From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

2 POWER AND POLITICS THE POLITICAL ROOTS OF DEVELOPMENTAnd with power came the promise of precious land: after a ten-yearcampaign, on 3 July 2007 the Chiquitanos of Monteverde clinched anagreement with the government that granted them a ‘land of communalorigin’ of 1m hectares.The course of this epic struggle also transformed relationships athome. Jeronima’s husband, himself a local leader, now looks after thekids when she has a meeting. ‘We used to meet separately as women,but now we meet with the men – we’re no longer afraid,’ she says.The Chiquitanos’ journey out of marginalisation underlines thecentral role of power and politics in development. The interplaybetween individuals, families, communities, and states can open pathsto rights, security, and prosperity, or it can condemn communities tovulnerability and poverty. Power and politics will determine whetherthe world can build on the extraordinary pace of political and socialchange of the twentieth century in order to eradicate extreme povertyand tackle inequality and injustice.At the core of power and politics lie citizens and effective states.By ‘citizens’ we mean anyone living in a particular place, even if theyare not formally eligible to vote, such as migrants or children. By‘effective states’, we mean states that can guarantee security and therule of law, design and implement an effective strategy to ensureinclusive economic growth, and are accountable to and able to guaranteethe rights of their citizens. The interaction between active citizens andeffective states, with its complexity, its cross-class alliances, its peaksand troughs, and its many contradictions will be discussed below.At an individual level, active citizenship means developing selfconfidenceand overcoming the insidious way in which the conditionof being relatively powerless can become internalised. In relation toother people, it means developing the ability to negotiate and influencedecisions. And when empowered individuals work together, it meansinvolvement in collective action, be it at the village or neighbourhoodlevel, or more broadly. 1 Ultimately, active citizenship means engagingwith the political system to build an effective state, and assuming somedegree of responsibility for the public domain, leaving behind simplenotions of ‘them’ and ‘us’. Otherwise, in the memorable phrase of theFrench philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel, ‘A society of sheep must intime beget a government of wolves’. 219