Introduction
The place of local development issues in the country’s economic and social development model has changed drastically, especially in the last three years. 3 Documents such as the Constitution of the Republic (ANPP 2019) and the National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030, together with the discourse, a set of approved policies and numerous actions by the government, clearly indicate that local development is no longer considered a relatively peripheral issue of limited importance and only partially understood. To the contrary, it is now seen as a key element of the socio-economic transformations under way. The aim of this article is to argue for this perception, and at the same time to review some of the obstacles that hinder the advancement of local development. This document is a collective work that takes advantage of the benefits of social networks for the exchange of ideas. The authors prepared an initial document and submitted it for consideration by a group of colleagues from the GUCID network, which allowed us to benefit from their valuable contributions, adding perspectives from very different parts of the country. This document is also informed by the diagnosis that we had to carry out in order to elaborate the project: Strengthening Capacities and Instruments for the Strategic Management of Sustainable Territorial Development. This is part of the programme: Strategic Management of Sustainable Territorial Development, in turn within the macro-programme: Government, Institutionalisation and Macroeconomics. The authors of this text are responsible for this project.
The first part of this article explains the growing support for the institutionalisation (rules, regulations, policies, discourses) of local development. The second part identifies obstacles that hinder the advancement of local development. The topic of local development is of crucial importance as nowadays it is considered a key element of the country’s economic, social and political transformations. Its progress and tensions reveal the complexities of the changes that the country is carrying out.
The centrality of local development and its increasing institutionalisation
Local development occupies a relevant place in the updating of Cuba’s economic and social development model. Guideline 17 of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution for the period 2016–2021, states: “Promote the development of the territories based on the country’s strategy, so as to strengthen the municipalities as a fundamental instance, with the necessary autonomy, sustainable, with a solid economic and productive base, and reduce the main disproportions between them, taking advantage of their potential” (PCC 2017: 6). At the end of this guideline, the need to elaborate the corresponding legal framework is indicated.
Territorial development is also incorporated into the National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030 (Díaz-Canel and Fernández, 2020).
The municipality is now recognised as having a key place in the country’s socio-political system, as defined in Article 168 of the Constitution of the Republic, which supports municipal autonomy and the legal personality of the municipality. The formulation is as follows:
the municipality is the local society, organised by law, which constitutes the primary and fundamental political-administrative unit of the national organisation; it enjoys its own autonomy and legal personality for all legal purposes, with a territorial extension determined by the necessary neighbourhood, economic and social relations of its population and the interests of the nation, with the purpose of achieving the satisfaction of local needs. (ANPP 2019: 104)
The recognition of municipal autonomy can be considered a momentous change. It is a very important step forward in the process of decentralisation of competences, resources and decisions. It can be interpreted as a significant step towards the necessary overcoming of the vertical and centralising tendencies that have prevailed until now, and it opens the way to a greater role for municipalities, popular councils, communities and the citizens who live in them. It opens new channels for the deployment of what is envisaged in the “Vision of the Nation for 2030” (PCC 2017: 16), which defines it as sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable.
In July 2020, the Policy to Promote Territorial Development was approved by the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP 2020). The preceding diagnosis identified the lack of an integrated and commonly accepted institutional conception of local development and its management mechanisms and tools, including local development projects. For these and other reasons, the need to approve a policy that institutionalises local development as an integral and priority process for the Cuban economic and social development model was clearly identified. The Policy defines local development
as an essentially endogenous, participatory and innovative process of articulation of interests between actors, territories and scales (municipal, provincial and sectoral/national). It is based on the leadership of municipal and provincial governments for the management of their development strategies. Based on knowledge management and innovation, these strategies are aimed at promoting projects that generate economic-productive, socio-cultural, environmental and institutional transformations, with the objective of raising the quality of life of the population. (MEP 2020: 3)
This formulation provides an adequate, holistic and integral conception of local development, discarding biased and partial interpretations that coexisted recently. The diagnosis also identified the need to strengthen local capacities. Among others, these include the capacities to design and manage municipal development strategies that ensure the strategic management of local development, improve project management and increase the efficient use of different sources and mechanisms of financing.
In April 2021, Decree No. 33 (Consejo de Ministros 2021) was approved, which regulates the implementation of territorial development strategies and the management of local development projects, with the aim of promoting territorial development based on the use of local resources and possibilities.
Both Decree 33 and the Policy identify the main tools for promoting territorial development, in particular in the municipal and the provincial development strategies, whose constituent projects must be essentially economic and productive in nature. They confirm the agency of local actors under the leadership of the Local Bodies of People’s Power, and insist on the importance of capacity building, knowledge management and innovation for local development. At the end of 2021, 166 municipalities and ten provinces had their strategies approved, 99 and 67 percent of the total municipalities and provinces, respectively. The quality of these strategies varies, and the popular participation that accompanies their elaboration, monitoring and evaluation also differs from one territory to another. This is a key issue.
In fact, the elaboration of municipal development strategies started in many municipalities before the Policy to promote territorial development existed, and therefore experience and implementation capacities have accumulated there. In other municipalities there is no previous experience and they will have to rush to build the necessary capacities. Cooperation between territories can help in this respect.
Local development occupies an important place on the agenda of the Cuban state and government, particularly that of President Díaz-Canel. In addition to his numerous interventions in this regard, an expression of this is the system of visits to the territories by the Council of Ministers and the emphasis he places on the role of universities in their interactions with ministries and governments. The general objectives of the governmental visits were initially (1) to analyse the current status and prospects of the main development programmes in the provinces, and (2) to have exchanges with executives, workers and the general population. In addition, since 2022 the results of the advice given, and agreements adopted in the previous visits, have been checked.
The visits favour very important processes for the success of local development. Two of these that are of key importance are the dialogue between the national, provincial and municipal levels, including the contact of the executives of the first level of management with local problems, and the development of links between the knowledge sector, in particular the universities, and the ministries and enterprises. During the visits decisive issues for the development of the territories have been discussed, such as food production, housing construction, transport, computerisation, the state of the economy, production chains, investments and other prioritised programmes (Díaz-Canel and Fernández 2020).
The Articulated Platform for the Integral Development of the Territories (Plataforma Articulada Para el Desarrollo Integral de los Territorios, PADIT), led by the Ministry of Economy and Planning, is present throughout the country. It is a flexible, integrative, inter-territorial, multi-level and multi-actor platform, which is being used in particular in the updating of Cuba’s economic and social model in accord with the National Plan for Economic and Social Development 2030 and the Constitution. The Platform supports at the territorial level the reflection on, and design of, the processes of decentralisation and the financing of territorial development, and the implementation of economic and social development initiatives.
PADIT distinguishes itself by contributing to the advancement of a territorial management model based on decentralisation and the transfer of competences, resources and decisions to the territories, which implies a leading role for governments and other local actors. It deploys training processes, including international exchanges, to support these objectives (Llanes et al. 2020: 197–9).
There is progress in government management in many municipalities, although the results are highly variable. The formulation and monitoring of the municipal development strategies represent an important step forward in strategic development planning. They require a higher level of stakeholder coordination, which broadens the social bases of local development, strengthens the integrated work of the various sectors represented in the municipality and favours the formation of teams and working groups that promote debate on public policies. All of this should foster vehicles for citizen participation in the management of development. Research carried out (Quintero and Núñez 2019; Núñez et al. 2020, 2021; Fernández and Núñez 2020) shows that in many municipalities the links between government, higher education and local development are being consolidated. Training programmes for local actors, including those in government, bring new concepts, methodologies, tools, computerisation processes and work systems, all of which support government management.
The mechanisms that allow the local economy to advance are gradually being made more flexible. The power of the municipal government to decide on the use of territorial resources based on their contribution to local development is recognised. This is a tool that contributes to strengthening municipal governance. On the other hand, the power to export and import from the localities is already being expressed as a trend, although still in its early stages (Núñez and Alcázar 2018; Alcázar et al. 2020).
With the aim of institutionalising the provisions of Decree 33, three important legal norms were also approved in 2021: Resolution 29 of the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP 2021), Bases for the organisation of the work system; Resolution 114 of the Ministry of Finance and Prices (MFP 2021), Budgetary procedure for territorial development and the tax and financial, pricing and accounting, treatment of local development projects; and Resolution 147 of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC 2021), Banking procedure for the management of financing for local development projects.
Agriculture is perhaps one of the sectors where the relevance and complexity of the process of overcoming verticalism and centralism is most clearly revealed. Agriculture has traditionally been organised on a sectoral basis, through programmes that are poorly connected, where decision-making is often distant from the productive units. Most municipalities have a strongly agricultural production profile. It is on this scale that food is produced, but to date they have limited competencies to manage the processes that take place in their political-administrative demarcation. The agricultural system demands systemic changes, and among them a key aspect is the need to strengthen local spaces. The concept of local food systems, one of the axes of the Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education Plan 4 (FSN) approved in July 2020, favours the transition towards a multisectoral, horizontal and participatory model in the food sector, with the municipality and its authorities as key players. The progress of the FSN is key to the local economy of most municipalities.
Advancing the local economy requires solving many problems. For example, the subordination to the province and nation of the business systems operating in the municipalities limits the capacities of local governments to make better use of the territory’s endogenous resources. This does not favour decision-making, and hinders effective and efficient food management with a territorial approach. The issue of respect for the management autonomy of co-operatives, for example, is another of the many problems to be solved.
The Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education Plan requires an inter-institutional and multi-actor approach. Extensive collaboration is needed between various ministries, organisations and actors, which indicates the complexity of their governance (Díaz-Canel et al. 2020).
In President Díaz-Canel’s view, the Policy to promote territorial development and the Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education Plan are, above all, two instruments to be used at the grassroots level and fundamentally in the municipalities: “The municipal government is the local actor with the greatest capacity to organise and lead, and for this the integral, stable, proactive and autonomous functioning of the municipality is decisive” (Díaz-Canel 2020). All of this should lead to the consolidation of local food systems.
There is a growing recognition of the role of knowledge, science, technology and innovation in local development. It can be seen that higher education and science, technology and innovation systems are strengthening their outreach to the territories. This issue requires special attention.
Here it is worth looking at the international context. In Latin America, various efforts have been made to promote decentralisation and territorial development policies. Many have not been successful.
One of the reasons is that the processes of transferring decisions, resources and competences from the central levels to the territories are not usually accompanied by processes of knowledge transfer and capacity building that would allow for an effective exercise of the powers assigned to them. Decentralisation and dialogues between actors operating at different levels require a better distribution of knowledge and the multiplication of learning spaces at all levels.
The asymmetry of knowledge is partly responsible for the survival of verticalism and centralisation (Costamagna and Larrea 2017; Costamagna and Núñez 2020).
Higher education is present in all provinces and most municipalities in the country. One of the most relevant institutional innovations introduced by Cuba in this field is the municipal university centres, which are often very active in knowledge transfer, with visible impacts.
In the last decade, the Ministry of Higher Education has incorporated local development into its strategic objectives. It is aware that there is still a long way to go. It has been strengthening the promotion of university policies aimed at local development in aspects such as the creation of better interfaces with the territories, the support for the municipal university centres as key actors and the promotion of training programmes with a potential impact on local development, such as higher university technicians.
For its part, the science, technology and innovation system has incorporated local development into the imaginary of the science, technology and innovation policy (Núñez 2018). Traditionally, the formulations of this policy have been predominantly sectoral, and based on linear and supply-side models of innovation and the privileging of the most advanced science and technology. The role of knowledge management and innovation at the local level is increasingly recognised as a relevant element of the system (Alcazar et al. 2020), and some 48 territorial science, technology and innovation programmes are now operating.
The issue of local development is incorporated into the governance mechanism created to drive the National Plan for Economic and Social Development 2030 through a system of macro-programmes, programmes and projects. To this end, the Strategic Management of Sustainable Territorial Development programme was created as part of the Government, Institutionality and Macroeconomy macro-programme led by the Ministry of Economy and Planning.
There is a wide and growing offer of training and research programmes on local development. This has become a topic on the academic agenda of the country. In fact, several of the ongoing changes have been proposed by professors and researchers, and are supported by research, publications, master’s and doctoral theses, and prizes awarded by the Cuban Academy of Sciences. Local development is currently on the agendas of the Ministry of Higher Education’s research programmes and projects, there is a national local development research programme and, as mentioned, there are dozens of territorial projects that contribute to the same end.
International cooperation has taken on local development as an area of interest. This interest has been evident since the 1990s, and since then many efforts have been sustained with international advice and funding. At present, despite global economic constraints, this presence is noticeable in various programmes. As mentioned, in the PADIT programme, for example, the UNDP is actively involved, bringing its experience in these issues and attracting experts to strengthen national efforts, and in addition a limited number of donors. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has been effectively supporting the country’s food sovereignty efforts. It is well known that the EU’s priorities for its collaboration with Cuba in the coming years favour areas of great relevance for local development, such as renewable energy sources and food sovereignty.
Consequently, it is possible to assume that the decisions that the country has been adopting in relation to territorial development could find technical and financial support from international cooperation. The presentation of good, relevant and well-thought-out projects will be essential. This also requires capacity building.
Based on the information in this section, it is possible to affirm that the institutional foundations, and to some extent the practices that favour local development, have indeed been strengthened. In the next section we identify some of the obstacles to be overcome.
Factors hindering the progress of local development and the necessary responses
The transformations that have led local development to occupy a central place in the country’s development are taking place in a very difficult economic context, exacerbated by the intensification of the economic, commercial and financial blockade and the US media war against Cuba, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.
On other occasions, similar situations have led to centralising and top-down dynamics. The weight of this tradition is strong. In addition, municipal self-management does not have a long-standing tradition to back it up. All this makes progress difficult.
The capacity of local governments to assume the leading role that corresponds to them is limited. There is still a visible habit of waiting for guidance, and there is little dialogue “upwards”. The proper selection of the people who can serve as mayors deserves the greatest attention. For this reason, it is also necessary to emphasise capacity building at the local level. On the other hand, the new structure approved for municipal governments has not yet been implemented to cope with the increased demands of the upcoming decentralisation process. Training and capacity building of leaders and executives must be ensured so they can carry out the strategic management of territorial development.
For the cultural reasons mentioned above, capacity building is also necessary among the actors at the “top”. They must be taught how to engage in interactive dialogue with local actors. There are several examples of attempts to impose “top-down” structures, decisions, resource allocations. The top-down tradition will not disappear from one day to the next. Consequently, the provinces, ministries, companies also need to build capacities to adapt their operating logic to the new needs.
Although modest progress has been made, much remains to be done in terms of popular participation in the collective construction of the local development agenda. All actors operating in municipalities, communities and popular councils must become more involved. These popular councils are an important nucleus where local policies find their maximum expression, it is society at the micro level. Structures, actors, knowledge and capacities are found and the social fabric reveals strengths, ruptures, fractures and vulnerabilities. The popular councils must be one of the key actors in the current territorial development policy.
It will be necessary to increase participation and popular control in the process of strategic management of municipal development with the participation of the popular councils, their constituencies and the population in general.
The human, cognitive and technological capacities available in the municipalities are limited. It is therefore necessary to multiply training processes at this level. These processes must respond to the particularities of each territory, through training schemes to promote visible impacts on the management and progress of the municipality’s development processes. Capacity building at the local level is a high priority task, in which higher education has a leading role.
A fundamental objective is to strengthen the human resources of the territories, in quantity and quality, to take on the complexities of territorial development and the growing demands of the decentralisation process. It will be necessary to increase the number of university graduates and technicians in the municipalities. To advance local development it is necessary to ensure that more of the students who leave to study outside the municipality return to their home town and are able to support local development.
It will be necessary to expand knowledge management and innovation capacities to solve problems related to food production, digital transformation, the use of renewable energy sources, improving the habitat, health care and education, among other needs.
The demographic issue needs to be given the greatest attention. There is a continuing trend towards migration to the municipal and provincial capitals, with the weakening of the rural popular councils, where, for example, the food issue is decided. Local development aims to improve the quality of life in the municipalities, particularly in rural areas. This requires national and sectoral policies that favour the access of these more remote communities to health services, education, commerce, communication, and also the improvement and professional growth of the inhabitants of the municipalities. This could help facilitate labour force replacement and retention of professionals.
It will be necessary to plan and manage local development, incorporating sustainability, equity, and social and gender inclusion approaches, and taking into account the demographic dynamics of the territories. Territorial planning must contribute to gradually reducing socio-economic inequalities among communities and municipalities, and between rural and urban areas, among others.
The municipal business structure is generally fragile. The greatest attention should be paid to strengthening the municipal state and non-state economic-productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises, which are emerging at a good pace but very unevenly across the territories, should be included in this. The autonomy of co-operatives must be ensured. It is very important to create a real entrepreneurial ecosystem in the municipality, ensuring its subordination to the territorial logic.
Concluding remarks
The leading role of the municipalities is a key element in the economic, social and political transformations that the country is undertaking. Significant progress has been made in the institutionalisation (legal norms such as decrees, resolutions, etc.) of local development, the political will to promote it at the highest level of the country is visible and very interesting experience has been gained in terms of the articulation of actors and the development of university–government links, among other areas. However, as is to be expected, the proposed progress is shrouded in a number of contradictions and difficulties.
The obstacles stem from a long cultural history marked by centralism, ideological constraints, outdated economic orders, conflicting interests and limited capacities at all levels. However, there is a clear consensus that advancing local development is a promising opportunity for Cuba’s socialist transition.