Yossef Ben Meir's Blog

Obama, The Community Organizer President

benmeir — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:50:52 +0000

Community organizing means different things to different people, but its basic intention is to bring people together at the local level to talk about the socioeconomic and environmental challenges they face, work through their differences, and then implement their own plan of action to meet their most critical development goals.

Facilitators of this process--such as the Democratic presidential nominee Illinois Senator Barack Obama, before he entered the political scene--are necessary to catalyze and help maintain a productive and inclusive experience for participating communities. Senator Obama often refers to this approach to social change as "bottom-up" because when implemented successfully it results in new public-private partnerships, the growth of civil society, government officials more responsive to people's needs, and a reformation of state and national social policies to promote local empowerment.

As cases from around the world have illustrated abundantly, such an approach leads local communities to have a heightened stake in their own development and to create self-help projects that further economic development, promote public health, and encourage progress that enhances people's lives in other key areas.

There are many benefits of community development based on broad local participation that make it applicable to a diverse range of domestic and international challenges facing the United States. The coherent vision offered by this approach to social change provides Senator Osama with a special and perhaps unique opportunity to enunciate detailed policies that he would pursue as president--policies that would also attract Independents and Republicans and add substance to his claim that he has the right kind of experience to lead the United States in the twenty-first century.

Consider, for example, the issue of international free trade. As devastating as free trade can be for manufacturing towns in different parts of the United States, its dislocation effect in developing countries, particularly in rural areas, can be even more acute. Under NAFTA, Mexico has seen a considerable decline in rural employment, lower prices for land and farm products, greater urban migration, rising income inequality, and increasing agricultural trade deficits.

Morocco, which entered into free trade with the United States in 2004, took heed of Mexico's experience and delayed free trade in the agricultural sector for 10 years to pave the way by modernizing its agricultural practices and diversifying its rural economy. This is where community organizing steps in. The new development projects that emerge from local participation in community initiatives nurture economic diversity and expand the income base through training and implementing the ideas for the development of local peoples.

This approach better enables hard hit communities to adapt to the economic restructuring caused by free trade while building a foundation for more rapid development. Senator Obama can therefore claim correctly, as he did at the Democratic primary debate at Howard University, that his community organizing background gives him precisely the experience necessary to create policies and reform existing free-trade agreements in order to revitalize communities at home and abroad that have experienced the extremely harsh effects of free trade but not its benefits.

Regarding reconstruction and reconciliation efforts in Iraq, only in the past year did the United States decide to "go local" to achieve successful outcomes. An experienced community organizer such as Senator Obama can readily see that the widespread use of foreign contractors undermined both the Iraqis themselves and the United States.

The evidence in Iraq clearly suggests that people do not attack projects that they design, manage, and control. The opportunity lost from not directing the tens of billions of dollars to community-based reconstruction and reconciliation created the opening, perhaps more so than anything else, for the deadly violence, the millions of people dislocated, and other disasters that followed. Because of his experience, Senator Obama can outflank Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, on this issue. Though Senator McCain was a critic of how the war has been conducted militarily, he has not been nearly as vocal about the colossal reconstruction failure and the insecurity it has created in Iraq as well as its toll on the United States.

On the domestic front, his community organizing perspective can inform Senator Obama's approach to the White House Office of Faith-based Initiatives. Senator Obama stated that, as president, he would review this program to ensure that its funded initiatives are open to everybody and are not used to proselytize.

I suggest one way to do this is to require individual initiatives to include implementing partners from different religious institutions. Such a requirement could help address first-amendment concerns related to faith-based programs while helping to ensure the long-term success of the initiatives themselves since partnership is an essential component of any successful community development. Indeed, the more collaborators, the more groups and individuals there are that seek to maintain the project's continuity.

Senator Obama's community organizer perspective also can be quite appealing to Republicans and Independents who would appreciate the local empowerment approach as an especially effective way to address the poverty and dislocation caused by free trade. The senator can use also this special perspective to explain to these key groups why the Iraq war has gone so bad, and how faith institutions can continue to play a significant, if somewhat different role in his administration.

His experience in community work is indeed the right and needed experience to formulate social policies that can revitalize the U.S. economy from the bottom-up, promoting development and helping the government to manage conflicts around the world. Throughout the campaign, Senator Obama should seize on every opportunity to carefully explain the community organizer experience and how it will inform his policies as president, always using examples of specific issues of vital interest to the electorate.

Decentralization in Palestine

benmeir — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:53:49 +0000

Decentralization has divergent meanings and serves different ideological interests. Generally, however, it seeks greater representation in development initiatives from the popular majority, the local poor, and from political, religious, ethnic, and tribal groups. The purpose of decentralizing initiatives is to more effectively satisfy local needs (in poverty alleviation, education, health, environment, etc.) while utilizing local resources, such as community labor and the latent capabilities of people. To be successful, then, decentralizing programs build administrative capabilities of local government and private groups, including their capacities to plan development, resolve conflicts, and manage financial and other resources.

In the process, a certain amount of autonomy from political and economic national centers and from global dynamics is created. This is not to suggest that national governments no longer retain important roles to play. National governments retain responsibility for macroeconomic and foreign policies, the national judiciary, and in other vital areas. However, a clear aim of decentralization is greater self-sufficiency at the micro-regional level, which allows greater flexibility, speed, and efficiency in dealing with matters of development.

Local communities have a stake in maintaining decentralized systems because they are more responsive to them, sensitive to their interests, and equitable in the distribution of resources. Central governments benefit by creating overall targets and inter-regional balance and competition that can foster performance, affecting remote areas far from the national capital, and increasing political stability, national unity, and their own legitimacy. Both local community and national self-reliance is therefore strengthened through decentralization.

The idea of decentralization is not new. The 1960s and 1970s marks when many countries began decentralization efforts. There was a shift back to central control by the 1980s, after the oil shocks of the 1970s. In recent years, decentralization and local participation in development are again in favor.

The paralyzing socio-economic conditions facing the Palestinian people suggest prime opportunities for this type of engagement. Eighty-five percent of the people in Gaza depend on humanitarian aid to survive, and per capita income is less than half of what it was in the late 1990s. The Palestinian economic structure is dependent on Israel’s: approximately 80 percent (some figures are as high as 90 percent) of all imports to the West Bank and Gaza are from Israel, and more than 90 percent of all exports go to Israel. Palestinian economic dependency on Israel, certainly among the most extreme cases of international dependency in the world, makes their relations bitter and volatile, and perpetuates the severe underdevelopment of the Palestinian people. Relief and opportunities for livelihoods are what the Palestinians need immediately, to be achieved in a manner that instills self-reliance, restructures the economy, decreases its vulnerabilities to external influences, and enhances regional stability.

Perhaps the ultimate justification of decentralized development programs is found in cases from around the world of projects that further economic development (employment, production, local ownership, rates of growth, and profit) and provide social benefits (education, health, social cohesion (including intergenerational), and dignity). Through community involvement, projects are more quickly implemented for immediate relief than typical development interventions, with small and dispersed costs and shared risk. The efficiency of delivery of goods and services are also increased, and, very importantly, the economic base becomes more diversified which discourages dependency.

     The devastating socio-economic reality of the Palestinians have unwittingly created one favorable situation that enables the broad implementation of decentralization: nongovernment organizations have become very strong and have taken on the role of service providers in the absence of an active government. There are local and multilateral agencies in the occupied territories, such as the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee and the UNDP respectively, who create positive examples of decentralized managed projects. There is a plethora of indigenous development associations (many of whom are Islamic) to potentially partner with and transfer the necessary skills to catalyze and organize community planning meetings, and help implement the projects local Palestinian people determine together. Thousands of Palestinian men and women from all walks of life, beginning with those who already interface with local communities, can be trained in organizing and facilitating the necessary community meetings where local people determine their development goals and implement projects to achieve them. An average of two facilitators per rural village or a neighborhood of a several hundred people is a productive ratio. The Near East Foundation’s Center for Development Services located in Cairo offers a fine model of an institution that provides development training and materials to support decentralized community initiatives.

     A funding level for training and projects at $500 million over three years (an amount certainly possible considering that the international community recently pledged more than $7 billion to aid the Palestinian people over the same period) should enable half of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza (a population of approximately 3.5 million people) to be significantly socio-economically impacted. The Quartet partners, which include the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, under whose auspices the aid was pledged, ought to strongly encourage the leadership of the Palestinians and Israelis (who mediate the delivery and use of foreign aid) to support the implementation of decentralized development in the occupied territories. A collective bottom-up mobilization of this scale would give rise to explicit democratic political activism, and redefine local to national political equations of power that will increase institutional responsiveness to the public and decrease corruption.

Fortunately, the broad-scale implementation of decentralization does not have to wait for a final status agreement with Israel. Of course, under occupation and harsh internal conditions make it highly difficult at best to have community meetings with full participation. However, international development experts, Michael Edwards and David Hulme, reflecting on decentralized development state that even under the most authoritarian conditions, “there are opportunities for progressive change.” When the decentralization process gains momentum in the Palestinian areas, it could assist the political process with Israel, in part because of the less intense climate it would create.

This development approach could be an area where common ground may be possible between some Western countries and Hamas, since the majority of Hamas’ activities have historically been in providing community services. Sooner or later, in one form or another, the United States and others are going to have to deal directly with Hamas, and working with them in decentralized democratic development in Gaza could affect Hamas’ current political positions that are untenable with peaceful coexistence with Israel. Indeed, Jeroen Gunning at the University of Wales noted that change is possible in core areas of Hamas’ ideology. The Quartet should make every effort to test whether engagement with Hamas on the terms of decentralized development leads to moderation.

Yossef Ben-Meir is president of the High Atlas Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by former Peace Corps volunteers and dedicated to community development in Morocco. This article is part of an essay entitled, “National Sovereignty through Decentralization: A Community-Level Approach to Conflict Management in Iraq and the Occupied Palestinian Territories”, that will be published in the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.

Barack Obama, Federalism and a Winning Coalition

benmeir — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:11:43 +0000

Barack Obama’s community organizing background in Chicago gives him a special opportunity to expand his base of support to include the millions of Republican and Independent voters who identify closely with the principles of federalism. Federalism, a founding precept of the Republican Party more than 150 years ago and currently often lauded by the party’s presidential candidate Senator John McCain, involves deference to states and localities in the management of their own affairs and social programs.

Community organizing and federalism share many of the same core values, such as decentralized decision-making, capacity-building at the local level in management and administrative functions, and self-reliance. Senator Obama ought to consistently connect his community organizing background to the ideals of federalism by describing how he has applied this deep and intrinsic principle through empowering people at the local level to improve their own lives. His sustained emphasis of how his experience connects with core federalist principles will particularly attract Republicans and Independents who deeply value federalism and who no longer support continuing the devastating war in Iraq as does Senator McCain.

Thus rather than simply mentioning his community organizing experience, which he often does during his political rallies and speeches, Senator Obama should spell out how it relates to the federalist perspective and how, as a result, he is uniquely qualified to apply its principles to dealing with many of the serious challenges the United States now faces and even explaining how those challenges came about. For example, the general failure of Iraq’s reconstruction (when one considers potential versus actually attained benefits) is significantly rooted in the excessive and ultimately self-defeating level of foreign contractors involved, which has disempowered Iraqis, leaving far too many of them feeling that they do not have a stake in this effort. The failure here has in fact helped to feed the violent resistance. The United States has now come to realize its mistake and is working to correct it by involving Iraqis in the design and management of reconstruction projects. But Iraq’s reconstruction as originally conceived and as undertaken up until recently was an affront to core principles of federalism, local control in decision-making, and community organizing. Seen from this perspective, the mismanagement by the Bush administration of the reconstruction effort is quite stark and can be viewed as a betrayal by many Republicans of the federalist ideals championed by their own party. Senator Obama should seize the opportunity to present himself as in the vanguard of federalist ideals; someone who has actually walked the walk as a community organizer, not a hypocrite who espoused the federalist ideals and then trampled on them.

Another example of how Senator Obama can utilize his community organizer/federalist experience and gain further support in his efforts to be president is through how he explains and deals with the social dislocation caused by international free trade. Free trade and globalization restructures economies, with brutal social effects as seen in parts of the United States and in developing economies, especially negatively impacting rural communities, such as in Mexico. When discussing these difficult conditions, Mr. Obama should highlight how community organizing and federalist approaches (i.e., empowering people) he is familiar with from first-hand experience can bring new opportunities to local economies and help create socio-economic initiatives that enable individuals and businesses to adapt and develop. Following this approach will help affirm the principle of federalism that many Republicans and others value and show its relevance in fashioning solutions to modern-day challenges at home and abroad.

The Obama campaign can legitimately conflate community organizing and federalism. After all, federalism is the political structure that enables and encourages local community organizing to occur. By presenting community organizing as a federalist process, the campaign will attract those Republicans and Independents who are disaffected by the Iraq war, but who would otherwise still support John McCain. This is why Senator Obama ought to continually use the federalist lexicon to describe the “bottom-up” strategies for social change that he clearly believes in. If he does so, Republicans and Independents will cross over to him and he will forge a coalition that should make him the next president of the United States.

Yossef Ben-Meir is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of New Mexico and president of the High Atlas Foundation (www.highatlasfoundation.org), a nonprofit organization founded by former Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Morocco and dedicated to the rural community development of that country.

Decentralization in Conflict Areas in The Middle East and North Africa

benmeir — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:21:25 +0000

It may initially seem a paradox that national-level governments are strengthened when they decentralize decision-making power by giving local communities control over, or at least a decisive voice in, matters relating to their own development. One naturally assumes that a country’s autonomy is strengthened the more power is concentrated at the national level.

However, in reality, when national governments assist initiatives that enable a community to determine and implement its priority development projects (in job creation, education, health, environment, etc.), they create in the process diverse administrative partnerships at all domestic levels. Everyone benefits. Local organizations and communities are desirous of maintaining these partnerships at the national level because government support helps satisfy their specific needs and better enables the people to shape the institutions that govern them. Central governments also benefit because by creating overall goals that encourage inter-regional balance and competition, they can foster better performance, positively affect areas far from the national capital, and enhance the central government’s legitimacy. The diverse benefits of decentralized development enable it to generate what is particularly needed to help resolve the complex regional conflicts involving, for example, complex regional conflicts involving, for example, Iraq, the Israelis and Palestinians, and the Western Sahara with Morocco.

There are a wealth of examples of decentralizing initiatives with national support from all over the world and in history. As early as 1956, the Administrative Committee of the United Nations stated that a major function of national governments is to unite with the efforts of the people and improve the conditions of local communities. In both mixed economies and socialist societies in Asia, for example, rural institutions became more effective promoters of development because of support from higher levels of government. In Brazil, the process of decentralization and the local participation it encourages allowed citizens to be directly involved with municipal fiscal planning that in turn enhanced transparency and responsiveness of social services. Joint forestry programs in India, organized by local organizations, met with government encouragement, which led to the central government’s enhanced legitimacy. The organization of the United States is also based on the same idea, that is, the principle of federalism or decentralization. The system of federalism is central to the U.S. Constitution, which imposes limits on the national government by giving local and state governments substantive independent powers.

“Participatory development” has become the term used to refer to community planning methods that create decentralization. These methods involve the participation of “facilitators” who organize local community-wide meetings at which participants plan their own development projects. Teachers, government extenionists in the ministries of agriculture, health, education, and so forth, community workers from NGOs, personnel from international public and private groups, and local community members can all be effective facilitators. Once trained, facilitators bring local people together to assess their social and environmental conditions and determine and implement development projects in areas most important to them – such as in job creation, education, and health, among others.

In the case of the Palestinians, their economic structure is extremely dependent on Israel. This dependency makes Israeli-Palestinian relations increasingly bitter and volatile while perpetuating the extreme economic underdevelopment of the Palestinian people. What the Palestinians immediately need are relief and opportunities for livelihood achieved through fostering a self-reliance that restructures their economy, decreases its vulnerabilities to external influences, and enhances regional stability.

Decentralization, it was found, advances local and national self-reliance, which, in turn, is associated with increases in independence from external control, self-help, and self-governance. Palestinian communities will increase their power and the influence of indigenous institutions and of the civil society. Significant democratic foundations will be established, and internal political processes will be more responsive and accountable. Decentralization vests control at the community level and can consequently more quickly generate life-sustaining development projects, which also cost less.

This development approach could work best in some areas where aspects of partnership may be possible with Hamas, since the majority of Hamas’ activities are already in community services. The impacts of working together wherever possible with even perceived enemies can in time affect overall relations between larger groups and even between societies.

In Iraq, the sectarian conflict is placing the central government in jeopardy, with the country breaking apart or a loose federal arrangement seemingly the most likely outcome. The creation of development programs as outlined here offers a third possible outcome, which is Iraq’s central government can increase its chances of survival and utility by supporting reconstruction programs that are driven in their design, implementation, and evaluation by local communities.

Decentralization can readily incorporate local reconciliation processes, which in turn can significantly influence decisions made at the regional and national levels. Another advantage of participatory projects is that they are dispersed, small in scale, and thus are not as strategic of targets as the more visible and foreign-conceived reconstruction projects insurgents typically sabotage. In addition, ample evidence from Iraq itself strongly suggests people do not destroy reconstruction projects that they determine and then manage themselves.

It is impossible to justify in developmental terms the extreme involvement of foreign companies in the reconstruction of Iraq. The opponents of peace, in a context where communities receive the real benefits from their participation in development, may have been dealt with internally by the Iraqi people themselves, and in ways that allowed for the continued benefits of the larger majority. This is why the United States should immediately follow through on the Iraq Study Group’s suggestion to allocate $5 billion for reconstruction, and direct these funds toward assisting local people to come together, plan, and implement projects that meet their self-determined socio-economic and environmental needs. No other approach is now on the table that can enable Iraqis to feel more vested in their surroundings and future, further the reconciliation, development, and political tracks, and provide the national government with legitimacy and purpose (and perhaps save it) through giving this type of projects its full and active support.

As a final example, last April, the Moroccan government submitted to the United Nations Security Council an “autonomy within Moroccan sovereignty” proposal for a resolution to the 32 year old Western Saharan conflict. The proposal catalyzed intensive negotiations among the parties (including Morocco and the Polisario, with Algeria and Mauritania invited to observe) under the auspices of the United Nations.

Considering Morocco’s position to enable the maximum possible autonomy for Western Sahara within the context of its existence within Moroccan sovereignty, it should broadly assist the coming together of Western Sahara’s local people so they can plan and implement their priority development projects. This will create greater autonomy for the Saharan region, bring desperately needed relief and opportunity to the approximate 160,000 Sahrawi refugees, and forge mutually beneficial relationships and institutional connections with Morocco. If the process goes forward, new trust and partnerships among the parties could help to more clearly define the form of regional autonomy within a broader sovereignty that Morocco proposes.

Morocco’s broad support of decentralization of development in the Western Sahara would affect the results of a referendum in Western Sahara that helps to decide its future (that is, if the parties agree to the terms upon which a referendum were to take place). Individuals and organizations that support projects created by communities in the process advance their public diplomacy too. Pursuing the projects communities wanted – that met their self-described needs – wins hearts and minds and will influence who wins the “war of ideas.” It is this kind of action that should form the basis of United States public diplomacy in the Arab-Muslim world.

Yossef Ben-Meir teaches sociology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He is also President of the High Atlas Foundation – a nonprofit organization that assists rural development in Morocco.