BRINGING THE CITIZENS IN:
2nd Generation Interventions
The Philippine decentralization process has created significant inroads and opportunities for governments, civil society organizations and grassroots communities. But it has also posed grave challenges, and the necessary reforms towards effective decentralization are hindered by multiplicity of stumbling blocks. Clearly, the most dominant of these hindrances is patronage politics.
- Patronage politics preserves the long-held interest of local elites;
- Patronage politics has allowed LGUs to cope with decentralization by maintaining dependence on national government transfers and congressional pork barrel
- Patronage politics becomes the risk-free solution to resource constraints, becoming a disincentive for instituting sustainable, long-term resource mobilization program of LGUs
- Patronage politics keeps LGU constituencies and grassroots communities at the margins of local governance
Bringing the Citizens In is the IPG’s new program that seeks to promote good local governance as an alternative to patronage politics. Its key pillar is citizen’s participation — that is, bringing the citizens into local governance and development processes. The program is designed to scale up interventions in participatory development planning, community organizing, gender and development and in LGU capacities for widening fiscal space.
Overall, the program aims to meet the following institutional goals:
- The development of a progressive and capable constituency whose role in public policy-making is not limited to representation by elected officials or as mere clientele of the local bureaucracy but one that is oriented towards active citizenship and the exercise of informed, collective and constructive interaction with the local government; and
- The development of structures and mechanisms by which people’s initiative in development planning, budgeting, project implementation, monitoring and evaluation are integrated into a cohesive, viable, formal processes that would institutionalize citizen’s participation in local governance.
COMPONENT 1: SCALING UP CITIZENS PARTICIPATION FOR SUSTAINED AND DYNAMIC BARANGAY-BAYAN PARTNERSHIP
A capacity-building intervention, this component shall enable municipal governments to develop plans and budget that are reflective of community-identified needs, and facilitate greater cooperation between the municipal government, barangay, local communities and civil society organizations in the delivery of municipal services.
Scaling-up citizens’ participation in local governance can address the glaring need to transform structures and processes of LGUs into participatory and democratic, and responsive to people’s interests. Ultimately, the program’s goal is to deepen democratization in local governance through inclusion of local communities and marginalized groups in development processes at the municipal levels.
Direct target beneficiaries are municipal and barangay governments, people’s organizations (POs) and local communities. Indirectly, the program also aims to benefit IPG’s partners in the Barangay-Bayan Governance Consortium ((BBGC). It is expected that after the action plan, the beneficiaries will have developed basic capacities to facilitate the implementation of development plans and to institutionalize participatory governance initiatives in their local development agenda and legislation.
STRATEGIES:
- Capacity-building and enhancement for LGUs and local communities
- Adoption of participatory and convergent methods of planning and project implementation
- Scaling up interventions to municipal and provincial levels while sustaining those at the barangay level
COMPONENT 2: BARANGAY-BAYAN BAYANIHAN: BUILDING PARTICIPATORY MODES OF COOPERATION BETWEEN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS AND COMMUNITIES FOR EFFECTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE DELIVERY OF DEVOLVED SERVICES
Barangay-Bayan Bayanihan is a capability-building intervention for the reform of service delivery systems and structures to provide appropriate, effective, sufficient and timely public goods and services to local communities. The program is designed to create the institutional mechanisms for barangay-bayan bayanihan as an alternative mode of barangay-bayan-community cooperation for the production, management and maintenance of public goods and services through co-production/co-financing/cost-sharing.
Co-production and co-financing enjoins the contribution of communities in terms of time, labor, equipment, skills, knowledge and other resources. Through community contribution, the project ultimately aims to enhance human development and poverty alleviation programs by improving service delivery systems. Further, the project is designed to prepare structures for co-production, such that, even after IPG’s technical assistance, these structures are able to replicate co-production in other projects.
Beneficiaries in this intervention include municipal and barangay governments, people’s organizations (POs), local communities, IPG’s partner organizations and other LGUs and public/private institutions involved in development work and good governance.
STRATEGIES
- Encouragement of communities’ greater involvement in project implementation
- Counterparting of stakeholders
- Upholding of cost-recovery through user charges
- Promotion of inter-barangay cooperation
- Promotion of inter-agency coordination and cooperation
COMPONENT 3: TRANSFORMATIVE POWER: WOMEN CONTESTING AND NEGOTIATING POWER RELATIONS AND DISPENSATION
Taking off from the IPG’s maiden Women in Governance Program, this second generation capability-building and advocacy intervention is designed to address the following needs: 1) develop/train women political leaders that would contest electoral disputes; 2) broaden a constituency that would collectively advance women’s advocacies in local development processes; and 3) provide venues for sharing, discussion and theory-building on women’s participation in politics and governance.
A gender-sensitive policy environment alone does not guarantee the promotion of women’s participation in power structures and decision-making. Hence, the project’s overall goal of mainstreaming gender-related concerns in local and national development and governance by expanding women’s participation in politics and governance. Intended beneficiaries are women’s organizations, women community leaders and local officials.
STRATEGIES
- Enabling women to contest power arrangements and dispensation at the local level of government
- Delivery of gender-sensitive and responsive public goods and services
- Intensification of gender awareness and organizing to include working with men
- Women’s advocacy
- Theory-building for women in politics and governance
COMPONENT 4: BUILDING BONDS AND BRIDGES FOR A SUSTAINED AND DYNAMIC PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY AND GOOD GOVERNANCE SOCIAL MOVEMENT
Focused on forging and expanding partnerships, this project is designed to strengthen the Barangay Bayan Governance Consortium (BBGC) as a network that forms linkages among civil society organizations, local government units and officials, and social movements.
In the strive to build a sustained and dynamic social movement for participatory democracy and good governance, IPG will assist the network in 1) development of advocacy agenda for reforms in decentralization and local governance; 2) program development; 3) constituency building; and 4) organizational development. Impact will be on IPG’s partner NGOs, POs and local government officials in the BBGC.
The principal strategy of the consortium in building a sustained and dynamic social movement is to “Bring the Citizen In”. It brings forth greater citizen’s participation in decision-making and agenda-setting, production and delivery of services. Also, whereas previously the consortium was limited to NGOs, this time around, linkaging will be expanded to include mayors and other local government officials (LGOs) to scale up from barangay to municipal level.
COMPONENT 5: SUSTAINING GOOD GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES THROUGH EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Since IPG’s inception, education and training have been the backbone of the organization’s local governance work. With the new problems and opportunities that decentralization has ushered in, IPG sees it as fitting to scale up its capacity and its education and training programs to build the Barangay-Bayan School of Governance in the near future. This is envisioned to become the instruction and research center for synchronization and regularization of the organization’s capability-building courses.
Through the creation of the School, IPG hopes to strengthen its role as an alternative learning institution that provides timely, relevant and responsive training for local government officials, local special bodies, community leaders, people’s organizations and other stakeholders. The School shall address the need to study, discover, design and test models of good governance practices and promote the same for replication to other areas.
Instructional courses are designed to orient participants to Philippine politics, decentralization, local governance, people’s participation, women and governance and such thematic issues as solid waste management, health, education, enterprise development and environment protection. Courses are also designed for competency-building and leadership formation.