Documents/Resources

Central America

·        Agreement on Socioeconomic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation signed between the Guatemalan Government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity [URNG] in Mexico City on 6 May, 1996 To strengthen real, functional, and participatory democracies and comprise: a) consensus and dialogue between representatives of the socioeconomic development: b) consensus between these representatives and state institutions in the drafting and implementation of strategies and development actions; and c) peoples' effective participation in identifying, setting priorities and fulfilling their needs. Citizens' participation in the socioeconomic development as well as being a democratization factor is essential to improve productivity and economic growth, for equitable distribution of wealth and assessment of human potential. With this disposition and in accordance with the agreements on the Resettlement of the Peoples Uprooted by the Armed Conflict and Indian Identity and Rights, the parties concur that it is important to create or strengthen mechanisms that allow citizens and different social groups to effectively exercise their rights and fully participate in the decision making on different issues that affect or interest them, with full awareness and in a manner that responsibly fulfills social obligations on personal and collective matters.

• Empowerment and Survival: Humanitarian Work in Civil Conflict By Martha Thompson (published by Oxam, 1996).  This two-part article explores the experience of living and working for poverty-focused NGOs in a civil war whose roots lay in the chronically inequitable distribution of power and access to resources. Based on 12 years’ work in Central America, the article reflects on the demands and constraints placed on international aid workers in the context of civil conflict; and on the ways in which relationships with local organizations and NGOs are affected. Empowerment and participation are examined from the perspective of those who reject their role as war victims. Part Two explores the immediate and longer-term impacts of war and political violence, both on those who survive, and on local and international workers who are concerned to address its causes and consequences."

• Land, Value and Economic Development in Toledo -- A Maya Perspective, by Gregory Ch'oc, Punta Gorda, Toledo, May 28, 1996 Today most of us live in a capitalist world where land is regarded as a commodity--something that has an exchange value and can be traded. This attitude has alienated land from man: man has relinquished his proper role of stewardship and protector of land resources. This is one reason why the plea to save the rainforests, the home of the Aboriginal people of Central America often seem to be something belonging to another time. In the present age of "progress", the concern about Aboriginal ties to the land often seem to be anachronistic. The proprietary attitude of land ownership usually destroys land stewardship, since the owners of land often buy and sell land as an economic commodity, with little concern for such matters of environmental degradation, pollution, erosion and so on.

·        Reframing Citizenship: Indigenous Rights, Local Power and the Peace Process in Guatemala By Rachel Sieder.  Although the civil war in Guatemala was not fought over ethnic claims for self-determination, the peace process that brought the war to an end holds the prospect of incorporating historically neglected indigenous demands into a democratic national agenda. Given that the majority of Guatemalans are indigenous, further democratization that is responsive to the ethnic diversity of the country would radically transform Guatemalan politics and society.  One agreement in particular, the Accord on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (AIDPI), signed on 31 March 1995, is of primary importance. It explicitly recognizes the multi-ethnic, culturally plural and multilingual nature of Guatemala and the specific, collective rights of some six million indigenous people. 

·        State Formation in Central America -- The Struggle for Autonomy, Development, and Democracy By Howard H. Lentner (1993). This analysis of the four basic components in the formation of states in Central America offers guidelines for understanding worldwide strivings for autonomy, unity, economic development, and democracy and examines Central American states. 

• The Challenge of Democracy in Central America By the Swedish Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Central America has undergone remarkable democratic change in the last fifteen years. In the beginning of the 1980s only Costa Rica was a democracy. In 1997 all five countries in the region are run by civilian presidents who have been voted into office in elections deemed "free and fair" by international observers. All five countries have also experienced a transfer of power by elections.

• US Bases in Central America and the Opposition to Them  By Boone Schirmer Paper presented at “Crossroads 1991”, an international conference on U.S. bases, Manila, Philippines, May 14, 1990. The opposite side of this picture must also be stressed. The Filipino people are not alone in their opposition to U.S. bases. They are joined in this struggle by the efforts of people in Central America and other parts of the world. These global struggles against U.S. military bases will tend to place difficulties in the path of the offensive that the Bush Administration seems in the process of developing against the Third World, since this offensive depends so heavily on the continued presence of U.S. foreign bases. Finally, these worldwide struggles will, in all likelihood, give strength to the people of the Philippines in the achievement of their goal of full national sovereignty.

• Inter-American Development Bank Documents. 

o       Decentralization and Recentralization: Lessons from the Social Sectors in Mexico and Nicaragua Gershberg, Alec Ian (August 1998).  The Office of the Chief Economist of the IDB Working papers series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development policy issues.  This study is designed to help practitioners prepare and evaluate institutional reforms for education and health programs. It provides an analytic framework for use by public officials and researchers, with case studies that illustrate a wide range of actual practice, and a set of lessons learned. The framework uses the concept of accountability to link the broad goals of reform to the key dimensions of organizational arrangements. The case studies, based on fieldwork in Mexico and Nicaragua, demonstrate a wide variety of available policy instruments. Significantly, they also demonstrate that the responses to these instruments are equally various: creative interpretation of central regulations by local officials, self governing schools that complement public funds with resources mobilized by fees, the reassertion of national control over previously decentralized health programs. A lot of attention is paid to the how of reform; the process of implementation is at least as important as the question of what is to be reformed. The lessons derived from these experiences emphasize contingent, rather than absolute, recommendations. Overall, the study suggests how success in achieving greater efficiency, equity and democracy in the management and delivery of social services requires a careful balance of centralized and decentralized responsibilities.

General 

• A Framework for Teaching Democratic Citizenship: An International Project By Charles F. Bahmueller, Center for Civic Education. Is it possible to develop an international, cross-cultural consensus on the central meanings and character of the ideas, values, and institutions of democracy and the common elements of which education for democratic citizenship should consist? A new project is attempting to answer this difficult and thorny question. "Education for Democratic Citizenship: A Framework," administered by the Center for Civic Education, is an international project with a global reach-with advisors and critics from every inhabited continent.

·        Strengthening the Inter-American Human Rights System Report on the seminar organized by the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, February 2-6, 1998. Versión en Español 

·        The Misrepresentation of Citizenship in Social Contract Theories. Modernist Civic Culture and Its discontents A civic culture must perform effectively two related tasks: (1) it must provide cultural resources capable of rendering intelligible to citizens the standpoint proper to liberal democratic citizenship and (2) it must render this standpoint intelligible in such a way as to generate in citizens the motivation to develop the moral capacities required for citizenship. Specifically modernist civic culture is defined by its use of Enlightenment conceptions of reason and knowledge to carry out both of these functions.

·        What Education for What Citizenship? (UNESCO Project). Designed during the last half of 1993 and launched in January 1994, this is an attempt to help improve educational strategies for citizenship education supported by empirical cross-cultural evidence about the images of democratic citizenship and the educational approaches and practices currently utilized for that purpose in different countries. A first phase of activities, consisting mainly of a comparative survey conducted in thirty-four countries utilizing representative samples of students and teachers at the secondary education level, and sampling students' parents as well, is currently being completed. In 1996 was launched the second phase of the project aimed at experimenting and evaluating the most striking findings of the survey in actual school situations, with a view to developing effective and adapted curriculum and pedagogical strategies for citizenship education in fifteen countries. The third phase of the project, devoted to the dissemination of knowledge and information in the field of citizenship education, has also been initiated with the creation of the Citied international forum on the topic, available through Internet, and the construction of an expert system providing increased accessibility to research-based expertise on citizenship education throughout the world.                       

·        Inter-American Development Bank Documents.  

• Descentralización en America Latina By Gustavo Fernández. (April, 1996). “Decentralization in Latin America” seeks to identify the main problems that decentralization creates for governability in Latin America.  The author provides a holistic approach and sets out to systematize the norms relative to decentralization.  He examines a federal country, a unitary country with regional decentralization, and another unitary country.  He finally draws juridical conclusions.  The main focus of the document is political.  The main goal is to place problems of governability in their context.  He does not, however, to provide a specialized analysis of each topic, nor to propose alternative courses of action.  The main focus is South America.  Fernández does not provide a deep analysis of the decentralization experience in the education and health sectors, because the transfer of these competences to local governments has been undertaken recently and updated assessments are not yet available.

• Public Administration for Results: Choice, Design and Sustainability ... By René Salgado (January 1997).  This paper suggests that increasing economic globalization and social participation in Latin America and the Caribbean calls for reform of public administration to make it more managerial, results-oriented and responsive to citizens' needs. Institutional Development (ID) and Civil Service Reform (CSR) are seen as tools of reform whose main goals are the adequate transformation of structures, culture, and relationships between public-sector management institutions and citizens. The paper discusses operational issues pertaining to ID and CSR such as universe, scope and sequencing, as well as mechanisms to strengthen the sustainability of public administration reform efforts. The latter, in particular, calls for the need to reinforce borrower's involvement throughout the project cycle, and the design and implementation of consensus-building activities relevant to the development of public-sector management.

• United Nations Development Program Documents.

• Decentralization in Chile By Frances Stewart and Gustav Ranis, 1994.  This document reviews the changes in decentralization that have accompanied the changes in political regimes and some of their effects on various dimensions affecting the human condition. Section II provides an overview of the decentralization process, while Section III provides a more detailed discussion of the nature and extent of decentralization achieved, both under Pinochet and since, including changes in the system currently being instituted. Section IV assesses the qualitative and quantitative impact of these decentralization measures; Section V presents some conclusions.

• War, Peace and Third World Development Dan Smith, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, 1994. Systemic violence up to and including war is a chronic development problem. A development agenda that fails to address violence is dealing with only part of the needs of Third World countries and will probably not enjoy much success. During 1993, there were 52 wars involving 42 war-torn countries; in a further 37 violent countries, political violence was widespread and even endemic without quite meriting the name of war; of this total of 79 conflict countries, 65 are in the Third World. 

• World Bank Documents.

• The Comparative Advantage of Government: A Review By Pedro Belli (October 1997).  In theory, market failures are necessary but not sufficient conditions for justifying government intervention in the production of goods and services. Even without market failures, there might be a case for government intervention on the grounds of poverty reduction or merit goods (for example, mandatory elementary education and mandatory use of seatbelts in cars and of helmets on motorbikes).  In every case, contends Belli, a case for government intervention must first identify the particular market failure that prevents the private sector from producing the socially optimal quantity of the good or service. Second, it must select the intervention that will most improve welfare. Third, it must show that society will be better off as a result of government involvement—must show that the benefits will outweigh the costs.