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Spatial Information Management and Local Governance
Working document for GISDECO pre-conference Workshop on Local
Governance and GIS, 15 May, 2002
2.02. The importance of local level governance is increasingly recognised. It is at this
local level that government, market, and civil society directly and intensively meet. This
recognition is reflected in the worldwide trend and efforts to devolve power from national
to local levels of government. The Local Government Code of 1991 in the Philippines is
a case in point.
2.03. Although ‘governance’ goes beyond government only, this actor has a major role
to play. Local government, in particular, has executing as well as enabling and
stimulating tasks within local governance. This implies growing and more demanding
tasks and responsibilities for local government units with increased interactions between
them and other local actors (e.g. citizen groups, farmer’s associations, private sector,
environmental pressure groups, neighbourhood associations, and media).
2.04. From the preceding remarks it can be concluded that spatial information has an
important role to play in this increasingly complicated field of local governance. This
role, however, is far from trivial and ways and means to manage the required spatial
information both effectively and efficiently are not clear as yet.
2.05. Local governance is – as this has been mentioned before – between local
government, market and civil society. It is subject to both supra-local levels as well as,
sometimes, international factors. Local governance thus deals with two dimensions:
‘horizontal’ interactions within local society and ‘vertical’ interaction with higher and,
sometimes, lower levels of authority.
3. Local institutions
3.01. Local societies are – as most other social systems – complex, evolutionary and
adaptive (‘complex adaptive systems’ – CAS). Social groups – and thus local societies –
are tied together through culture and institutions. Culture is the shared ways of thinking
and believing that grow out of a group experience and are passed from one generation to
the next. It is the way of life, the knowledge, beliefs, customs, and skills available to its
members. An institution is an established way of organizing social life and a pattern that
is valued by the group. It is a stable cluster of norms and normative behaviours that
develops around a basic social need. One of the distinguishing characteristics of an
institution is its normative impact on behaviour of individuals. In this sense, institutions
are part of the host culture. (See for more thorough elaborations of cultural and
institutions; Broom et al., 1981. See for an elaboration of cultural conditions for the
application of GIS; Van den Toorn and De Man, 2000.)
3.02. The World Development Report 2002 of the World Bank views institutions as the
rules, including behavioural norms, by which societal agents interact – and the
organisations that implement rules and codes of conduct to achieve desired outcomes. In
short, institutions are viewed as rules, enforcement mechanism, and organisations.
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