A new agenda
The role of local and regional authorities or sub-national authorities (SNAs) in development cooperation has been discussed intensively since the early 2000s at the global and EU levels as well as in both donor and recipient countries. Development cooperation has traditionally been the area of national governments, private consultants and non-governmental organisations. In decentralised cooperation the involvement of local and regional authorities has been a neglected area, as has been widely recognised in recent years.
In the latter half of 2000s the European Commission started a process of determining the role of local authorities in European development cooperation. Primary topics in this process have been decentralisation, democratic local governance and territorial development, as evidenced by the Issues Paper "Towards an EU approach to democratic local governance, decentralisation and territorial development" published by the European Commission in 2008. Critical questions on this agenda are what is the proper role for local and regional authorities and what cooperation modalities are the most suitable to decentralised development cooperation. One of the current policy papers addressing these issues is the EC Communication "Local Authorities: Actors for Development" (COM(2008) 626 final). Similar discussions have taken place on national forums of the EU Member States as well, Finland included.
Role of local authorities
The EC Communication on local authorities as actors for development recognises the fact that local and regional authorities allocate significant financial resources for development. However, the significant direct allocations are made by large regional entities. Most significant donors among European sub-national authorities (SNAs) are the federal states in Germany (SNAs made some 10 % of German Official Development Aid in 2006), autonomous communities of Spain such as Catalonia (almost 15 % of Spanish ODA contributed by SNAs in 2006), regions of Belgium (SNAs making some 4 % of Belgian ODA in 2006) and French regions such as Rhône-Alpes and Ile de France (some 1.5 % of French ODA in 2007). What is a noteworthy trend here is the continuous growth of SNA-driven cooperation. For example, Spanish sub-national entities accounted for some 2.14% of ODA in 1989, which rose to 13.5% in 1998 and reached some 15% in the early 2000s and, according to some estimates, continues to grow.
Most local authorities in Europe are not able to operate purely as donors, by law or due to limited resources. Small and medium-sized local authorities can to a large extent allocate only their knowledge and expertise to development cooperation. The latter aspect is important from the point of view of Finland, which is dominated by small and medium-sized local authorities, the average size of local authorities being around 12,500 in 2008 and by the end of the decade over 14,000 inhabitants (the rise in the average number of inhabitants is due to forthcoming mergers). The extraordinarily high level of capacity and wide range of expertise in Finnish local government should be seen as an invaluable resource for decentralised development cooperation. The other important feature of the Finnish system is the strong role of the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA) in the building of the capacity of Finnish local government, which also has its implications for decentralised cooperation.
A key to understanding the role of local authorities' involvement in development cooperation is the peer-to-peer setting for the exchange of knowledge and know-how on a long-term basis. This relates to the fact that the possession of in-house expertise on municipal affairs and the involvement of two institutions with fairly similar tasks within their national contexts makes a comparative advantage of local governments over any other actor as aid agent.
From twinning to strategic partnerships
Traditionally town twinning is used to facilitate understanding and cooperation between the politicians, civil servants and citizens of twin towns. That has been and continues to be one important part of municipal international cooperation. Yet, in general, development cooperation is much more focussed and much more concerned with development and the eradication of poverty, that "twinning" in the traditional sense of the word may not be the best possible way of describing the realities of decentralised cooperation. This shift can be conceptualised as a transition "from town twinning to strategic partnerships".
In this picture "strategic partnership" is seen as a long-term commitment to development cooperation with two levels: a general framework, which is based on a twinning agreement or twinning-like relationship and a specific partnership agreement or a concrete action plan. In this sense it combines twinning with a project approach.
Building the Finnish agenda
Finnish local authorities forge international relationships through twinning and other links and contacts with cities around the world. They are actively engaged in international cooperation through various local government networks and organisations and through EU programmes and other project partnerships. This is the area in which the role of the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA) has been central. The understanding of the nature of local self-government, wide service palette, concentration of expertise and a developmentalist approach to municipal affairs evidently form a potential that should be utilised in the emerging trend of decentralised cooperation.
Decentralised cooperation has been on the Finnish agenda for quite a long time. The bulk of Finnish development assistance has been channelled through NGOs, accounting for some 11% of total Finnish aid. They complement bilateral development cooperation by reaching people at the grassroots in areas often bypassed by conventional aid and by working on equal terms and pursuing common agendas in North-South cooperation. The problem lies in the fact that a large part of development aid is still routed through the central governments of the recipient developing countries. The true challenge is how to integrate local actors into the development agenda and cooperation. (Saasa et al. 2003, 98-99.) A particularly topical issue is the involvement of local and regional authorities and their associations, whose potential has only recently been recognised in global and EU development policy discourse. In the Finnish context the most important individual demonstration of this trend is the North-South Local Government Cooperation Programme, which was introduced in 2002.
A full report on decentralised cooperation: Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko: Local Authorities in Development Cooperation. University of Tampere, Finland.
