Decentralization and Popular Democracy: Governance from Below in Bolivia

8. Return to the Extremes

chapter 8 Return to the Extremes Chapters 2 and 3 chronicled how the same institutional shock produced very different kinds of local governance in two extreme cases of municipal performance . Did these initial responses persist over time? Did the bad get better , or did the good degrade? This chapter returns toViacha and Charagua in 2009 to examine how governance in each municipality evolved over the subsequent 12 years. Doing so allows us to examine the differential effects that decentralization has over time—that is, when the shock is still fresh versus later on, after the incentives and patterns of behavior it creates have become routine. It allows us to track changes over time in speci‹c social and political dynamics that prove to be important to the quality of local government. And it allows us to test the robustness of the theory developed in chapter 6 much more rigorously, using a large quantity of deep, nuanced evidence on how municipal responsiveness and accountability change over time, based on qualitative data gathered after the theory was ‹rst proposed. Viacha in 2009 Twelve years later the visitor’s ‹rst impression of Viacha is of a central square now graced with statues, large trees, and abundant ›owers and greenery, in striking contrast to its sad, gray past. Behind it stands a new, modern municipal building that is much larger, cleaner, and more functional than the one it replaced. The city center is modestly busier, with more shops, restaurants, and traf‹c than before, although this difference is not large.At the municipal level, the 12-year interlude saw both contraction and growth. In 2002 Districts Four, Five, and Six seceded to form two new municipalities , Jesús de Machaqa and San Andrés de Machaqa. Viacha shrank away from the Peruvian frontier and was left with four districts, only one of 240 them rural. But the population lost was fully replaced through urban growth. Whereas before Viacha’s outer neighborhoods reached tenuously toward the outskirts of El Alto, one city almost petering out before the other began, now their urban sprawls jut into one another chaotically, and only neighborhood locals can ‹nd the boundary. Most of this growth is in District Seven, which straddles the road northward toward La Paz. In eight years it quintupled in size, from fewer than 6,000 inhabitants in 2001 to more than 30,000 in 2009.1 With 70 civic organizations , it was, according to the president of its FEJUVE, “a little Viacha that will soon be bigger than Viacha.”2 But municipal services did not keep up with this growth.“There is no potable water or sewerage, and 20–30% of the district still has no electricity,” the assistant mayor protested. “Public services are worse than in rural areas. . . . Our wells abut our septic tanks, and so we defecate in our‘potable’water.”3 Af›icted by the strains of its own rapid growth, and feeling itself abandoned by Viacha, it is not surprising that District Seven wanted to follow in the footsteps of the Machaqas and become its own municipality.“We already have the importance and size for it,” the FEJUVE president insisted.4 Other aspects of Viachan life proved more enduring. Twelve years later the municipal coliseum was still un‹nished, a brooding “cement monument ” to the kickbacks of Callisaya and his ephemeral successors.5 But under the current mayor the end, at last, was in sight. SOBOCE undertook a technical completion study, allowing the municipality to contract the speci‹c works required before the facility could be inaugurated. And in terms of its social character too, Viacha remained “a complicated, dif‹cult city. The people are con›ictive and they like to ‹ght.”6 Another impartial observer agreed. “People in District Seven are demanding and con›ictive. Those in Districts One and Two are unhappy with everything. They’ve tried to overthrow the mayor each of these last ‹ve years.”7 But in 2009 Viachan society, complicated and con›ictive as ever, was enjoying local government of a very different quality from the graft and paralysis of 1997. Local Governance in Viacha, 2009 “The electri‹cation of Viacha’s 63 rural communities is now complete,”said Luis Calle Callisaya, head of the Viachan Agrarian Association, reporting a huge change in the lives of his constituents with obvious satisfaction. Return to the Extremes 241 With respect to potable water, most communities now...