Development policy is each day more complex and multifaceted.
The uprising of new actors demands new approaches and strategies, both at national and international level. In fact, due to the growing volume of financial resources Local Authorities (LA) in some EU Member-States are allocating to development, European Union organisms are now calling for the establishment of a more coordinated and structured framework, capable of promoting a more enduring participation of LA in development cooperation initiatives.
Multi-actor partnerships are, then, arising and have proven to be a key element for interventions’ success. Combining different actors, of different types and from different nationalities have brought to development cooperation policy a new dimension.
In fact, promoting multi-actor partnerships, in particular inter-municipalities interventions, promotes not only a more efficient cooperation strategy, but also mainstreams democratic governance at local level. LA involvement in development cooperation issues strengthens local communities once it gets citizens closer to decision processes, supports consultation mechanisms and strengthens participatory democracy. LA work as an essential focal point, once it assembles all local agents, such as local community; civil society associations, private sector entities, municipality services and other Non-state actors.
Nevertheless, despite international recognition of the undeniable benefits LA bring to development cooperation policy and the establishment of Official Development Aid (ODA) quotas, which compel developed countries to allocate concrete financial resources to development cooperation initiatives; it is evident that European Local Authorities’ involvement has evolved at different pace, especially when comparing Spanish, Portuguese and German LA.
In fact, Spanish LA are certainly in a much more advanced standard, since they have a structured strategy of intervention, well defined priorities of action and are gathered under successful networks, whose financial resources allocation to development cooperation projects, has grown over the last years. They can, therefore be seen as a role model for other European LA.
On the other hand, even though, Portuguese Local Authorities have a strong history of Town Twinning, especially with Portuguese Speaking Countries, trans-national inter-municipalities initiatives focusing on development issues, are still scarce. Only more recently, LA have started to re-think their cooperation strategy and inter-municipalities relations.
Regarding Germany municipalities, town-twinings are much more common with Northern LA, namely from France, UK, USA or Poland. Actually, German LA do not have specific financial resources to allocate in development cooperation initiatives, which inhibits them to strengthen inter-municipalities relations with Southern countries.
Despite their different stages of participation and involvement, Portuguese and German LA face common restrictions in which development cooperation policy is concerned, namely: (i) Lack of decision makers’ support; (ii) LA technicians poor training; (iii) Lack of information sharing both within LA and between LA and NSA, at national and trans-national level. In fact, Local Authorities and NSA often develop cooperation initiatives in the same country, geographical area or even intervention sector, without even questioning the possibility of a combined intervention. This dialogue gap originates fragile interventions that could have beneficiated from a more coherent and constructive approach that would have combined each actor’s experience, knowledge and resources and (iv) scarce engagement in multi-actor partnerships. The project
Networking for Development aims, therefore, to answer to all these challenges and strengthen Portuguese and German Local Authorities role as effective development cooperation actors.
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