Articles > Dr Jacques Jobin

Municipal International Co-operation: Common Problems and Common Solutions
Jacques Jobin, Secretary General, International Union of Local Authorities

To achieve sustainable social and economic development one needs to be knowledgeable of experiences attempted by various institutions over the years. The acceptance of learning from the experiences of others is a basic feature of good management. Even when experiences have taken place in very diverse circumstances, it is always possible to draw lessons that can be adapted to our particular situation at home.

In the municipal world such sharing is not new. Particularly at national levels this has been done traditionally by national local government associations who have facilitated the comparing of practices among their members. At the international level, however, such activities are much more recent and they are also very often misunderstood. For years activities of international twinning have created the false impression that, internationally, all that interested local government was exchanging cultural activities and developing friendship among political leaders. While today twinning continues to be recognised as a worthwhile exercise contributing to bridging cultural barriers, municipal partnerships are seen as a developmental activity and as an integral part of Municipal International Cooperation.

Municipal governments have a definite advantage in the field of international cooperation. This advantage is derived from the fact that no matter where we exercise our mandate, this mandate is fundamentally similar. Even when municipal governments serve communities that are culturally and economically different, they must make decisions in a participatory manner and must be perceived as open and responsive to the peoples needs. Municipal governments provide an array of services that are broadly comparable. They ensure appropriate urban planning and land use, waste management, water distribution, fire protection, they provide a secure environment for the citizens and they often manage school and health services. Finally they need to relate effectively with other spheres of government.

Local government must cater to all the people. In many countries it generates its revenue and is responsible for its own decisions within its areas of jurisdiction. Local government is a basic and permanent feature of a community. Without a responsive and efficient local government sustainability of local development is not possible, because sooner or later local government will play a role in all aspects of community life and that role will either be positive or negative, depending on our willingness to be supportive. Supporting local government's search for transparency, efficiency and responsiveness is a cause that leads to sustainable improvements in the lives of communities. This is a reality everywhere as national governments are more and more forced by society to devolve powers closer to the people.

Municipal International Cooperation (MIC)
Municipal government mandates show many similarities and this makes it possible through municipal partnerships to develop peer to peer relations i.e. municipal engineer to municipal engineer, fireman to fireman, public works managers to public works managers, politician to politician, planners to planners etc. This gives MIC very real advantages, since by building these relationships it allows counterparts to share practical approaches and methods to address practical issues. It is not necessary to enter into long training programmes to improve service delivery when experienced people share their knowledge at the operational levels. We have seen many cases of improvements coming from the simple sharing of daily practices. This phenomenon of peer to peer cooperation is what we call institutional cooperation and modern communications make it feasible on a sustainable basis.

The counterparts communicate directly and share realities while funding agencies and traditional development experts are needed to support the creation of links. Project delivery is done by the municipal staff. This is the reason why sustainability and measurability of impacts and social and economic coherence become a realistic objective since they are achieved, as programmes evolve, by the practitioners themselves.

The Municipal International Cooperation area of expertise is two-fold: First it addresses the decision-making processes which can be quite complex; those processes involve consultation mechanisms, citizen information programmes, methods to ensure responsiveness to citizens, integrity systems in procurement practices, relations between elected officials and senior professional municipal management. MIC also addresses delivery of services that range from waste management to land use and planning.

Partnership methodology
Municipal partnerships are entered upon only after initial visits have occurred in both municipalities. These visits made by an elected official and both municipal staff identify the areas in which the partnerships will be active. This is then formalised in a protocol of agreement, which is endorsed by both municipal councils with duration and budgets identified from the outset.
To be real, and to generate commitment, partnerships need to be based on fundamental principles:

• A partnership is successful when joint reflection and planning are done with the objective of sharing resources toward a commonly established goal;
• The functions of planning and evaluation are performed jointly;
• Balance is not only striven for in principle but achieved;
• Equal opportunity is given and results in equal time in one another's country, equal levels between the staff participating in the exchanges and demonstrated interest in each other's history, culture, traditions and needs;
• A partnership is built on friendship, tolerance and respect.
• Judgement is exercised after having lived and experienced various realities together and comes after both partners have walked in the other person's shoes for a while.

The challenge, which many municipalities have already met and achieved, is worth braving - because it is an example to all those who attempted even in the very recent past to achieve efficient international cooperation by merely relying on statistics and trickle down effects of mega projects while ignoring the social, cultural and even economic realities faced by the people.
On the other hand, we are quite conscious of the lack of decentralisation, of participation, of democracy and of overall transparency of local authorities in many countries. One must be fair and realise that what municipalities are doing is trying to establish a dialogue with friends whose situations result from having inherited a very different history. Local government empowerment is still often perceived as a threat by central governments.

Benefits of Partnership
Partnerships are successful and many municipal councils find it more and more possible to convince their citizens of the benfits of international involvement for their cities. We see results and hope coming from a large number of these partnerships. After consultation with municipal officials that have been involved in MIC, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities International Office has published the following comments from their participants:

• It strengthens the professional skills of municipal employees and enhances their self-confidence and job-satisfaction;
• It enables a municipal government to work with its citizens through community organisations, business and networks of interested individuals;
• Recognition of expertise enhances the status of municipalities at the provincial, national and international levels;
• Municipal partnerships promote cross-cultural understanding and increase community awareness of international development issues;
• Participation in International Programmes offers an opportunity to take a leadership role in municipal development cooperation;
• Participation in such Programmes encourages networking, communication and cooperation between municipalities;
• It allows some municipalities to focus on economic development and identify the types of support needed by local businesses to expand to the international stage. The majority of the participating municipalities see the Programme as a means to develop long-term relationships with their partners that may lead to mutual economic benefits.

The experience of municipal partnership shows us that a new type of institutional cooperation is possible, and it is one that places people face to face, people who share similar responsibilities in their respective municipalities and who together attempt to find the best solutions for their communities. This is more than symbolic; it is the way of the future. A future where from the street of Tokyo one can call home in Canada, a world where e-mails are exchanged almost instantaneously anywhere in the world. A world where borders are being built to protect cultures and are being demolished to ensure economic growth and quality of life.

It is astonishing that so few multilateral agencies have yet realised that local government is destined to be the basic institution that will ensure sustainable development and social stability in the third millennium. Cooperation professionals often dismiss local government as too corrupt and inefficient, but local government will be around long after those professionals have left the scene. When I hear their comments I am reminded that Senator Robert F. Kennedy reacted to these attitudes by saying that in his view "nothing will ever happen, if all possible objections must first be overcome". We continue, therefore to foster MIC activities centred on capacity building of local governments both in the North and in the South to ensure the emergence of an ever-greater number of Local Governments who are true agents for the development of their communities.

The future
In April 1999, Mr Renato Ruggiero, ex-Director-General of the World Trade Organisation gave his final speech as Director General before the 20th Seminar on International Security, Politics and Economics organised by the Geneva "Institut pour les Hautes Etudes Internationales". He concludes his remarks by the following very impressive analyses of the challenges that we face to-day and I quote:
"As this century draws to a close, we are no longer threatened by a Cold War nuclear confrontation. The new global threat is hunger, poverty ignorance, inequalities unemployment, human rights violations, the prospect of environmental collapse. And yet we also live at a time when mankind has reached a level of material, technological, and human progress unmatched in history - when we are all moving into a new world of unprecedented opportunities opened up by the end of the Cold War and the revolutionary power of new technologies.

The fusion of computers and telecommunications is linking the world's people together, improving access to health care and education regardless of geography and distance (...).
There are many criticisms of this global world and the voices concerned often seem to prevail over messages of opportunity. But no one offers a rational alternative to the main challenge of our time, which is to improve the management of this interdependent world - not refuse it (...).

(...) We are now seeing the rise of a world trading system - rules-based, not power based - at a time when the call on an improved system of international governance is more and more insistent.
Let us not be afraid to dream again as we build a global system for the third millennium."

I venture to comment that while this analyses calls on us to dream, it fails to provide basic avenues for such dreams. As mentioned earlier in this text institutional cooperation is now possible on the basis of sustainable partnerships and one can imagine a world where practitioners of service delivery as well as local leaders are in touch with each other and share best practices. We recognise the cynicism in politics is less prevalent at the local level, that sustainable development must involve the people and that their local government is the sphere of government that needs to be responsive to their everyday needs. In this world, a large number of homes will have access to the information networks, cultures will thrive without being self-centred, nations will operate within regulatory frameworks that will ensure dialogue, youth will be able to be exposed from home to all the knowledge of humanity, education will make individuals able to take responsibility for their future. Local government is more and more called upon to become the corner stone of development of our society in the next century.

Let us dream of a society where the vast majority of public funds are disbursed at the local level, where central governments need not subsidise the local level who would raise its main revenues locally after due, non partisan, electoral processes, a world where local government work hand in hand with community organisations, a world where one can raise one's family without fear of centralised policy decision making leading to loss of control over one's destiny.

Let us dream of a world where multilateral agencies as well as national agencies that wish to improve the life of the poor do not forget the essential role of local government as Mr Rugiero did in his speech.
With the world at our doorstep, local government is becoming the institution that will truly represent and serve the people. MIC policy and programmes aim at making them able to share know-how that will ensure their ever-continuing success.