ABSTRACT
Why is it necessary to write a book on the priorities of the poor and the role of local governance? Poor people in developing countries have been the subject of many studies before and the problem of poverty and how governments respond to it has been debated from every disciplinary angle back and forth. What more has this volume to add? Moreover, why isn't people's poverty regarded reason enough to justify the book, but do we explicitly focus on the priorities of the poor in relation to the role of local governance? In this book we will argue that there is considerably more to learn beyond the ‘voices of the poor’ (Narayan 2000), by zooming in on the inter-play between characterizing poverty in a particular context, the initiatives taken by local governance and the development frustrations in between. The capability literature on poverty and development (e.g., Sen 1982, 1984, 1985; Carney 1999, 2003) has emphasized poor people's agencies, or lack thereof, whereas others (Bebbington 1999; Leach et al. 1999; Kabeer 2001) have emphasized the role of institutions, social capital and the need to be empowered in order for people to effectively transform their endowments into entitlements. The more recent literature on capacity building in development studies (e.g., ECPDM 2008; Hambly-Odame and Sarapura 2009) points out the need to strengthen capacities of individuals and households, socioeconomic groups (including minorities) and organizations to mobilize and use resources in a productive manner. It is true that if we steer away too much from people's capacities and constraints we remain blindfolded to their feasible and preferred development options. The poor are economic agents forced to juggle their scarce resources with one hand only. The real insufficiency is for opportunities to solve their social, political and economic problems. These opportunities are determined in part by exogenous factors through the surrounding structure of society and political-economic system, and in part by endogenous factors including people's constrained capacities and agency. It is not difficult to see the limited range of options that people have in widespread poverty situations, resulting in ‘bad choices’ only. The point for them is to make a choice every day, albeit from a constrained and unclear set of options, in order to have a chance to survive in the first place. The sustainability of their actions will change over time, depending on income status and power relations at different levels of scales (see also Bebbington 1999). Poor people know what their immediate priorities are; these might be a long way from what their actual preferences and aspirations are in life. Both could play a guiding role in our unraveling of the poverty problem and as input into more effective policymaking (Narayan et al. 2009). The role of a governance system that is responsive to the priorities of the poor is to ensure the strengthening of people's capacities, not the least in times of hardship and crisis, to use and mobilize their resources in a sustainable manner, and to do so at interlocking levels of scale, including the individual, organizational and systemic level (national and supranational level). Governance in this book is understood as defined by Stoker (1998) as the institutions and actors from within and beyond government. In order for governance to exercise its power legitimately from the perspective of the poor, it has to seek their consent and not only the consent of politically or economically favored groups (in line with Beetham 1991:19).
