ABOUT DECENTRALIZATION IN VENEZUELA
The recent amendments to the Law on Decentralization and Devolution - in effect since 1989 - by the National Assembly can a series of considerations. We start by making a socio-historical approach to the process in Venezuela. We begin by denying the informative aspect that is reversing a process of 20 years (1989-2009). The long-term decentralization has been a feature in its expression of disintegration. Demonstrate what I say: The Captaincy General of Venezuela, formed in 1777, is the result of the disjointed nature of the spatial structure panvenezolana. When The Bourbons raise the concentration of political-administrative merely trying to reverse the existing administrative dispersions in the colonial order.
Subsequently, the process begun in 1821, with Constitution of Cúcuta Venezuela introduces a decentralized structure, expressed in four (4) territorial spaces: Departments of Maracaibo, Venezuela, East and Guiana. The 1830 Constitution established that each Provincial Government have an assembly which was elected authority. In 1857, the Municipal Power Monagas introduced in an attempt to centralize policy decisions in a territorial space dispersed. The Constituent Assembly of 1858, establishes a system of agreements between the central and states, is the basis of a federal unorthodox, where regional areas get certain rights within the legal framework and the unity of the national project. This issue is timely in the discussion that we have today. It is raised and think that decentralization has generated a profit or otherwise, has occurred in confrontations with the central government.
The concern we raise is a discussion that is generated in our country from 1858 until the beginning of the process of political centralization initiated by Cipriano Castro (1899-1908) and continued by John V. Gómez (1908-1935). Constitutions from 1858 to 1901, empowering the States to elect its political authorities, this is a central aspect of decentralization. Disposal - along with other restrictions, imposed by the Constituent Assembly of 1902 is explained by the attempts to end political atomism characteristic of nineteenth-century Venezuela. During the governments of Castro and Gomez, regional authorities were losing powers assigned to it by the 1864 federal process, such as the availability and administration of an armed force, to manage income-generating sources among others. This is a consequence of the existence of individual projects of governance, which violated the territorial and political unity of the nation. The whole process from 1899 until 1989 was marked by political centralization, either in his authoritarian side (Castro and Gomez, much less López Contreras and Medina) or whether by democratic centralism (1958-1988). Decentralization, 1989, resulted from efforts of the political elite to survive the collapse of the political system of conciliation, which is expressed in situations of violence in February 1989, known as the Caracazo. The adoption of direct election of governors and mayors, as well as the transfer of the administration of health services, education, ports, airports and roads is a consequence of liberal globalization, which required the reduction of the "size of government" as condition for joining the world-system conditions. However, although the decentralization process introduced these new features, approaching the gobierno estatal y municipal a las preferencias de los ciudadanos, también generó perversiones: la erección de liderazgos personalistas territoriales, que actuando bajo las potestades descentralizadoras se desenvolvieron como verdaderos caudillos decimonónicos, haciendo y deshaciendo a través del uso de los recursos regionales y municipales.
Las relaciones de clientelismo y burocratismo creadas bajo la descentralización, son equiparables a las condiciones del centralismo y permitidas bajo el marco jurídico de la Constitución de 1961. La Constitución de 1999, introduce cambios en todo orden: en el sistema político, en la estructura del Estado y por lo tanto en la administración pública. El ajuste a La Ley de Decentralization is due to the contradictions between articles 156 and 164. The 156 provides in paragraphs 2 (defense of the integrity of the territory), 7 (security and defense of the nation), 15 (system of customs and foreign trade), 20 (public works of national interest), 26 (transport regime land, air and river) and 27 (highway system) powers of the National Government, while the art. 164 in its section 10 powers granted concurrent with the national public power (ports, customs, airports, roads). This opens a debate about the impact which means the dispersion of public policies on the part of the relationship between the national government, regional and municipal levels. Dr. John E. Historian
Romero
Juane1208@gmail.com
02/04/2009
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