Explaining the design of the Rwandan decentralization: elite vulnerability and the territorial repartition of power

Abstract

Rwanda has made important progress since the start of the decentralization process in 2000. Local government enjoys an unprecedented range of competences and resources. With the exception of the provincial level, elections are generalized, something novel in the history of the traditionally centralized Rwanda. This, however, conflicts with widespread analysis that decentralization, instead of empowering the local level, has improved control from the centre through top-down policy-making and control of local governments and the population. This article aims to improve our understanding of the paradoxical nature of Rwandan decentralization. To do so, it first analyses the Rwandan decentralization process by disaggregating it into administrative, financial and political dimensions. This demonstrates that, in all three dimensions, decentralization is characterized by the heavy role of the centre, and the promotion of tightly monitored, technocratic and depoliticized local governments. The article then explains such design by focusing on the political elite's perception of its environment. It argues that the vulnerability collectively experienced by the political leadership, rooted in the experience of the genocide, its search for legitimacy, the volatile international environment, and the dependency on international aid, has spurred it to design local institutions in a way that promotes swift implementation of its development agenda and limits local political entrepreneurship and elite capture at local level.

Keywords:

• Rwanda
• decentralization
• imihigo
• elite
• Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)
• vulnerability
• threats

Notes

1. Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), Sectoral Decentralisation in Rwanda, pp. 42–4.

2. Private communication with a high official, Ministry of Public Service and Labor. See also MIFOTRA, Public Sector Retention Pay Policy, p. 36.

3. For instance, the Rwanda Five-Year Decentralization Implementation Program of 2004 states the need to replace ‘the sub culture of passive obedience which left people open to political and sectarian manipulation’; MINALOC, p. 11.

4. Andrews, Limits of Institutional Reform in Development, pp. 161–91, McConnell, Institution [Un]Building; Kauzya, Political Decentralization in Africa; Van Tilburg, “Decentralisation as a Stabilizing Factor.”

5. Ansoms, “Re-Engineering Rural Society”; Ingelaere, “Ruler's Drum”; Ingelaere, “Peasants, Power, and Ethnicity”; Purdeková, “Even If I Am Not Here.”

6. Sommers, Stuck, p. 89.

7. Purdeková, “Even If I Am Not Here,” p. 476. Also Ingelaere, “Peasants, Power, and Ethnicity”; Gaynor, Decentralisation, Conflict and Peacebuilding.

8. MINALOC, National Decentralization Policy.

9. Andrews, Limits of Institutional Reform in Development, p. 165.

10. Interview with an official in the Ministry of Health, September 2013.

11. Different interviews including an MINALOC official, September 2013, Kigali, and a district vice-mayor, June 2013. See also Gaynor, Decentralisation, Conflict and Peacebuilding, pp. 34–6, 44–54; Institut de Recherche et de Dialogue pour la Paix (IRDP), La Participation Citoyenne.

12. For instance, in the case of health, the ministry is likely to refuse that a district with a low prevalence of malaria puts the fight against malaria as an objective.

13. Interview with a district vice-mayor, June 2013.

14. For example, Nsanzimana, “Rwanda: Farmers Decry ‘Overzealous.’”

15. Nsanzimana, “Rwanda: No One Should Be Forced.”

16. Interview with a district official, June 2013.

17. Ansoms, “Re-Engineering Rural Society”; Gaynor, Decentralisation, Conflict and Peacebuilding; Ingelaere, “Ruler's Drum”; Ingelaere, “Peasants, Power, and Ethnicity”; Purdeková “Even If I Am Not Here.”

18. For example, Prud'homme, “Dangers of Decentralization.”

19. RGB, Sectoral Decentralisation in Rwanda, pp. 42–4.

20. MINALOC, Decentralization Implementation Plan 2011–2015.

21. MINECOFIN, 2013–14 Districts’ Earmarked Transfers Guidelines, pp. 90–1.

22. RGB, Sectoral Decentralisation in Rwanda, p. 43.

23. Republic of Rwanda, Law No. 08/2006 of 24/02/2006, art. 10.

24. Republic of Rwanda, Law No. 08/2006 of 24/02/2006, art. 20.

25. Republic of Rwanda, Law No. 08/2006 of 24/02/2006, arts 12, 69.

26. Also Lutz, Reflection on Rwanda's Electoral System, p. 10.

27. For an illustration, see, for instance, Ingelaere, “Ruler's Drum,” pp. 71–3; and Gaynor, Decentralisation, Conflict and Peacebuilding, pp. 42–3.

28. Depoliticized is used here in the sense of not being interested in articulating competing political projects and mobilizing followers around them. Mayors are politicized however, in the sense that they apparently all belong to the RPF.

29. Green, “Patronage, District Creation, and Reform.”

30. Interview with Protais Musoni, Kigali, September 2013, who was Minister of Local Government and Social Affairs during the 2006 reform.

31. Interview with Protais Musoni, Kigali, September 2013.

32. Interview with a former local official, Kigali, September 2013.

33. For instance, Wunsh, “Decentralisation, Local Governance”; Crook, “Decentralisation and Poverty Reduction in Africa.”

34. Crook, “Decentralisation and Poverty Reduction in Africa”; Green, “Patronage, District Creation, and Reform.”

35. Doner et al., “Systemic Vulnerability,” p. 328.

36. Doner et al., “Systemic Vulnerability,” p. 328.

37. Sometimes it is even the loss of power by Kagame himself that creates worries. At the beginning of 2013 people publicly declared on radio that in case Kagame leaves power they would go back to exile; personal communication, April 2013. The extent to which such declarations are orchestrated is unknown, but, as arguments publicly used, they are nonetheless telling.

38. Prunier, Rwanda Crisis, p. 133.

39. Interview with Tito Rutaremara, Kigali, September, 2013.

40. Waugh, Paul Kagame and Rwanda, p. 123.

41. African Rights, Rwanda.

42. One episode was the discovery in 2008 of teachers preaching ideology of the old regime in schools; BBC News, “Genocide Hatred Lingers.”

43. Hutu compose about 85% of the population.

44. Ansoms, “Re-Engineering Rural Society,” p. 295.

45. Lutz, Reflection on Rwanda's Electoral System, pp. 21–2.

46. Interview with an MINALOC official, Kigali, September 2013.

47. Interview with a former prefect, Kigali, September 2013.

48. Bardhan, “Decentralization of Governance and Development”; Blair, “Participation and Accountability at the Periphery”; Prud'homme, “Danger of Decentralization.”

49. Interview with Protais Musoni, Kigali, September 2013.

50. Interview in Kigali, September 2013.

51. Interview with a consultant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Kigali, May 2013.

52. RPA, the armed branch of the RPF during the war.

53. Interview with an army senior officer, Kigali, February 2013.

54. Interview with Tito Rutaremara, Kigali, September, 2013.

55. Interview with Protais Musoni, September, 2013.

56. For example, BBC News, “Blasts in Rwanda Capital.”

57. Private communication, Kigali, April 2013. This is visible in the effort of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to counter such discourse through the programme ‘Come and See’ targeting the diaspora.

58. BBC News. “Why has Tanzania Deported Thousands?”

59. Private communication in Kigali, September 2013.

60. Interview in Kigali, September, 2013.