Las teorías del desarrollo económico local y la teoría y práctica del proceso de descentralización en los paises en desarrollo

Since mid 1980s, the decentralization process has been launched once again in developing countries. This time caused by the lack of response of central governments to the needs of public infrastructure in local areas, and by a renewed demand from the population for more democratic systems and a greater participation in the governance of the local areas. Together to this process, specific local areas in developing countries have attempted some advances of the local economic development process. This paper presents a survey of the theoretical economic literature on these two processes. On the other hand, it summarizes the decentralization process experiences of 13 developing countries from Latin America, Asia and Africa regions. From the survey and the summary of experiences, this paper formulates a definition of local economic development that allows the differentiation of both processes. Thus, local economic development is a process that encompasses the decentralization process. To the extent this latter process creates an adequate government system (economic, administrative, political and sustainable) and consistent to the local economic development process, this will be necessary although not sufficient. To achieve the local economic development goals (i.e., raising continuously and sustainable the local areas living standards, generate employment, to use fully the human resources, and to eliminate the share of population living under poverty conditions), it is required the actions and interactions not only from the government structure but more importantly from other factors and agents considered in the local economic development literature. The agents and factor compositions and the types of actions and interactions will depend of the economic, social, political, geographic, culture and environmental conditions from each local area, in a given developing country.