In Oaxaca's Municipal Funds Program, Monograph Series, No. 42, by Jonathan Fox and Josefina Aranda. This small volume covers miles of useful territory. It asks if government actions to give civil society a greater say are an effective way to augment civic participation. One problem is that the tide of interest in decentralization, here and elsewhere, seems less influenced by the growing voice and sophistication of civil society than by the gravitational pull of tenets currently dominant in the developed world. This influential approach considers decentralization to be the appropriate mechanism for reforming the provision of public goods such as health, education, and targeted poverty-reduction programs.
Numbers alone give government here a very local face, often indigenous.
The indigenous presence was further strengthened in 1995 with passage of the Electoral Law of Uses and Customs, which allows indigenous communities to elect municipal officials by traditional means rather than by political party. Thus, a federally-led effort to increase participation in municipal government might be expected to find more fertile ground in Oaxaca than in many other Mexican states. How the program was intended to work often fell short in practice. Regulations stipulated that Municipal Solidarity Councils would be formed by state and local officials to divide up funds and recommend projects. Communities would form their own Solidarity Committees to implement projects.