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Introduction
This study analyzes the characteristics of the bonds established between the social actors that participate in the implementation of social programs from the Contextual Interaction Theory (CIT) angle (Muthathi & Rispel, 2020; Javakhishvilo & Jibladze, 2018; Salaj, 2017; Owens & Bressers, 2013). In the social policies context, these bonds are set during the interactions where the subjects conciliate and negotiate actions and decisions, adjusting them to their own interests and needs (material, symbolic, institutional, politic, individual and collective). Therefore, to observe these bonds that are established in the implementation processes is the base and the purpose on which they are determined. It is postulated that studying the characteristics of the links established between the actors - and their variations among the different programs - is central to understand the materialization of social policies implementation, together with its possibilities to succeed. To achieve this, it is possible to explore three key dimensions of the bonds proposed by the CIT in particular contexts of implementation spaces: motivation, information, and the power of the actors in the game.
From the retrospective ex post facto study of multiple cases (Díaz, Mendoza & Porras, 2011) this investigation analyzes the social space created in the implementation of four social programs in the District Mayor office of Cali; a government that has difficulties in facing the increasing of exclusion and inequality relations on a geographical and racial scope. This perspective lets the researcher search for the causes of a phenomenon that has already happened, with a recognized ecological validity (Bisquerra, 1989). In an exploratory way, one of each type of programs was chosen by following the classification proposed by Martínez Nogueira (2004), which distinguishes the level of interaction and the level of homogeneity/ heterogeneity of the task. The need to approach the study of multiple cases from this perspective consists in the importance to define the implementation space, observing: 1) how the intervention is structured, in a continuum from the uniformity (highest possibility to schedule routines, procedures, activities, etc.) to the flexibility (lowest possibility of scheduling and highest possibility of adjustments during the project); and 2) how the relations are established between the subjects, from the null involvement to the daily interaction. This leads to the following classification:
Table 1 Types of social programs according to the level of organization and interaction between the actors.
| Interaction Level | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Null or Low | Medium or High | ||
| Organization level of the task | Homogeneous (low/medium) | Transfer of goods and services | Professional social services |
| Heterogeneous (high) | Social and emergency benefits | Capacity development, social inclusion and human services |
Source: own elaboration based on Martínez Nogueira (2004).
There are many ways that the implementation can vary according to the characteristics of social programs. The chosen typology to classify different kinds of social programs allows them to be sorted according to the programmatic and interaction differences, thereby it is a typology that can be applied to any other implementation contexts of the social policies, nationally or regionally. For that matter, its relevance lies on the need to extend these kinds of studies to the relation between the type of bond co- created by the actors, the implementation processes and the obtained results, in order to apply the knowledge in other similar public policies.
In effect, because of this complex heterogeneity with social and economic character that composes the different communities in which the social programs are implemented, the actual problems that the public services face would require more flexible mechanisms, inclusive and adaptable to operate more efficiently, in local communities increasingly diverse or in the gray zones of societies with individuals exhorted to become responsible social actors, in relations of service-compensation with the Estate (Castel, 2010). This implies in recognizing, to the public policies level, that today more than ever the programs designs are not complete until the implementation phase. Or, from another perspective, that the programs implementation is a political activity, where some of the most decisive actions that configure the policies occur in these processes’ interactions (Peters, 2014).
In this context, it is proposed to emphasize a perspective of the social programs implementation as a space of social interaction where goods and public services are exchanged between the state agents and the civil society, as individuals and collectives (Peroni, 2014). Seen as a process, this is conducted through interactions between the multiple government levels, in which non-governmental actors can be involved. This interaction’s network would be shaped by complex structures that, effectively, make the programs work. However, although the participants of these structures lean to have interest in the political area, they don’t necessarily share the same expectations about them (Peters, 2014), manifesting it in the implementation field. From the actors’ perspective, the implementation process can be conceived as a series of uncertain games in which numerous semiautonomous actors participate, in a scenery where each one of them makes an effort to protect their interests and obtain access to elements of the program that are under control of others (Bardach, 1977).
This study analyzes the constitution and manifestation of the bonds that are established in the implementation process of social programs of different natures executed in Cali’s City Hall. These are framed in a context of great changes of social politics in Colombia since the state reform made in the 80’s, which led to the writing of a new Constitution in 1991. These changes implied the need to evaluate the results, impacts and plans of public actions and politics (Roth, 2009). As an effect, today in Colombia many processes of social public policies are developed, straightened in the planning, the objectives, obligations, and functions division, regional adaptability, etc.
However, there is a huge lack of implementation processes, since here is where the bureaucracy and the patronage have maintained a precedent in politics. This is how the bureaucracy makes a great number of policies end in administrative and technocratic acts, as a consequence of interactions between political and stakeholders groups that have no conceptual clarity about public policies (Roth, 2010). Acting as an element in charge of establishing a social form based on the rational organization of the means in function of the ends, promoting the consolidation of an institutionalism that applies in the public administration, management practices characteristic of the private market sector.
In the context of corruption, patronage and illegality there were established triangular patronage dynamics that generate anomalies adhered to the political system, where the employees need the politicians to achieve and maintain their positions, the politicians need the stakeholders to fund their campaigns and the stakeholders need the politicians to create laws that benefits their companies (Misas, 2006). These mutual dynamics have been one of the main obstacles of public policies, because they tend to concentrate power.
Thus, the citizens’ empowerment and their participation in the country matters in a democratic way are nullified and undermined, excluding the organized civil society. Here is where the policies, as efficient instruments to resolve the unmet needs, have become important to the public administration, because they are converted in an assistentialism tool that allows the politician to conserve their electoral support, linking the communities in the formulation and implementation of politics, but without resolving the matter in an effective way (Muller, 2006).
The theoretical approach adopted in this research allows to unravel the game that is established, revealing relations that were made invisible in this process, through the analysis of the motivations, the information, and the use of power in micro spaces by the different actors involved.
Hereunder, the central concepts that orientate this research are defined. In the first place, it’s expressed what is commonly understood as implementation and why this study proposes another complementary outlook. Then the implementation as a space of game between the actors from the CIT view will be addressed. In the third place, which is the relevance of the social programs under this perspective will be reviewed.
1. The Implementation as an Irresistible Tautology
From Pressman and Wildavsky (1973), the implementation phase is recognized as a set of actions performed by public and private individuals (or groups), with the aim of completing the objectives previously decided (Van Meter & Van Hom, 1975); affirming that the implementation of public policies is a process that is triggered once their design is concluded and human, material and financial resources are settled in to execute them, which pretend to accomplish the objectives in the best possible way (Rubio, 2013). It refers to a model based on the planning and control, beginning by an initial plan where the implementation is seen as a “production function”. It is assumed that the model determines: i) established goals, detailed plans, adjusted controls; ii) unambiguous objectives; iii) the implied actors, who have plain conscience of the goals; iv) the resources, which would be assigned, would be sufficient and available when needed; and v) the inexistence of environmental conflict. Thereby, this perspective assumes the implementation from the clarity of the design and as a lineal consequence of it. In other words, the implementation of a public policy with a high level of implementation fidelity (Rojas, Leiva, Vargas & Squicciarini, 2017).
In this study a different perspective is assumed: as the previous assumptions are not tautologically accomplished, the implementation cannot be considered as a lineal production (models oriented to results or logical settings, for example). Likewise, this overview raises some questions such as: Which are the implementation results? Who took the decisions? How off are they from the projects’ design? Which were the performed tasks? Etc. Questions that derivate in an analysis linked to the accountability or the study of the phases of public policies but that doesn’t address the implementation process itself. Instead, they address the purpose or the results, although some questions related to the systematization and evaluation processes remain open.
2. The Implementation is not Reduced to a Production Factor
From a complementary perspective, the social policy is assumed as a complex process intervened by different state sectors and by society and, in its action, configures social relation fields. To study the public policies means to recognize that their formulation and implementation reflects a sociocultural process and, as such, interprets, classifies, and generates realities, also molding the subjects to whom they are addressed. Thus, the argument is in favor of a constitutive and modulating conception of the social policies, in relation with the configuration and dynamics of the intervening actors. Specifically, Bardach (1977) uses the term “games” as a metaphor to define the implementation as the execution of a series of games slightly related with each other, and sustains that he observes the players to see what is in game, their strategies and tactics, their resources, their game rules, etc. So, the social policies can be a game in which the show and the scenery building are more important than solving the problems through an effective implementation (Edelman, 1991).
Furthermore, Lindblom (1991) notices that the complexity of the game of power in the policies formulation is multiplied during the implementation phase. During this process, the policies change while they are translated to administrative alignments and put in practice. It is interesting to analyze the social process that grows around the policies, and the relations between the different actors that intervene in the matter. In this case, the strategies, the resources as the information, the double view in the interaction between the decision makers, the implementers or street bureaucrats and the beneficiaries that form the community development and social inclusion programs. This moment is understood as an “assembly” process between many activities and different elements of the program (Bardach, 1995), which is executed by the actors that interact and are linked in some way.
So, the more actors involved, bigger are the divergences of agendas and goals, and there are more coordination and communication challenges, making it harder to act together (Bardach, 1995). In the institutions as responsible for the processes, there are non-written rules, manners and traditions, frequently hard to change, and many times they would be more determinant to the social decision, as the neo-institutionalism notices (Eslava, 2010).
There is also a diversity of behaviors between the employers and the target group. Therefore, i) the bigger the behavior diversity between the actors to be regulated, the harder it will be to formulate clear regulations, decreasing the probabilities to achieve the normative goals (Sabatier y Mazmanian, 2000); ii) the bigger the complexity of the change, in the way that things used to be, involves both technical and behavioral changes, so the harder it will be to implement the policies (Cleaves, 1974).
So, the implementation as a space where the social policies are manifested is far from being a production factor, because it is not linear. It is dynamic and, at least, bidirectional.
3. The Implementation as an Actors’ Play. Contextual Interaction Theory
The relational space of the implementation is referred to the locus where they interact, where the actors superimpose. Such space can be approached by the Contextual Interaction Theory, that conceives policy implementation as an interactive and dynamic process in which the actors could participate as implementers or as target groups (Javakhishvilo & Jibladze, 2018). In fact, current perspectives understand the implementers as “bureaucrats on the street level” (Baviskar & Winter, 2016) for the discretion level that they apply in the implementation, and the beneficiaries as the last implementers also from “street level”, capable of demanding or rejecting specific programs (Spratt, 2009).
The basic assumption of the CIT is that the result of the policies process depends not only on the inputs, but crucially on the characteristics of the actors involved: their motivation, information and power. All the other factors that influence the process do so because they are connected to the characteristics of the actors. The theory doesn’t deny, however, the value of a multiplicity of possible factors, but reassures that theoretically its influence can be understood observing its impact on the motivation, the information and the power of the actors involved (Bressers, 2004).
Thus, to improve the implementation may not require great efforts, but well targeted actions that create small changes between some actors in an interdependent environment (O’Toole & Kirkpatrick, 2007). That is why it is required to comprehend the motivations, the available information and the power of the players to identify the interdependences, susceptible to impact the implementation processes and its final results. For that purpose, the public officials, the beneficiaries, the intermediaries, and the local politicians will be observed. Hereunder, the central concepts of the proposal are presented:
Motivation: refers to the importance level that the actors give to a policy or particular program and how the policy or program contributes to their goals and objectives, and how it affects the implementation. The motivation exam helps the interested parts to understand the perspectives of the implementers (their beliefs, value priorities and perceptions of the importance and magnitude of specific issues and political solutions) that frequently reveal the fundamental causes of the implementation barriers (Sabatier, 1991; Spratt, 2009).
Information: the succeeded implementation of politics or programs requires that the involved actors have enough information. The information includes the technical knowledge of the matter and the levels and patterns of communication between the actors. For example, do they know who is responsible for the implementation they should be working with and who is benefited by the policies? Do they know which department is assigned to lead the implementation and how the program will be supervised? (Spratt, 2009).
Power: it is important to understand who is authorized to implement a policy and to what extent they can implement it. The power can derive from former sources (such as the legal or regulation systems) or informal sources (such as depending on another part to achieve different goals). In most cases of interactive processes, the informal power sources can be very important, because they can balance the former powers of the implementation authorities (Spratt, 2009).
This way from the CIT perspective it will be possible to approach the “implementation games” (Bardach, 1995) and analyze the possible behaviors during the implementation, by the actors/players. And, more specifically, explore how the bonds are manifested in the implementation of social programs from the CIT that conjugate the precise and necessary elements to do it: actors (with information, motivation and power), that interact in specific contexts.
4. The Social Programs
The social programs are artifacts of instrumental and symbolic nature that aim to cause an impact on the individuals and groups that form the target community or the beneficiaries group. They are constructions subject to restrictions. Nonetheless, the programs lie on the conviction that human action can change reality, since it is about the symbolic, the material or the social world. Or, from a more relational perspective, the social project/ program is precisely a proliferation of active connections that allows the 88 forms to be born; in other words, the existence of objects and subjects, establishing and making the bonds irreversible.
This study is placed into the implementation analysis. Here is where the study of “(socio)political life micro-structure” is placed, how the organizations internal and external to the political system deal with their own matters and interact with each other, what motivates them to act, how do they do it and what could make them act in another way (Jenkins, 1978). Specifically, the sociopolitical life micro-structure will be addressed, from the social programs with high and low interaction with the beneficiaries and with more and less heterogeneity in the task development. It will be interesting to know what is really played in terms of scope of the implementation of such programs, more than their bonding with the programmatic design.
Precisely what this research aims is to identify and characterize in a comparative way how the social bonds that are established are manifested, and how they configure the implementation space of the four social programs implemented in Cali’s Municipality, from the CIT perspective, described below.
The Child Group program seeks to contribute to the reduction of infant mortality through actions of promotion and maintenance of health in children up to 6 years old. The Elder Colombia program consists of a monetary subsidy for elderly people inscribed in the identification system of potential beneficiaries of social program and who’s not receiving any type of income. The Risk Management program defines policies for disaster prevention, monitoring, evaluation, and management in the municipality. And finally, the Citizen Culture Local Workshops program promotes and develops initiatives to transform people’s reality concerning healthy environments, conflict resolution, democratic participation, and use and care of public space issues, among others.
5. Methodological Approach
The present study follows a cross-sectional and qualitative methodology, with analytical relational scope. The data collection techniques were the non- participant observation in the implementation spaces of the programs and semi-directed interviews. The sampling for the interviews was intentional, (Stake, 2005) and based on the key informant criteria according to their role in the implementation, and specifically through snowball, in relation to the beneficiaries that were part of such programs. Therefore, the key actors that establish bonds in the interaction space were interviewed: programs designers (2), street bureaucrats (4), leaders/intermediaries (4), and the users (2); resulting in a total of 12 interviews conducted. The information production was completed with interviews conducted to academicians (2) specialized in the programs. These programs were chosen by following the typology proposed by Martínez Nogueira (2004): 1) low homogeneity of the task and imply a low interaction with the beneficiaries (delivery of subsidies); 2) low homogeneity of the task and imply a medium or high interaction between the participants (health program); 3) medium/high homogeneity of the task and high interaction with the beneficiaries (peace program); 4) medium/high heterogeneity on the task and low interaction with the beneficiaries (risk/ nature programs). The previous typology allows us to identify the differences that generates the materialization of hardly standardized designs to all the contexts (Peroni, 2014).
Lastly, regarding the analysis plan, the transcription of the interviews and the observations information were codified by the NVivo software, using a mixed codification combining theoretical and open codification (Flick, 2002). In other words, establishing first the codes that address the dimensions of the specific goals, but maintaining an openness to what could emerge from the material. Then, an analysis of qualitative content was performed (Andréu, 2001).
6. Analysis
6.1 Motivation to Formulate or Just to Execute?
Firstly, in some cases it is possible to detect a tendency in the interviewees’ speech to recognize an ambiguous dialogue between the planning and the implementation of the action. Risk Management, high heterogeneity task program, but low interaction, exemplifies this vision since from a formulation level it brings the action of the beneficiary community to develop in the specific moment of execution but not in the planning phase. In effect, there are promoted actions that prioritize the act against catastrophes, while from the implementation, other dynamics are generated, such as eviction, exclusion and precarious situation of the communities. Sara Elena, leader from the target community of this program, exemplifies from her experience, how it was determined the program implementation, and which are the motivations that orient its execution:
We would like if there was an entity that demanded this diagnosis here. Yes, because they come talk to us, take us out of there, (although) this high-risk zone without this study is not justified. Well, if it is a high-risk zone, we can leave, but the territory has to remain as a sustain to the families that are going away for we can work on it. If they are building a fluvial port from which they will get a lot of money, we, the families of black communities, we as community council should have this support too to participate on the tourism part […] so they don’t want to recognize the Community council that has access to these rights. (Personal communication, Sara Elena, Risk Management, leader/target community, Oct 25th, 2018)
In this case, it can be appreciated how the planning action of moving the communities passes through an interaction unknown to one of the parties, becoming a program implemented by imposition. Although the particular manifestation of the policy is motivated by an action that aims to solve the problem, in its implementation it overlooks the belief systems and the interests of the beneficiary population, creating a crisis in the actor and the objective of the policy.
A solution proposed by Roberto, employee of the same program, would be to establish a proposal mechanism in which one phase leads to another, understanding the particularities of each locality, territory, and community where it applies, presenting specific solutions with a minimum scheme of durability. Nonetheless, it is here where emerges the problem of temporality and implementation, such as Roberto says:
Sometimes it seems that the action implementation is very fast because there are spaces where it was made fast and it worked fast and this in the employee mentality is: “here it works fast so in every places it should work the same way”, and this is not true. In another places it is slower, previous consults are needed, more negociation is needed, more concertation. This is going to delay the times and the project has to suffer these considerations. (Personal communication, Roberto, Risk Management, employee, Oct 8th, 2018)
In short, the need of a temporality is understood based on the individual knowledge of each community, beginning from their own goals and motivations, orientating to their needs and resolving them through the social policies. In the Local Workshops case, low homogeneity task and high interaction program, it begins from the community to the institution, laying on the motivation of the implementation in the communal availability. In effect, the citizen engagement is evident in the Workshops, because they constitute an alternative that puts the community in the planning and not only in the execution of the action. In this way Valeria, a program employee, sees that the creation of the Workshops:
It was not a project made from a desk, we will make Workshops, no, it was a growing process, a communal process that was created and then the administrative decision to follow, so the following of the process has been from the popular education according to the contexts, according to the problematics and, also according to the kind of leaders that we have and the capacity of management. (Personal communication, Valeria, Local Workshops, employee, Oct 23rd, 2018)
So, the Local Workshops result in a policy that confronts the local realities approaching them from their own needs. Specifically, these operate through the promotion of a citizen culture that morally regulates the actions around the addressed issue. Federico, employee of the program explains: “with the citizen culture what we look for is […] to straighten the moral regulation, that the person has conscience and follow the regulations not only for the legal sanction but for his own subjectivity” (Personal communication, Oct 23rd, 2018). These forms of regulation that implement themselves in the mutual recognition and action agreement are achieving an increasingly important part in the social politics management, gradually replacing the policies that use instruments based only on the distribution and delivery of resources and services to a passive community.
In the case of the Child Group program, the actors understand the social need of generating strategies of inclusive and effective participation for the first childhood, although there is the risk, on the one hand, of childhood distress or teenage pregnancy, and on the other, the need of raising healthy children that will turn into community thinking adults. In a declarative way, the cosmovision that sustains this program’s orientation considers the first childhood as a phase in which they are given rights and a set of multidimensional particularities such as emotional, biological, social, affective, cultural, psychic, and others. The human being is understood as someone who is in constant construction and evolution. The same way the care and the assistance that are rights of the children, as an essential factor to the full development, not only of these individuals but of their entire family is recognized.
However, at the moment of operationalizing the policy in indicators, they respond mostly to public health issues, finally setting the “mentoring” from a must do, and not as an endeavor that reinforces childhood well- being. This standardized form allows the arriving of different cultures and people though. However, the risk of providing under a must do, conditions the program to a caring need that will is assumed mostly by the mothers and not a work that should be conceived in a communal way. In effect, another unexpected result is connected to gender, since the participation of men in caring labor is more fragile in this interface, so it is a wasted opportunity to use these programs as means to reinforce and promote masculine participation schemes. Something similar happens with the Elder Colombia program, that is born from the motivation to assist elderly people in situations of financial and multidimensional vulnerability, yet, puts itself as a subside to approach this vulnerability and not as a guarantee of social rights that will safeguard this population from facing a vulnerability situation.
In short, the tension about the beneficiary communities’ involvement both at the formulation and the implementation or, in interaction terms, in what moment the interface is opened to the actors’ meeting, before or after the decision making. The problem is that, by not including the beneficiary community in the formulation, a space is opened to respond to their interests or motivations in other areas of the policies or plainly to other actors and their personal interests. This results in the risk of implementing a policy as a strategic action that instrumentalizes the supposed target community, degrading the bonds between the different actors’ levels.
On the other hand, to implement a policy that considers the target community in the formulation makes the temporality problem emerge, at least in the first negotiation as a specific community, as is the case of the Local Workshops program where its activation depends on the motivation of the involved community. The benefit of this is that the normative action to where the program points is shared by all the actors, which allows a positive reproduction of the initiative to happen, because it was already implemented from the establishment of mutual bonds on recognized expectations.
6.2 Information: The Problem of the Acknowledgment of Diversity
The main characteristic that crosses through the programs analyzed here in terms of the information that the involved actors have is the diversity of the beneficiary community with whom they work. So, the programs have the challenge of approaching communities of different socio-economic levels, diverse ethnicities with their respective languages and organization forms, and even to respond to the local or foreign communities displaced from their original community because of the armed conflict. Víctor, director of a study center about the risk, exemplifies this challenge: “The time management of the afro community is shorter, in other words, with the natives they reunite in long sessions, but with the afro communities it’s harder to manage these times, the times have to be shorter. We need to give more time to the dispersion […] There are other logics.” (Personal communication, Víctor, Risk Management, intermediary, Oct 9th, 2018)
Furthermore, the displacement of the communities because of the armed conflict emerges as an important factor to consider in the policy that is being implemented at a local level, because it questions a base supposition that is to assume certain acknowledgment about a community associated with a geographic zone. About the communal organization around the Risk Management: “When they ask me, for example, why do the Raizales del Pacífico communal council is called, if you are living in Navarro? Is because we come for the armed conflict, we are displaced.” (Personal communication, Sara Elena, Risk Management, leader/target community, Oct 25th, 2018). Moreover, the undesirable extreme according to the actors about this situation is exposed by Víctor: “The last week I was invited to a forum about communal experiences in adaptation to the climatic change, so the funniest is that there were no communities, there were only regional corporations and like two NGOs and a university organization, only a few people… incredible.” (Personal communication, Víctor, Risk Management, intermediary, Oct 9th, 2018)
In this case, the previously reviewed problem of formulating a program for a population without it being considered is seen from the information dimension. Nonetheless, as the interviewees say, it is not enough that the street bureaucrats have the “knowledge to make decisions, but these decisions are followed by programs or projects that aim to mitigate a risk, (it is also necessary to) prepare people to know how to behave when these disasters occur” (Personal communication, Roberto, Risk Management, employee, Oct 8th, 2018). In other words, the active role of the target community is recognized just like the mutual interdependence to assure the success of the initiative. However, to these purposes, it has brought back the challenges of the target community diversity to be addressed, as Julia, employee of the Child Group program, exposes about the ethnical diversity that characterizes the country:
(To the mothers) they are given brochures, one obviously asks, do you know how to read and write? For example, the natives can’t read nor write, so I draw, and then return and knock the door and I come an explain, but they are really accelerated and don’t understand fast, so they go away mad and begin to speak their own language. (Personal communication, Julia, Child Group, employee, Oct 16th, 2018)
In the Local Workshops’ case, same as in the Child Group, part of the projects that are effectively raised consider as a component the production of knowledge within the target community. This, because some problems addressed by the programs are, or by lack of knowledge, or information. The implementation of a Workshop in some cases is also seen as the rescue and transmission of another kind of content, related to the tradition/memory.
Also the Local Workshops while conforming an interaction interface of high homogeneity in the task and high interaction, the moment of implementation contributes to solve the problem previously raised by the Risk Management, about the policies planning without really knowing the community with which it will be worked.
In terms of citizen culture the Workshops straighten the coexistence and prevent violence because they are done at a territorial level, considering all the heterogeneity of the diverse municipal territories, so the key is also to the administration to know the diversity of territories, the different perceptions that have the same citizenship about their coexistence and their social and environmental setting (Personal communication, Valeria, Local Workshops, employee, Oct 23rd, 2018)
Lastly, in the case of the Elder Colombia program, although this is of low or medium homogeneity and low interaction, for its implementation it is crucial that the target community knows under what criteria they can enter in it and that the street bureaucrats dominate their logic. This program, different from one with low heterogeneity in the task, dominates a logic of structuration of the established processes that need to be known. So it also brings an education component about its own operation and marks a huge part of the interaction of trespassing resources or services, within the same type of actor and between each type of actors.
The programs that work with a wide diversity, as in the case of the Child Group or Risk Management programs, example the need to maintain certain openness to the possible emergency of different groups with particular characteristics that have to be known. The interaction between them is marked by how much information both actors from a specific community have and how much knowledge there have about the formal codes through which the actions are implemented.
In the Local Workshops, for being a high interaction program, the trespassing of information between actors (mutual knowledge) as well as among the target community, to address mainly the problems of education and trespassing of culture and values is relevant. In the case of Elder Colombia, given its low interaction and high homogeneity of the task, it highlights the importance of the knowledge that the target community have to access it and the knowledge of the implementers of the target community to process it internally. In this case, the bonds of the implementations are marked by a continuous flow of information inside the groups. Knowing how the mounted bureaucracy works, on one side, and the word-of-mouth trespassing of information between the beneficiaries, on another.
6.3 Power: Projects Anchored in Political Enclaves
In a logical way, the motivation that originates the programs also considers the material and symbolic means with which actor will count to intervene in its implementation and finally who will become subjects of the interface. It is because of that, in the Risk Management program, marked by low interaction, the determinations out of the negotiations between the main actors involved open space to the intermission of other sources of power, such as private opportunist groups. Víctor, from the Risk Management program, comments how this intermission of third actors that wanted to profit through the programs during the design of the first Territorial Ordinance Plan happened: “Until this year we had certain extensions and privileges for them, but there was a high proliferation of NGO’s that basically became instruments of the senators, mayors, governors, councilors, and politicians. They simply made that the NGO, a big number, became laundries to corruption.” (Personal communication, Víctor, Risk Management, intermediary, Oct 9th, 2018)
Keeping with this case, in terms of recognition in the bonds of who has the power to execute an action, the institutional power as the space from which comes the power in a low interaction program, can regulate to its own will the management of the target community. In the case of the displacements made without a previous negotiation on the basis of evidence, these can happen precisely because of the non-recognition of the parts through institutional mechanisms. “It has been three months since we are asking for recognition as communal councils by the municipal authorities, but it has not been accepted”. (Personal communication, Sara Elena, Risk Management, leader/target community, Oct 25th, 2018)
In a similar way, the institutional recognition is in charge of equipping the programs with certain faculties and mechanisms. So, again there is a connection between the power in game and the motivation that effectively generates the interfaces with capacity to intervene in the communities’ realities. Carlos, founder of the same program, addresses this situation:
The last three years I have been working in Cali’s City Hall in a new secretariat called Risk Management of Emergencies and Disasters. Before it became a secretariat, it functioned as a program, as a unit without budget, without a high-level structure from where decisions could be made and executed with its own resources. The actual dependence already has this range of secretariat, what gives us a legal power, a normative power, a programmatic power and an operative power. (Personal communication, Roberto, Risk Management, employee, Oct 8th, 2018)
On another side, challenge of diversity in the target community emerges again, but now tensioning the mechanisms of the power organization. “You can enter in a meeting with black communities with the security that you are not coming out with a pact, with a real agreement. This is not going to happen, because there is another dynamic, the hierarchical relations are not very clear as in the native community, for example” (Personal communication, Víctor, Risk Management, intermediary, Oct 9th, 2018). Situations like this are key, although they put in doubt the institutional- centric position in the proposition of the terms and logics that will be used to conduct the problem. In the case of the Child Group program where there is a higher interaction, to attend this diversity necessarily implies a bigger use of resources, professionals and time.
In the same way, in the case of Local Workshops, the use and sufficiency of resources activates the discretion and agency of the actors to action by its consecution, but also for not giving in the power spaces because of that. Edna, community leader and intermediary in the Local Tables, narrates how to face this challenge: “How do we get the resources for the Workshops? Almost everything is our self-management as leaders, in some occasions there is some resource assigned by the municipality for this activities, what I don’t like is that is not improbable that this resource comes tied to an operator, a person who handles the money” (Personal communication, Silvana, Local Workshops, intermediary, Oct 25th, 2018)
Nonetheless, as Silvana notes, if they hadn’t managed it on their own, it is possible that these resources come tied to an operator, even in some cases affecting the efficiency of the processes. It is also important to highlight that the acquisition of resources addressed by Silvana is as important as the capacity to use them - concrete execution of power. This situation of conditional transfer puts the interested community in the tension of acting by itself with its own resources before waiting for it to come from another instance: “they were already told about the importance of having our surroundings clean, and we cannot wait for the government to be always arranging things, but we also have to put a grain of sand to organize our neighborhood” (Personal communication, Silvana, Local Workshops, intermediary, Oct 25th, 2018). This way, it is possible to rescue, in the Local Workshops case, the need to maintain active the agency by the target community, seeing it as a strength in these kinds of initiatives, although, despite the shortage of resources, the center of power of actions never abandons the community itself. Federico, employee that follows the process of the tables, addresses:
The message that we always give is that this is a communal process and we as an administration follow it. The Citizen Culture Local Workshops aren’t from the Municipality and this is also important when being on field, that the people who wants to participate understand it because there is a relation with the Estate, a tradition of asking and giving, and well… believe that here is a great bank with money […] One of their working mechanisms is the self-management, in other words, they have been developing or straightening from self-management because the resource here is very small (Personal communication, Federico, Local Workshops, employee, Oct 23rd, 2018)
Mainly in this dimension, as it has been seen previously, it is important to know where and where not to place people around the power. Questions about who defines these boundaries become crucial to understand how the bonds are established in each program. In the Risk Management case, given its low interaction, an important space of misuse of resources is opened, and the observation of the accountability of former organizations is limited.
On the opposite, in the Local Workshops case, the high interaction of the program and the fact that it originates from the motivation of the same communities involved, play as factors that maintain the power and the decision making inside the community. Furthermore, the high heterogeneity of the task makes it harder for the Municipality’s mechanisms to make central decisions, different from the Elder Colombia program, of low interaction and high homogeneity in the organization, where the power is handled primarily on a bureaucratic way under external standards, opening almost null spaces for the exercise of power from employees and even less from beneficiaries.
Conclusions
The previously presented analysis addresses emergent elements, which need to keep making progress in its comprehension to reveal the game that underlies the implementation of the programs and that explains its level of success, as well as its challenges. About the motivation, in line with the other scientific bibliography consulted, it is appreciated as essential so it’s a base guide to the planning of actions that effectively are expected to approach the problematized matter and not for misuses as patronage and corruption. In effect, to study the former mechanisms that are established to distribute the power among the different actors resulted as key to effectively identify if there is a connection between the implemented actions and the proposed goals.
So, the idea of the implementation interface is reinforced as a space of dispute and negotiation between the actors that aim to fulfill their needs and desires through the bonds of recognition and exchange of information and resources. The characteristics that each interface adopts will depend as much of the integration levels between the actors as the homogeneity/heterogeneity of the tasks. The programs with a high interaction in this field turned out as the most complex, opening a bigger space to the negotiation between the actors. In the Local Workshops case, while addressing complex issues, it permits and requires a dynamic interface of power relations. Differently from the Child Group program, of high interaction and homogeneity of the task, the fact of opening interaction spaces in standardized planning makes it confront issues such as to interact with a community that may not share either the same language or the same terms proposed for the power organization.
In larger terms, these last two cases propose an even bigger challenge to the state intervention that is reduced by the complexity of the means that are pretended to be intervened. In this sense, if the goal of the policies is to work effectively for the communities to which they are addressed, it becomes essential to make the Risk Management more public and to abandon the strategic actions that degrade the bonds between the communities and the institutional mechanisms. As one of the employees notices about this program, the “recommendation would be, fundamentally… make more public the Risk Management theme” (Personal communication, 8th, 2018). This goes an alternative way to the technocracy and could be extended to other programs, including the exchanging like the Elder Colombia case.
In addition, the comparison of these cases allows us to study how social policies are configured according to their origin, local or national. The high heterogeneity of the task, following the above example, makes it difficult for the center of decisions to be made by broader frameworks, empowering people. Unlike the policies of low interaction and high homogeneity in the organization, where power is processed primarily in a bureaucratic manner under external standards, which respond to further integration into national policies.
This orientation for the planning and implementation of policies and programs goes together with a governance approach recognizing a reality principle that is that the Estates do not have the capacity to address the totality of social issues. In other words, they also have to propitiate, as they do following the Local Workshops, other power spaces inside the same community for its self-determination. This way the biggest problem detected would be addressed, that is the diversity of realities and people who pretend to be approached by an Estate anchored on a nation with its own logics, not shared with other people in the territories.
