LogoLink

About LogoLink LogoLink, the Learning Initiative on Citizen Participation and Local Governance, is a global network of practitioners from civil society organizations, research institutions and governments created to stimulate and support civil society organizations and networks to engage in citizen participation and social control of public policies at the local level.

Focusing on knowledge production, LogoLink works to systematize, analyze, debate and diffuse the knowledge arising from field-based innovations and expressions of democracy in local governance. During its 10-year existence, LogoLink has contributed to the achievement and consolidation of citizen participation and social control in processes and in public institutions that range from the governance of schools and health centers to the development of public budgeting.

LogoLink provides useful resources for civil society leaders, democracy activists, local authorities, researchers, academics and others involved in developing innovative public policies oriented to fighting inequalities and assuring fundamental human rights.

Democratizing local governance is about assuring the citizen participation in decision-making processes. It aims at guaranteeing citizen participation both in planning public policies as well as in monitoring the implementation and evaluating such policies. Facing a historical background of authoritarian and hierarchical structures, LogoLink quests after overhauling this scenario and democratizing local governance.

LogoLink recognizes the existence of important ongoing decentralization processes in some countries, but also recognizes the incomplete results of these processes when it comes to the sharing of power amongst citizens. Thus, the network is committed to the socialization of decision-making processes.

LogoLink is engaged in animating a more participatory and inclusive relationship between those who govern and those who are governed. It means in one hand to sensitize and challenge governments to implement innovative and equitable public policies oriented to assuring human rights; and to be more responsive and accountable towards the needs and concerns of citizens. On the other hand, it means to support citizens and civil society organizations to create participatory spaces, hold their governments accountable and exercise social control.

The network's projects and initiatives create spaces for reflection, learning and exchange among partners and various stakeholder audiences, whilst situating reflection and learning within the broader political contexts at the national, regional and global levels. LogoLink members are hubs in their regions, fuelling the debate and rendering the propositional capacity of regional and national networks. Currently, LogoLink is comprised of nine partners from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Europe.

LogoLink: an overview During the 1990s, civil society mobilizations took place in many countries in a backdrop of transition from authoritarian to democratic governance regimes. At the time, regional and international networks committed to deepening democracy and social justice set an agenda facing authoritarian, hierarchical, and centralist structures of governments, and demanded decentralization, democracy, citizen participation, and social control of public policies.

In the midst of such developments, bottom-up initiatives culminated in the recognition of the right to participation as a milestone for the newly adopted democratic constitutions in several countries, especially in the Global South.

Especially in Latin America at that time, democratization and decentralization processes pushed by social movement pressures resulted in new and innovative participatory structures such as deliberative councils on specific public policies with assured citizen participation; periodic national conferences that evaluate public policies and decentralization processes; participatory budgeting experiences; plebiscites; referenda; among other initiatives. Such experiences became a reference and inspired initiatives all over the world. It would be fair to consider these Latin American processes a first generation of trends towards democratization and decentralization that were highly influential and heartened movements around the globe.

In Asia, important decentralization processes also took place. In the Philippines, as in Latin America, participatory budgeting experiences were also developed in the early 1990s. In India, specific laws were adopted to guarantee the participation of communities in controlling the implementation of local public policies. In some African countries, such as in Uganda and in South Africa, despite incipient democratization processes, legal frameworks for participation were adopted; and south-south cooperation has been established to enhance and qualify participatory initiatives.

LogoLink partners in the Global North have described a similar shift in citizen capacities and expectations. Though the cultures and economic circumstances are different, Northern democracies have also been gripped by rising citizen discontent, historically low levels of trust in government, and a flowering of public participation efforts in reaction to these trends. These efforts have focused more on the advancement of processes for recruitment, facilitation, and action planning, rather than the structural reforms and new legal frameworks that have been created in the Global South. Increasingly, public participation advocates in the North are recognizing that both process and structure are essential; many of them have begun to champion Southern democratic innovations, such as participatory budgeting.

Such relevant experiences have fostered a debate in which democracy, decentralization, local governance, citizen participation and social control are the key issues, opening new perspectives in deepening democracy at the local level.

This was the scenario in which LogoLink came into being. Since its creation in 2001, LogoLink has consolidated itself as a unique network by virtue of its thematic niche - it is the only global initiative on 'citizen participation and local democratic governance' with partners both in the Global South and in the Global North.

During its first five years, a team based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK, coordinated LogoLink. The network, since the early 2000s, played an important role in debating and drawing attention to the links between democracy, citizen participation and local governance. LogoLink's initial phase - from its foundation, in 2001, up to 2005 - was marked by tree major initiatives: the international research project on "Participatory Planning Approaches for Local Governance", developed in 2001-2002; the international research project on "Legal Frameworks for Citizen Participation", in 2002-2003, and the international research project on "Resources, Citizen Engagements and Democratic Local Governance", in 2004-2005.

LogoLink activities have contributed to overcoming a naïve approach that perceives that the establishment of participatory mechanisms would necessarily result in participatory decision-making processes. The main findings of such studies have revealed the existence of a dispute regarding how effective participatory processes are in shaping public policies. The studies have also shown the importance of the dispute among different political strategies and objectives.

In 2005, considering the political changes that took place in several and important southern countries, and the central role that citizen mobilization played in such contexts, the network decided to move its coordination South. Instituto Polis, LogoLink founding member based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was chosen to take on the coordination role within the network.

LogoLink emerged as a global network at the dawn of the New Millennium when democratic decentralization and local governance were beginning to take shape in many countries of the Global South. It capitalized the existing knowledge, practices and experiences from countries such as Brazil, India, Philippines and South Africa, which have already embarked upon democratic decentralization for some time and gained considerable credibility and visibility. However, over the decade, a considerable number of other countries have also embraced democratic decentralization and local governance as part of overall governance reforms in those countries. In the meantime, democracy all over the world has been shaped by a host of events and trends, regionally and globally. A learning network such as LogoLink needs to take such changing scenario into account, not only in order to remain relevant and vibrant but also to actively contribute to and shape such changes.

LogoLink kept on deriving its strength from its members - LogoLink's members, both in the Global South and Global North, are important organizations rooted in the national and regional contexts and foster deeper connections with local civil and political societies.

Since 2005, LogoLink has analyzed, debated, and disseminated critical overviews of participatory experiences that took place in southern countries. In order to deal with the challenge of knowledge production, LogoLink developed the following initiatives.

The project "Promoting learning on citizen leadership: synthesizing experiences from India, Brazil and South Africa", coordinated by PRIA, has contributed to reinforce capacity building processes among civil society organizations and leaderships. From 2008-9, Polis, as a hub in the Latin America region, coordinated the project "New institutionalities for Participation" that analyzed and discussed the consequences and impacts of such institutionalities in nine different Latin-American countries. Building on earlier research and learning, from 2008 to 2009, LogoLink partners engaged in the project "International Research on Democratic Local Governance Fighting Inequality". Whereas previous research conducted by LogoLink had already identified legal frameworks and decentralization reforms as important processes in building democratic local governance, this research project's main goal was to bring insights on new features and innovative approaches in strengthening local democratic governance.

Two other initiatives deserve special attention. Firstly, the China Participatory Urban Governance Network (CCPG), a LogoLink member from China, joined the network a few years ago, not only to learn from the other partners but to share its own experiences on local government and participation. In 2011, upon a request from CCPG, LogoLink promoted "Lectures on Latin American innovations on local governance" in Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai.

Secondly, in order to update the political agenda on participatory processes, LogoLink has conducted a comprehensive systematization of its knowledge production over the last 10 years. As a result, LogoLink is currently concluding this initiative that consolidates the network's identity, updates the debate today on local governance and democratic accountability and points out the guidelines for LogoLink's future actions.

Furthermore, LogoLink has actively participated and organized several debates and learning events, such as the "Pioneers of Participation: International Workshop for Local Governance in Southern and Eastern Africa" (South Africa, 2009), the "International Conference on Citizen Leadership and Democratic Accountability" (India, 2009), and the "Asian Regional Conference on Local Governance: Accountability, Participation and Inclusion" (Nepal, 2011).

Also, in May 2008, LogoLink joined efforts with ALOP (Latin America NGO network committed to the agenda of local development) to organize the "International Conference on Democracy and Development" to discuss the relationship between social movements, political parties and NGOs in the context of social and political changes in Brazil and Latin America.

In addition, LogoLink hosted debates in major events, such as the World Social Forum and World Urban Forum (Brazil, 2010), Expo Brasil - Local Development (Brazil, 2010), and the Civicus World Assembly (Canada, 2010).

Overall, these projects have showed that there is a need to produce critical analyses, and that the consolidation of participatory mechanisms is not an end in itself; these mechanisms have to be situated in long-term strategies for deepening democracy.

In recent years, many global stakeholders have assimilated the discourse of decentralization, democracy, citizen participation and social control. The establishment - governments and multilateral organizations - has captured the concepts, and it has included them in its own discourses. However, LogoLink studies point out that these institutions do not always consider or uphold the goal of sharing power, nor the sense of social transformation as previously formulated at the civil society level. This process has resulted in the impoverishment of the discourse of citizen participation and social control, and depriving such discourse of its transformative nature.

LogoLink recognizes this process and identifies the importance of the knowledge production and debates about the different meanings of participation.

LogoLink perceives a new global dynamic of social movements that results in the setting of a common agenda to defend human rights, in which local democratic governance plays an important role.

In order to face the reappropriation and reconceptualization of the meanings of participation by multilateral agencies, and governments, in a context of globalized debate, LogoLink currently aims at developing a global campaign on 'The Right to Participation in Local Governance'.

Finally, this year, LogoLink celebrates its 10th Anniversary. It has been an exciting journey. The network has successfully maintained its relevance and vibrancy by facilitating knowledge production, deeper reflections, learning exchanges and policy dialogues among practitioners, political leadership, policy makers and other stakeholders on contemporary issues of citizen participation in local democratic governance. Also, LogoLink has persistently been asking up-to-date critical questions, which ensures that the network findings are always relevant on a larger scale