The social origins of municipal democracy in rural Ecuador: Agrarian structures, indigenous-peasant movements, and non -governmental organizations

This dissertation is about efforts to make municipal governments in rural Ecuador more democratic and more effective as agents of inclusive social and economic development. Decentralization initiatives and struggles by social movements to deepen municipal democracy in Latin America have increased the importance of municipal governments in the region. However, no clear methodological framework has yet been presented for studying municipal governance in general in Latin America, and municipal democracy in particular.;This dissertation proposes a "relative power approach" to municipal democratization in Latin America which emphasizes the forces shaping local-level class, gender, and ethnic power relations as the basis for analyzing municipal governance. This approach seeks to explain different patterns of municipal governance by posing questions about the development of capitalism at the micro-regional level and the local distribution of productive assets; political organization, coalitions between and divisions within local class, gender, and ethnic groups; the impact of national and global political-economic forces on micro-regional power relations; the relative autonomy of municipal governments from local social forces and from national governments; the jurisdiction of municipal governments over matters of local conflict; the design of municipal institutions; and the political strategies of municipal leaders.;The dissertation applies this approach to three cases of efforts to deepen municipal democracy in rural highland Ecuador in an effort to explain the underlying causes of the relative success and failure of those efforts. The three municipalities examined were Guamote (Chimborazo Province), Cotacachi (Imbabura Province), and Bolivar (Carchi Province). Research in those three municipalities, conducted in 1999 and 2002, found that the conditions underlying the relative success of efforts to democratize municipal governments were highly exceptional and were unlikely to be replicated in other rural highland municipalities. Foremost among those conditions were a relatively equitable distribution of agricultural land, high levels of indigenous-peasant organization, and high-levels of financial and technical support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and aid donors. The dissertation also examines the ways in which the particular design of municipal institutions and political strategies of municipal leaders contributed to or undermined municipal democratization processes.