What happens is not just a question of attitudes. Local governments in Latin America face a set of incentives that give them comparative advantage over national governments in forming the partnerships implicit in local development. First, their costs are lower. Such information is much more accessible and easier to digest at the local level. Second, the potential benefits are higher.
Real impact is felt locally and regionally but much harder to measure nationally.
That is key because the process picks up momentum as its impact becomes noticeable and civic support coalesces to support the policies and those promoting them. The experience of several social assistance programs with national performance mandates indicates they have great difficulty in designing interventions and projects that involve community actors. The changes in laws and policies I have briefly surveyed can create patterned incentives for governments, citizens, and civic organizations to adopt behaviors conducive to a model of local development. But those changes must reinforce an underlying attitudinal shift. Governments, NGOs, and business still regard one another warily in most places.