Decentralization, Clientelism and Popular Participation: Is there a role for ICTs to improve local governance?

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 Abstract—This case study investigates under which conditions ICTs can play a role in fostering the empowerment of rural communities to fully participate in the decision-making processes of local governments. The analysis using empirical evidence from rural communities in Bolivia focuses hereby on the following key questions: i) to what extent can ICTs contribute to improving the efficiency and efficacy of local government? ii) does ICTs have the potential to make local governments more transparent and responsive to the needs of rural communities and iii) can ICTs support the core objectives of the Bolivian Law of Popular Participation to strengthen the role of local government in public-policy making and the implementation of development programs? The article will explore these issues using several case studies of rural municipalities in Bolivia that have participated in the USAID-funded project Enlared Municipal. It concludes that the most important factors influencing whether ICT programs can support the processes of decentralization, improved social accountability and thus improve the well-being of rural communities depends primarily on political, social and cultural factors, whereby economic and technical factors are secondary.
I. INTRODUCTION
ver the past few decades, most developing countries have embarked on decentralization programs with the ambitious aims of: i) increasing government‘s efficiency and efficacy; ii) enhancing the quality of service delivery in such areas as health and education; and iii) to enhance the responsiveness and poverty-focused of governments [1]-[3]. Most of these programs operate under the assumption that decentralized governments achieve more efficient results and are less corrupt since they are closer to the people, better able to understand the local dynamics of economic and social development and are thus more accountable for their programs to rural communities [4]. These programs are usually embedded into broader policy reforms of the public sector and go frequently hand in hand with major privatization programs. In Bolivia, the 1994 Law of Popular Participation (LPP) signaled a dramatic shift in national policy from a centralized
Manuscript received September, 22, 2008. Bjӧrn-Sӧren Gigler is a PhD Student at the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN), London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK (e-mail: b.gigler@lse.ac.uk).
top-down policy approach to a decentralized, participatory, locally empowering approach [5].
The LPP transferred authorities and resources from the central state to local municipalities in order to make government more efficient and to improve the implementation of its policies for poverty alleviation1. At the core of the decentralization program was (i) the delegation of new responsibility to municipal governments and Territorial Grassroots Organizations (TGOs) with an allocation of 20% of national tax revenue upon approval of their Annual Operating Plans (AOPs) for the social sectors—mainly health and education and (ii) the establishment of mechanisms for social control, called Vigilance Committees (VCs), responsible for overseeing the expenditure of funds [6]-[7]. Critics of the law point out that its implementation faced severe obstacles since powerful regional elites continued to dominate local municipal planning processes and captured the resources provided by the central government [8]. Furthermore, the results from the bottom-up participatory process had to fit with national and departmental plans, and respond to the spending priorities of the national government [9]. It is however important to acknowledge both the LLP‘s shortcomings and its successes— in particular that, with the LLP, the Bolivian government finally recognized traditional indigenous forms of organization and transferred important resources to local governments. It was, in short, a formidable attempt to shift power relations within Bolivia‘s mestizo-dominated society, so that indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups would have the space to voice their concerns, interests, and needs.
This case study investigates the role ICTs can play in supporting such a decentralization process and in helping to improve the well-being of indigenous peoples. In particular, the case study addresses the following questions: (i) do ICTs contribute to improving the efficiency and efficacy of local governments, thus strengthening their institutional capacity to provide basic services to local communities?; (ii) can ICTs enhance the transparency of local governments and make them more responsible and accountable to the needs of local communities?; (iii) was Enlared Municipal, the centralized government-led program, able to achieve its main objectives, and which constraints and limitations did it face in the implementation of the program?; (iv) in which dimensions
1 Bolivian Government in cooperation with the IMF and the World Bank, ―Economic Policy Framework Paper for 1997-99‖, June 1997
Decentralization, Clientelism and Popular Participation—Is there a role for ICTs to improve local governance?
Björn-Sören Gigler, London School of Economics
O

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(i.e., political, organizational, and social) do ICTs have the biggest influence on local governments and to what extent do they enhance the human and social capabilities of the program‘s participants?; and (v) did the project lead to any institutional changes in local governments, thus altering the relationship between local government officials and indigenous communities? The case study investigates these central issues, based on the empirical evidence from the government-led ―Enlared Municipal‖ project—the principal ICT program in support of local governments in Bolivia, coordinated by the Federation of Municipal Associations of Bolivia (FAM). The overall objectives of the program were (i) to improve the transparency and accountability of local governments; (ii) to enhance local governance structures and to improve the relationship between local government and indigenous communities; and (iii) to strengthen the institutional capacity and thus the performance of local governments in particular in relations to the delivery of social services. Thus, the program‘s main focus was the political dimension, as its principal aim was to improve local democratic processes and to strengthen the popular participation of indigenous peoples in local governments. Nevertheless, the program also included in its overall goals institutional and social aspects of local development as evidenced through its third general objective.
Based on these objectives the project focused on the following specific activities: (i) implementing an ICT capacity-building program for local government officials; (ii) developing and promoting the use of a national Portal on issues related to municipal development www.Enlared.org.bo among local, regional, and national government officials; (iii) assisting municipalities to develop and implementation their own municipal websites at the local level and (iv) helping formulate a national ICT strategy within the framework of the ongoing UNDP-sponsored ETIC-initiative2.
II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN E-GOVERNMENT, GOOD GOVERNANCE AND DECENTRALIZATION
E-government is defined in the literature “as the use of ICTs to improve the activities of public sector organizations‖ [10]. More specifically, the main objectives of e-government are (i) to make government more accessible, effective and accountable; (ii) improve the relationship between government and citizens; (iii) strengthen the coordination and cooperation within the public administration; and (iv) enhance government performance in the delivery of public services [11]-12].
The proponents of e-government frequently argue that the application of ICTs in the public sector can play a catalytic role for greater democracy, improved government performance and socio-economic development more generally [13]-[16] particular, the literature frequently points to the potential of e-government programs to promote good governance by enhancing the performance and accountability
2 The Estrategia Nacional de las Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación (ETIC) is a UNDP-financed initiative which developed through a participatory process including all sectors of the Bolivian society a National Strategy for the Information Society for Bolivia (www.etic.org.bo)
of local governments [17]-[20]. Most of these authors have an optimistic view on ICTs and their role in development and thus recommend that governments proactively embrace e- government applications in order reap the benefits from the use of ICTs within the public sector.
More critical views of e-government highlight that in praxis the majority of e-government programs in developing countries have failed [21]-[23]. In fact, Heeks [24] ascertains that the empirical evidence shows that 35% of e-government programs are total failures (the program was not implemented or was immediately abandoned after its development), and 50% are partial failures (major goals were not attained and/or there were undesirable outcomes). He introduces the ‘reality- design‘ gap framework to analyze the underlying causes for the numerous cases of failures and shows that the major reason for these failures is the common gap between the current realities within public administrations and the design of the e-government project. Heeks concludes that the larger the design-reality gap is in the following seven dimensions (information, technology, process, objectives and values, staffing and skills, management systems and structures and other resources) the greater the risk for-government programs to fail [25]. Madon demonstrates based on an interpretive set of case studies in Kerala India, that e-government programs have frequently neglected such critical factors as adequate resources, skill-levels, values, beliefs and motivations and thus poor people and communities were unable to derive real benefits out of such investments [26]. The author proposes a framework for evaluation the impact of e-governance projects based on Sen‘s capability approach in order to be able to assess the developmental impact of these programs on peoples‘ quality of live. Madon concludes that a critical barrier for the successful implementation of e-government programs is that far-reaching back-end administrative reforms need to be implemented in parallel for these programs to have any significant positive effects on local governance [27]. The literature on the e-government and decentralization has stressed that the principal value of ICTs lays in both in enhancing the participatory (good governance) and the managerial (improved performance) dimensions of local government [28]-[30]. Lawrence Pratchett emphasizes that ICT projects have the potential to contribute to support local governments in the following three dimensions of their work: (i) enhance local democracy; (ii) promote public policy- making; and (iii) improve the quality of their service delivery [31]. Most scholars however highlight that local governments use ICTs primarily as instruments to improve the delivery of services and neglect its uses to enhance participatory mechanism conducive for good governance [32-35]. In fact, an empirical study of the ICT use of 270 local governments in California highlights that most municipalities do not see ICTs as an instrument for promoting good governance at the local level, but as an additional communications tool—failing to explore their value as change agents and their potential to alter the fundamental relationship between government and citizen [36].

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This case study draws on previous e-government studies by Ciborra (2005); Ciborra and Navarra (2005); Madon (1993, 2004), Walsham (1993) and Heeks [37]-[42] in its approach to apply Pettigrew‘s (1985; 1998) methodology of a contextual approach which emphasizes the importance of the economic, social, political, and cultural context into which the technologies are introduced [43]-[44]. These factors thus will be essential for assessing the effects Enlared program had on local governments and the well-being of indigenous peoples.
III. THE ENLARED MUNICIPAL PROGRAM
The Enlared Municipal project was implemented in two distinct phases. The first phase of the project, from March 2001 to June 2004, was implemented by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). ICMA is a U.S.-based international professional organization for managers, administrators, and assistants in cities, towns, and counties and provides technical and managerial assistance, training, and information resources to its members and the local government community (ICMA website).
During its first phase, the project developed an online central Portal for municipal government (www.Enlared.org.bo), attempted to introduce a national bidding platform for Bolivia, and provided technical support to the Mancomunidad of the Chiquitania for the development of an integrated Management Information System for the fourteen municipalities belonging to the Mancumidad of the Chiquitania [45]. However, the program‘s impact on local governments was limited by its ambitious and poorly focused objectives, its concentrated, top-down organization, and the perception among participants that the ICMA was a foreign and distant organization unconnected with the particular realities of the Bolivian municipalities. During field visits to the Chiquitania region in the Eastern lowlands in from April 20-25 and August 2-7, 2005, it became apparent that the project did not have any sustainable impact on local governments and communities. Interviews with local indigenous leaders, several government officials, mayors, and Juan Burgos, the ICT project coordinator of APCOB—a local NGO promoting indigenous people‘s development in the eastern lowlands—revealed that the municipalities and communities were not aware of the suggested Information Management System, and that in fact the fourteen communities of the Mancomunidad did not have any connectivity to the Internet. The tremendous ―design- reality‖ gap between project descriptions, consultant reports, and the realities on the ground was highlighted by the evidence through the results from my fieldwork. Most people interviewed were not aware that the project existed, even though its first phase had been completed less than a year before the fieldwork was carried out. In the municipality of Concepcion, located in the Chuiqutania, approximately five hours from the city of Santa Cruz, the newly elected mayor clearly expressed his frustration with the overly centralized planning and execution of the projects:
―Frequently the needs of local communities are not considered, the projects are in fact designed on the desks of the Ministries or of the international donors. A consequence of this approach is that many projects are not sustainable at the local level and finish once the financing dries up. This program must be one of those unsustainable projects—at least for my municipality there are currently no concrete benefits visible from this project‖.3
The findings of the fieldwork showed that the first phase of the project did not have any lasting development impact on indigenous communities, so the research is focused instead on the second phase of the project. Based on its experience with the first phase of the project, USAID decided to refocus the program and strengthened its partnership with Bolivia‘s national association of local governments—the Federación de Asociaciones Municipales de Bolivia (FAM)4. During this phase—from the beginning of September 2004 to the end of November 2005—the FAM assumed responsibility for project coordination. The Federation organized a competitive bidding process in mid-2004, which was won by the Swiss-funded program Programa de Apoyo a la Democracia Municipal (PADEM)5. The program focuses on increasing the capacity, accessibility, and accountability of municipal governments in order to strengthen the participation of community-based organizations and citizens in local governance. This program was selected, in part, because of its seven-year experience in working with local governments on issues related to good governance, participation, and empowerment6. The new Enlared project team aimed to make the program more responsive to specific local needs and integrated ICTs into the ongoing local and regional processes of policy- making and citizen participation. There was a strong emphasis on finding new ways of achieving the overall development objectives of the project.
A. Socio-economic, Cultural and Technological Diversity of Municipalities
In order to set realistic objectives, the project team focused its technical assistance on fifteen municipalities and nine regional municipal associations, covering all of Bolivia‘s nine states.7 A major challenge for the project team, however, was
3 Interview with Justo Seoane, Mayor of Concepción, and Ex Vice-Minister of Indigenous Affairs, April 22, 2005. 4 FAM is the National Association of all the Bolivian municipalities with the exception of the major cities of La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. 5 PADEM stands for the Program for the support of the democratization of municipalities, which is being coordinated by the Swiss Non-governmental organization Ayuda Obrera Suiza (AOS), which works towards the strengthening of local democratic processes and the empowerment of poor communities throughout Latin America. 6 Interview with Carlos Soria, coordinator of the Enlared project. August 25th 2005.
7 The 15 municipalities include: Cobija (Pando), Trinidad (Beni), Montero and Comarapa (Santa Cruz); Sipe Sipe and Villa Tunari (Cochabamba), Monteagudo and Tarabuco (Chuquisaca); El Puente (Tarija); Batallas and

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that the fifteen municipalities differed extremely between rural, poor indigenous communities, such as Batallas in La Paz, or El Puente in Tarija, rural more mestizo dominated municipalities such as Comarapa or Montero in Santa Cruz and large urban municipalities such as Trinidad or Cobija— the capitals of Beni and Pando, respectively. In addition to the tremendous difference in the socio-economic, political, and cultural context, these municipalities differed in their access to electricity and telecommunications services. To address and understand the heterogeneity and the local context of the fifteen participating municipalities described above, the program team initiated its activities in October 2004 with a detailed ICT needs assessment at the local level. Its main objective was to assess the differences in awareness, ICT uses, and proficiency of use among local government officials in the fifteen participating municipalities. As part of this baseline study, the team carried out community meetings, interviews, and structured surveys with mayors, council members, technical staff of the municipalities and with representatives of local Territorial Grassroots Organizations (TGOs), members of the Vigilance Committees (VCs), and other community leaders. In total, 634 people—424 men and 210 women—participated in this baseline study and provided valuable information on their information and communications needs and their current use of ICTs [46]. The assessment found that there was little awareness and uses of the Internet in any of the rural municipalities, and that, even in the urban municipalities like Tupiza or Uyuni, local governments were not using the Internet for work. In fact, out of a total of 127 local government officials, only a quarter (24%) used the Internet for work; the overwhelming two- thirds majority did not use the Internet at all, and one-tenth of participants did not even use computers. The results of the needs assessment reveal profound differences in ICT readiness among the fifteen municipalities studied.
B. Main Activities
Based on the baseline study, the project team focused its activities on the following four strategic areas: (i) technical redesign of the Portal; (ii) content development and online services; (iii) capacity-building in the use of ICTs; and (iv) news desk and communications. Within these different areas the project was able to achieve the following specific results. First, the Portal www.enlared.org.bo was redesigned using local technology and focusing on providing technical support to the Federation of Municipal Associations, as such helping 9 municipal associations and individual municipalities in the development of their own websites. At the completion of the second phase of the project, the Portal hosted 116 sites from these organizations. The Portal placed significant effort on providing targeted and timely content for policy makers, local government officials, donor agencies and the general public interested in issue of municipal and local development. For instance, the Portal provided for the first time a comprehensive list of all newly elected mayors (from the
Coroico (La Paz); Machacamarca and Pampa Aullagas (Oruro) and Uyuni and Tupiza (Postosi).
municipal elections in December 2004) and their contact information, as well as the most recent socio-economic and human development data on all 314 municipalities. In addition to the provision of content, the Portal provided more interactive features, such as a weekly forum with national or local policy makers including relevant issues of interest such as the Constitutional Assembly or political and social exclusion of the extreme poor due to their lack of appropriate documentation. Concerning the capacity-building program, the project trained 60 municipal staff in the use of ICTs (30 from the regional associations and 30 from the 15 municipalities). The staff from the municipalities participated in two one-week national training workshops, one organized in June in La Paz and the other one organized in late August in Cochabamba. The content of the training focused on (i) basic computer skills, such as word processing or use of spreadsheets; (ii) introduction to the use of the Internet; (iii) the design and development of websites and; (iv) an introduction to ‗digital‘ journalism. The main purpose of these training workshops was to create a network of technical specialists in the municipalities, who then could become the municipal focal points for Enlared.
IV. EVALUATION OF THE PROJECTS IMPACT
Based on the above description of the project‘s main achievement or outputs, this section will focus on evaluating the impact the project had on the well-being of rural communities. The evaluation of the project impact is hereby defined as the “systematic analysis of the lasting or significant changes— positive or negative, intended or not—in people’s lives brought about by a given action or series of action [47]. As such, the analysis aims to unpack the extent to which this project has made a difference in peoples‘ lives and has in fact met its overall development objectives by asking the following: (i) Has the project contributed to strengthen the managerial and technical capacity of local governments, thus allowing them to play a more pro-active role in public-policy making? (ii) Has the project supported the transparency of municipalities and thus promoted participatory democratic processes at the local level; and finally (iii) Did the project enhance the efficiency and efficacy of local government thus improving its delivery of services, such as health and education to its community. This categorization is based on the theoretical framework developed by Lawrence Prachett described above in the case study [48]. The article applies the alternative evaluation framework based on Sen‘s capability approach developed by the author in an earlier article to evaluate the impact of the e-government program on people‘s well-being [49].
A. The program’s Overall Impact
The principal finding presented in this section is that the program had a very limited positive overall impact on its participants‘ human and social well-being. The empirical

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results are based on two user surveys carried out by the project
team and a sub-sample from the impact survey (n=22), carried
out as part of my research in July 2005. The first user survey
(n=190), administrated as part of the ICT needs assessment in
October 2004, was designed to generate a baseline about the
awareness and proficiency of ICT use in the fifteen
municipalities. The second user survey (n=186), was carried
out by the project team in September 2005 in the same fifteen
municipalities, as part of its monitoring and evaluation
activities. The main difference between these two surveys and
the impact survey that I carried out as part of my research is
that they did not include any questions on people‘s perceptions
of the project‘s impact on their well-being and the well-being
of their communities, but instead assessed the participants‘
proficiency in ICT use and on evaluating the ICT training
component of the program.
Before analyzing participants‘ perceptions of the project‘s
impact on their human and social capabilities, we can observe
several basic statistical indicators about people‘s ICT use and
conclude that the project had a limited impact in the fifteen
municipalities it targeted.
The first critical finding from the data analysis is that the
large majority of local government officials from the fifteen
municipalities that participated in the project were entirely
unaware of the project‘s existence. Only a small percentage of
respondents to the baseline survey administrated in 2004 and
the user survey from 2005 indicated that they knew of the
project, and an even smaller percentage of the respondents had
actually used the services provided by the project. In fact, the
data from the first survey indicate that out of 127 respondents,
only 16 (13%) knew about the project and only 14 (11%) were
using the first municipal Portal developed by ICMA. This
figure is astonishing, particularly since in October, 2004 the
project had already been operating in Bolivia at a national
level for three years. These data confirm that, particularly in
its first phase, the project failed to make any long-term
positive impact on local governments or on the participating
communities.
The graphic below shows that awareness of the program
among local government officials significantly increased
during the second phase but the project continued to suffer
from relatively low awareness about its activities at the local
level. The empirical data from 2005 show that out of a total of
190 respondents, 70 people (about 37%) indicated that they
knew of the project—a major improvement from the
extremely low figure of 13% a year earlier. The project
continued to be under-utilized: only 31 respondents (17.5%)
indicated that they frequently used the services provided by
the project.
In spite of the significant improvements during the second
phase of the project, the continuously low levels of awareness
and usage among local government officials raise major
questions about the program‘s overall effectiveness and are a
good initial indicator for the limited overall impact of the
project.
Knowlede about the EnlaRed Municipal Program
among local government officials
(user survey: n=190)
Yes, 70, 40%
N/A, 22, 12%
No , 85, 48%
Yes No N/A
Fig. 1: Low Awareness of the Enlared Municipal program
The principal finding of this section—that the project had a
very low overall impact—was also confirmed by the empirical
results from the impact survey I carried out during my
fieldwork. Results from this survey indicate that—based on
the participants‘ self-perceptions—the program did not
enhance in any significant manner the human and social
capabilities of its participants. The graphic below shows that
the participants perceived the Internet to have had only a very
minor positive impact across all dimensions of their lives.
With the exception of the organizational dimension, in all
other dimensions (i.e., political, social, and economic) the
majority of participants expressed serious doubts about the
positive impact of the Internet on their lives, indicating that
they believed that the Internet could only ―somewhat‖ or ―not
at all‖ enhance their well-being.
Another remarkable finding was that the Enlared Municipal
project participants were very skeptical about the Internet‘s
impact in all dimensions of their lives. For instance, only 56%
of the Enlared participants indicated that the Internet had a
positive impact on the social dimension of their well-being.
The negative perceptions of the participants is particularly
striking in the political and social dimension, since the core
objective of the Enlared Municipal project was to improve the
performance of local governments in these two dimensions.
In fact, more than two-thirds (70%) of the program‘s
participants believed that the Internet could only ―somewhat‖
or ―not at all‖ improve their well-being in the political sphere
of their lives. In the social dimension only 31% of its
participants indicate that the Internet could significantly
enhance their well-being in this dimension.
In sum, the empirical data reveal that the participants were
particularly skeptical of the Internet‘s ability to improve their
own well-being and the living conditions of their communities
politically or socially, constituting the program‘s failure.
On the other hand, the organizational dimension is the only
dimension in which its program participants‘ have favorable
views. In fact, 59% of the respondents believe that the Internet
can significantly enhance their well-being in this dimension.
With respect to the economic dimension, respondents‘
views are most skeptical; an overwhelming majority (70%)

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Enlared: Perceptions about the Impact of the Internet
on peoples' well-being
24
30
31
35
41
59
6
35
25
35
24
18
70
35
44
30
35
23
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Economic
Political
Social
Cultural
Personal
Organizational
A lot Somewhat None
Fig. 2: Enlared Municipal Participants‘ overall perceptions on
ICT impact
indicated that the Internet would not have any impact at all on
either their personal or community well-being. The empirical
evidence from the impact survey thus emphasizes the
participants‘ overall negative perceptions of the Internet‘s
effects on their well-being. In contrast with the overall results,
Enlared Municipal participants were skeptical of the Internet‘s
impact on their individual well-being and on the social
capabilities of local governments and their communities. In
fact, the data analysis demonstrates that the program failed to
enhance people‘s individual capabilities and help local
governments to improve their performance, accountability,
and delivery of social services to the mostly rural
communities.
B. Impact on the Political Dimension of Well-being
This section investigates the underlying reasons that the
program had only a limited effect on the political dimension.
This issue is central to the evaluation of e-government
programs, and specifically the Enlared Municipal program,
since its main objectives were political in nature.
The analysis of survey results and interview responses in
the previous section shows that the Enlared Municipal project
failed to significantly improve participants‘ informational
capabilities; this section will investigate the project‘s failure to
promote ICT use as a way to improve governmental
responsiveness, transparency, and accountability. A glaring
result from the impact survey was that less than one-third of
the respondents (30%) thought the Internet had any significant
effect on the political dimension. The data indicate that 35%
of the programs participants believed that the Internet had no
effect at all on this dimension. The particular pessimism of
Enlared project participants becomes apparent when their
responses are compared with those from the overall sample,
among whom 36% of respondents indicated that they were
convinced that the Internet could play a significant role in this
area and only 20% expressed serious doubts about its efficacy.
It is critical to note again that the Enlared Municipal program
was the only ICT program that specifically prioritized the use
of ICTs to enhance peoples‘ political well-being. These
findings clearly indicate the overall limited impact of the
program in this dimension.
What are the underlying causes that explain this finding?
Which factors explain why the program was so unsuccessful
in reaching its main objectives? What were the effects of the
program on local governance structures and which barriers did
it encounter in trying to enhance indigenous peoples‘ political
well-being?
The following analysis draws on the empirical results from
the impact survey and presents more in-depth qualitative
evidence from the two municipalities of Batallas and
Comarapa. Based on Pratchett‘s above mentioned
classification and the principal objectives of the Enlared
program, I have broken down the political dimension into the
following two areas: (i) enhanced transparency and
accountability and (ii) improved local governance.
B.1 The Impact on Enhanced Transparency & Accountability
The first critical finding is that the Enlared Municipal
program had only very limited effects on the transparency and
vertical accountability of local governments and thus could
not significantly strengthen local democratic processes. The
graphic below shows the effect the program had on the major
four areas of accountability.
The disaggregated results illustrate that the program helped
improve people‘s access to information about their own rights
and national government policies, but failed to enhance the
transparency of local governments. In fact, less then one
quarter of the respondents (23.5%) believed that the Internet
could make an important contribution in this area, and only
25% were convinced of its value for enhancing people‘s
access to information on government programs.
Enlared: The internet and Vertical Accountability
28.6
23.5 25.1
45.2
51.8
31.7
34.4
41.2
19.6
23.1
40.4
35.3
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
inproved
information about
nat. gov. policies
improved
know ledge about
citizen rights
improved
transparency
improved
information about
gov. programs
Percentage
A lot Somew hat None/Na
Fig. 3: Continued lack of governmental transparency and
accountability
The results point to a principal incongruity in the program:
while it had some positive impact through its Portal on
improving the access to information related to municipal
development at the national level, it did not improve
information flows between municipalities and local
communities. The program had an overly abstract national
agenda and improved the access to information for a small
elite of national policy makers, international donors and the

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media, however failed to enhance in any significant manner the dynamics between local governments and its citizens at the community-level.
This major finding was also confirmed by the semi- structured interviews with local government officials, NGO representatives and community leaders in Batallas and Comarapa. In an interview, the ―official mayor‖8 of Comarapa clearly expressed his skepticism about the project and the role of the FAM in supporting local governments in general:
―We have a very diverse population in Comarapa and the surrounding communities; about half the population are mestizos and the other half are indigenous migrants from the highlands. Thus for us to improve our communications with all the communities is very important, but I don‘t see how this program can help us to better deal with this problems. The program has developed a website—How does this help us to improve our communications with more remote indigenous communities? How do these communities benefit from this—the majority of them do not even have access to electricity, then how can they access a website. I really can‘t see the value of this type of program for us.‖9 This comment needs to be understood in the context of Comarapa, a municipality that, in spite of relatively favorable socio-economic indicators, was confronted with significant social tensions between its primarily rural indigenous population and its urban mestizo population. In the statement above, the senior advisor stresses the challenge of improving his municipality‘s capacity to communicate with local communities in order to enhance the popular participation of a broad range of people in municipal planning processes. This is a critical shortcoming the implementation of the LPP has confronted in most rural communities throughout Bolivia. While the law has succeeded in significantly enhancing the participation of communities in the identification of municipal development projects through broad-based consultations, it has faced in most municipalities serious limitations in terms of improving the participation of local communities in municipal decision-making processes about critical issues of local development such as for instance the approval of planned public investment projects (Goudsmit and Blackburn, 2001).
The above quote highlights that the program failed to enhance the transparency of the municipalities and to improve its communications with more remote indigenous communities. In Comarapa a critical issue furthermore was that the local government sided frequently with the mestizo
8 The ―official mayor‖ is the most senior government official in local government, who is in charge of the all processes of the public administration (own translation). 9 9 Interview with Jose Luis, official mayor of the municipality in Comarapa, July 15, 2005.
population and attempted to suppress the influence of indigenous peoples in local politics. The president of the local agricultural producers associations and a Quechua indigenous leader describes the exclusivity of local politics:
―For us it is very clear that the municipality is quite biased against our communities. It is always the same issue. We can wait for hours in the municipality with our demands, the mayor and the councilmember won‘t listen to our concerns. They are too busy with their political games and to represent the interest of the rich people of the city— we just don‘t have any voice in their decisions and we have no information at all about what type of programs and activities they are planning for this year.‘10 In short, local authorities lacked the will to improve access to information for the general population and instead allowed a small circle of mostly urban elites to dominate the local political decision-making process. The mostly rural indigenous population was entirely excluded from any political decision-making processes and was forced to choose the path of street blockages and civil disobedience to gain a voice in the political process. Questions remain, however: What was the role of Enlared Municipal project in such a complicated socio-political environment? Did the program have any influence at all on the local political process? Why did the program fail to promote in any way the popular participation of indigenous communities in the decision making process of local government.
One reason was the programs‘ inability to react flexibly to the given socio-political context. Instead of working with local government officials to make the existing municipal planning processes more transparent and to gradually enhance the popular participation of indigenous communities in local decision-making processes, the project continued to promote its original concept to assist the municipality in developing a website which was supposed to enhance its transparency. This activity provided by the program clearly did not match the local socio-political context nor was it an appropriate mechanism to address the existing democratic shortcomings in Comarapa. Thus, the program did not alter the prebendal culture 11 of local government. The same few powerful groups continued to dominate the decision-making process within local government and the mostly indigenous population continued to be excluded and marginalized in political terms. In brief, the program failed (i) to improve the transparency and accountability of local government and (ii) to enhance peoples‘ political capabilities to better participate in the decision-making processes. The empirical evidence presented
10 Interview with Julio Sanchez, president of the agricultural producer association, Comarapa, May 24, 2005. 11 A prebendal local political culture is defined by local political practices that are characterized by patrimonial, clientelistic and caudillist features (Blackburn, 2000)

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above, based on participatory observations and unstructured interviews with key policy-makers and local actors, clearly demonstrates that the local stake-holders perceived the Enlared project to be distant from their own realities and vividly illustrates the program‘s inability to meaningfully improve local democratic processes.
B.2 Impact on Enhanced Local Governance
Another critical aspect of enhanced political capabilities at the local government level is the improved capacity of municipalities for public policy making in local communities. Within the increasingly fragmented and disaggregated structures of local communities many local governments face considerable challenges in playing a central role in promoting local governance structures that are conducive for economic and social development [50] The following analysis uses the concept of ―good local governance,‖ developed by Judith Tendler, which refers to a healthy ―three-way dynamics among local government, civil society, and an active central government‖ [51].
At the core of the concepts stands the notion that a good local governance structure is essential for effective public policy making. Tendler stresses that coordination between local governments, local civil society organizations, and communities, as well as coordination between local and central government, are critical for good governance. Local government is more of an effective facilitator of partnerships between different local actors and stakeholders than a sole implementer of development programs.
A critical question this raises is what role ICTs can play in such a new system of local governance? The case study will focus on the extent to which the Enlared project was able to strengthen the capacity of local governments to assume the role of a ―facilitator‖ of local development. In brief, to what extent was the project successful in enhancing healthy local governance in local communities? The principal finding from both the municipalities of Comarapa and Batallas demonstrate that the Enlared project was unable to play a central role in enhancing the capabilities of local governments in this dimension, primarily because it did not effectively promote a cultural change within local governments to a more democratic and inclusive approach of local public policy making. Instead, local government continued to manage local development programs in their traditional authoritarian and bureaucratic styles. Asked about the role the Enlared program played in local politics, Claudia Camacho from ICO cited the program‘s inability to facilitate a partnership between the local government and her NGOs in order to work together on the construction of a telecenter for Comarapa.
―When we first heard about the Enlared Municipal program and that Comarapa was selected to participate in its pilot phase, we were very excited and thought that we could closely collaborate with the municipality on promoting the use of ICTs, a key objective of our own program. Our idea was that we could share the connectivity costs with several institutions working in Comarapa and asked the mayor for his support. Unfortunately, the mayor did not see any value in this program and instead promised that the municipality will build its own a telecenter for the community. Now, two years later, Comarapa still does not have the promised telecenter and we have never received an official response from the municipality on our proposal we submitted in writing to the mayor‘s office.‖12 This statement reflects the all too common lack of coordination among local municipalities, local NGOs, and the central government. Despite the stated interest from the municipal government and the Enlared project, after two years Comarapa still did not have the telecenter it had been promised. A key aspect in the failure of the Enlared Municipal program to promote good governance at the local level was the frequent discrepancy between the political mandate designating local governments the executive agencies of development programs like the ICT program and their actual institutional capacity and technical knowledge to actually implement such programs. The following comment by the mayor of Comarpa about the planned telecenter illustrates this point:
―For me it is very clear. We in the municipality are the executive branch of government at the local level. It is our mandate to plan and implement all programs in our municipality. In the case of the planned telecenter, I had several meetings with the staff from ICO and explained to them that it is our role to coordinate this project. I still think that it is a good idea to build a telecenter here in Comarapa, particularly for your youth, however it needs to be clear that we need to oversee all activities related to this project.‖13
This statement clearly demonstrates that the local mayor considered it the prerogative of local government to coordinate and oversee all development programs in his municipality. His defensive attitude illustrates the tensions between his local administration and the NGO. While local government officials frequently insist that the municipality needs to spearhead all the development programs at the local level, the severe crisis of the state has led to a situation where national and international NGOs have frequently filled the institutional vacuum and are de facto implementing many programs, such as in health, education or infrastructure which under normal circumstance would be carried out by the state.
12 Interview with Claudia Camacho, ICT program coordinator of ICO in Comarapa, May 23, 2005. 13 Interview with mayor of Comarapa, May 23, 2005.

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The above-mentioned telecenter is a good example of a situation in which the local government lacks the institutional and technical capacity to implement the program and a non- governmental organization brings its own expertise and resources to provide the population with a needed service. Another reason for the poor local governance structure in Comarapa is the role international donors frequently play in creating dependencies in both the public sector and civil society organizations at the local level. The Enlared Municipal program, for instance, had defined its priorities and operational methods through a highly donor-centric approach. In fact the program did not allow local actors to come together in order to adjust the program‘s planned activities to their particular social, political, and cultural context and to define a way on how to collaborate on its implementation in Comarapa. In fact, the provision of internet services and ICT training workshops would have lend itself to such a collaborative approach, since many organizations within the municipality had initially expressed their strong interest in sharing the connectivity services with each other. An important consequence of the common donor-driven approach is that it provides important disincentives for local actors to work together and to coordinate their activities with each other, since each of the organizations is primarily accountable to their international donor and not to local stakeholders. The example provided above—about the inability of the municipality to react to the proposal by ICO to share the costs of the Internet connectivity—demonstrates that programs like the Enlared Municipal project focus solely on achieving their centrally defined development objectives rather than on facilitating partnerships among the different local actors. In fact, the program worked exclusively together with the municipality and entirely neglected to reach out to the other organizations within the municipality. In this sense the Enlared program is exemplary of many other development programs in Bolivia in that it was unable to facilitate a partnership between the different local stakeholders that would have significantly enhanced the impact and sustainability of the program [52]. In the case of the Comarapa municipality, the local government officials even preferred to delay the municipality‘s Internet access for many months rather than develop a collaborative relationship with a local NGO.
In sum, the Enlared program failed to enhance the local governance structure at the community level, since its program had an overly abstract national agenda and its centralized approach prevented it from affecting in any significant manner institutional changes at the local level. Furthermore, the program did not facilitate effective partnerships between different local actors and instead narrowly focused on trying to implement its pre-conceived objectives irrespective of the local socio-political context. In this sense the program represents the common shortcomings of similar donor-centric programs in Bolivia. Finally, the program failed because it lacked the necessary institutional credibility with local government officials based on the severe crisis of central government institutions. In brief, the program had no significant impact on enhancing the inter-agency coordination between local government, civil society organizations, and local communities; neither did it enhance the relationship between local and central government.
C. Impact on the Organizational Dimension
The overall empirical results from the impact survey seem to indicate that the program had considerable positive effects on the organizational dimension. The data show that more than three-fourths of the program‘s participants (77%) rated the impact of the Internet on this dimension either as very significant (59%) or somewhat significant (18%). This section disaggregates these overall results in order to investigate the extent to which the Enlared project did indeed lead to significant organizational changes in local governments and thus had a positive impact on their institutional capability. This issue is critical for evaluating the overall impact of the program, since one of its core objectives was to enhance the efficiency and efficacy of local governments by introducing ICTs into local public administrations. First, the analysis uses the ―social capital index‖ in order to carry out a deeper analysis of the impact of the Internet on the organizational dimension. The graphic below highlights that while a two-thirds majority of participants (69%) perceived the Internet as critical to strengthening their horizontal networks with colleagues in other municipalities, only a minority of respondents (49%) believed that the Internet had a significant effect on strengthening the organizational capabilities of local government. The participants‘ skeptical views about the program‘s impact on organizational structures of local governments is also evidenced by the fact that more than one-third (35%) of respondents doubted that the Internet could play any role in this dimension. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the large majority of respondents (64%), in spite of their skepticism about the Internet‘s ability to affect organizational change within government, had a very favorable view of the positive effects of the Internet on local organizations outside of government, such community-based organizations. This seems to indicate that the participants believed that there are major barriers to introducing ICTs into public administrations, while they consider this to be easier to be achieved outside of government. The more in-depth analysis of the data provides much richer insight into the effects of the program on the organizational dimension. In fact, the results demonstrate that the program‘s organizational impact was limited to establishing a strong social network among its participants, instead of instituting far-reaching organizational changes within local bureaucracies. Furthermore, the observed strengthening of social capital and horizontal communication networks was the result of ad hoc formation of informal networks between the program‘s participants, rather than a sign of improved institutional linkages between the different local municipalities.

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10
Enlared: Impact on Social Capital
64
49
69
18
16
20
18
35
11
0 20 40 60 80 100
strengthens local
organizations
strengthens local
gov ernments
strengthens horizontal
networks
Percentage
A lot Somew hat None/NA
Fig. 4: ICT—a powerful tool for horizontal networking
The above data also have to be seen in the context of the
significant barriers the program participants faced in
developing and promoting the use of information systems
within local bureaucracies, because of local government
officials‘ limited understanding of ICTs. In fact, a second
critical indicator for the program‘s lack of organizational
impact on local governments is the continuously low levels of
Internet use in the large majority of municipalities.
The following section draws on the empirical results from
the project team‘s two user surveys14 carried out in October
2004 and September 2005 with local government officials in
all of the fifteen participating municipalities. The analysis of
this dataset adds significant value to the statistical analysis,
since these surveys were carried out with a broad range of
local government officials in each of the participating
municipalities15, while the impact survey focused only the IT
and communication specialists who directly participated in the
program‘s training workshops.
The first finding from the empirical evidence is that the
program failed to institutionalize the use of the Internet in
public administrative processes in local governments. As the
graphic below illustrates, by September 2005—twelve months
into the second phase of the project—only about one-third
(36%) of the local government officials were using the
Internet for work; although about two-thirds of respondents
indicated that they had some experience in using the Internet,
most continued to use the Internet for personal, rather than
professional, communication. In fact, the survey results show
that only one-third of the respondents who were Internet users
(29%) used it at their workplace; most people (49%) used it in
telecenters or Internet cafés.
The failure of the program to promote the use of ICTs in
local governments is confirmed by the fact that only 40% of
government officials had a personal e-mail account (such as
―.yahoo‖) and none of the participants had an institutional e-mail
account (―.gov.bo‖). It is also noteworthy that the large
14 Both of these user surveys focused exclusively on issues related to the
awareness, readiness and use of ICTs in local governments (Enlared project
files).
15
The user survey from September 2004 was based on a sample of 190
respondents and the second survey from September 2005 on a sample of 186
participants.
majority (62%) of the respondents who had an e-mail account
used it only once every three days.
Moreover, the graphic below illustrates the resistance or
apathy of key decision-makers to these technologies. In fact,
the large majority of mayors and/or council members (82%)
did not consider the Internet important and thus did not use it
for their work. The data indicate that only among technical
staff did the majority (58.2%) use the Internet for their work.
Technical staff also demonstrated higher rates of e-mail use:
54% of them had personal e-mail accounts, compared to just
18% of mayors and council members.
The very low local appropriation of ICTs in local
government can be confirmed by comparing the results from
the baseline study from October 2004 with those from the user
survey from September 2005 described above.
Internet Use for work by local government officials
(user survey: n=190)
Yes, 69, 36%
No , 80, 42%
N/A, 41, 22%
Yes No N/A
Fig. 5: Limited Internet use within local governments
The percentage of respondents who used the Internet at
work remained unchanged at about 36% in both years. The use
of e-mail accounts actually decreased from 47% in 2004 to
only 40% in 2005. This empirical evidence clearly
demonstrates that the use of ICTs and the Internet continued to
be low priorities in the fifteen municipalities, in spite of their
nominal participation in the Enlared Municipal project. One
reason for this low level of ICT use is the extremely high turn-over
rate of local government officials. The municipal
elections in December 2004, four months into the project
implementation, resulted in profound political changes in a
large majority of local governments and negatively affected
the project.
Internet use by position in municipality
14.8
32.7
18.3
41.8
15.7
7.1
25.5 20.5
10.7
66.9 63.8
82.2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Mayor/Council
member
Technical
specialist
Member of
oversight
committee
Total
Position
percentage
A lot Somew hat None/NA
Fig. 6: Government officials‘ skepticism about Internet use

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11
In fact, 68% of the respondents from the 2005 survey
indicated that they had been working for less than one year in
the municipality and just eight of the training participants, out
of a total of ninety-four, had participated in a previous training
workshop during the first phase of the project.
The principal finding about the marginal role ICTs play
within local governments is also confirmed by the fact that
only technical staff (i.e., IT specialists and communication
officers) participated in the ICT training workshops organized
by the Enlared program, and that key decision-makers (i.e.,
senior administrative staff and/or council members) did not
show any interest in participating. In sum, the program failed
to reach one of its main objectives—to promote the use of
ICTs in local public administrations in order to strengthen the
organizational capabilities of local government. Why did the
project fail to promote organizational changes?
D. IMPACT ON THE SOCIAL DIMENSION OF WELL-BEING
The empirical findings reveal that the Enlared program had
no substantial impact on the social dimension of people‘s
well-being. In fact, as the graphic above illustrates, only one-third
(31%) of its participants indicated that the Internet has an
significant impact on their human capabilities in the social
dimension. This finding is striking, since the social dimension
was the one dimension in which participants in the overall
survey had the most positive views, with 60% believing that
the Internet had a major impact on their lives. These data need
to be seen in the context of the third major objective of the
Enlared program, which aimed to improve the performance of
local governments in the delivery of social services by
strengthening their institutional capabilities. This aspect of
municipal development issues is particularly important for
indigenous peoples, since the large majority of indigenous
communities lacks access to basic social services, such as
water and sanitation, education and health.
Furthermore, one of the principal objectives of the entire
decentralization program in Bolivia was to substantially
improve the delivery of social services to rural, marginalized
communities. In fact, a critical argument in favor of the LPP
has been that local municipalities are supposed to have a much
closer relationship to communities due to their geographic
proximity. The literature, however, indicates that this major
objective of the LPP was not realized due to capture of local
municipal planning processes through local elites (Blackburn,
2000). The empirical findings from the impact survey seem to
confirm this skeptical view in the sense that the participants
expressed very critical opinions about the role ICTs can play
in improving the delivery of social services to indigenous
communities. While at first sight this general finding seems
unforeseen, it is fully consistent with the failure of the
program to significantly enhance the organizational
capabilities of local government. In other words, since the
program did not succeed in strengthening the institutional
capacities of municipalities it is to be expected that it also
failed to have any positive impact on the delivery of social
services.
Enlared: Impact on Social Services
13
14
38
17
38
25
70
50
37
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Improv ed gov ernment
serv ices
Improv ed access to health
Improv ed access to
education
%
A lot Somewhat None
Fig. 7: Internet‘s limited role in improving service delivery
V. CONCLUSION
This case study demonstrates that the Enlared Municipal
program failed to significantly impact the accountability,
transparency, and performance of local governments. The
reasons for this failure were both internal and external. The
main internal factors were (i) the overly centralized approach
taken in the implementation of the project, compounded with
the project‘s assumption that the regional municipal
associations would be an effective intermediary in reaching
local municipalities which turned out to be false; (ii) the
political nature of the Federation of Municipal Associations
(FAM), which forced the project to engage with local
governments that were unwilling and unprepared to participate
in such a program; (iii) the overemphasis on the technical
development and maintenance of a Portal on municipal
development; and (iv) the lack of adequate resources and
staffing to carry out a more systematic and long-term ICT
capacity-building program at the local level. In addition to
these internal factors, there were several key external factors:
(i) the overall political instability in Bolivia, beginning in
October 2003, which involved the dissolution of two
governments in one year alone (2005) and which provoked
disruptive forms of civic unrest; (ii) the lack of a coherent and
comprehensive national strategy for developing a
telecommunications and ICT infrastructure in Bolivia,
particularly in rural areas, meaning that ICT projects were
implemented in technically unprepared regions; and (iii) the
limited institutional and technical capacity of many local
governments to develop public policies and to implement
development projects.
In sum, the program was too centralized, which led to a
critical design-reality gap that undermined its ability to
enhance local governments‘ transparency, accountability, and
performance. The program was never integrated into broader
issues related to local governance and did not have any
significant impact on its participants‘ human and social
capabilities. In order to more significantly affect indigenous
peoples‘ well-being, it would have to be much more precisely
tailored to the specific socio-economic, political, and cultural
realities of local governments and indigenous communities.

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