Descentralização, participação comunitária e desenvolvimento municipal: o caso do município de Quelimane

Abstract

The theme developed here has been privileged on the agenda of some international institutions and followed by many underdeveloped countries that are currently embarking on the process of democratization. From the 1990s onwards, mainly in Third World countries, the centralized state was destined to have a different configuration and was forced to establish new relations with societies. Political-administrative thinkers pointed to the need to decentralize certain functions of the State and called for the involvement of communities in the decision-making process. For this reason, today it is well known that the concepts “decentralization”, “community participation”, and local development are increasingly attracting the attention of analysts and “policy-makers” 'From the Municipality of the City of Quelimane, in this study we have as a central objective to analyze community participation in the decision-making process and the implementation of local development policies. We approach the work with the hypothesis of the idea that despite the promises enshrined in the legal framework and the theoretical support of several scholars that democratic decentralization promotes the participation of communities in the decision-making process, in the Municipality of Quelimane the communities have little participation in this process . Issues such as legitimacy in relation to institutions, their performance, and relationship mechanisms limit community participation. In order to consolidate the theoretical basis, we researched some bibliographic sources that have been cited and referenced in the annex to this work. As a data collection instrument, we favor semi-structured interviews. We set up the sample with pre-selected actors. Some information was obtained from direct observation on the ground. After the study, our main conclusion is that democratic decentralization alone does not guarantee the participation of communities in the decision-making process. If we take as reference the Municipality of the City of Quelimane (hereinafter MCQ), the communities have little influence on the decision-making process at the level of the legislative body. The low density of interaction between the decentralized bodies and the communities, the issues of legitimacy in relation to the secretaries of the neighborhoods, the weak expectation or not credibility that the Municipal Council will meet their expectations, the demotivation of the Secretaries, are some of the underlying factors weak community participation. In order to overcome these constraints, we warn the Local Authority of the City of Quelimane that in use of its administrative autonomy, (Article 7.2 of Law 2/97) identify, mechanisms that guarantee the participation of influential people at the level of communities / neighborhoods (levels closer to the communities) in the dynamization of these * communities and that such people participate actively in the Local Authorities.(TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)