Democratic Decentralization Local Governance And Sustainable Development

Drawing on field-based data and experiences from the practice of democratic decentralization and local governance over the last three decades in Ghana, this book examines whether and how democratic decentralization and local governance reforms in developing countries have produced the anticipated development outcomes. In seventeen related contributions, the authors present four relevant focal themes, including conceptual and historical trajectories of decentralization and local governance; institutional choice, democratic representation, and poverty reduction; local governance, resource capacity, and service delivery; and non-state actors, local governance and sustainable development. The book blends perspectives of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to provide a holistic analysis of linkages between decentralization, local governance, and sustainable development efforts, presenting a novel and useful guide for science, policy, and practice of bottom-up governance and development. It provides relevant lessons and experiences for scholars, policy-makers, and development practitioners in Africa in particular and developing countries in general.

Communities need a holistic approach to address the problems that affect the people at the grass root. The planning of the direct beneficiaries involves decentralization in order to allow the lower power centers to widely take part in the development of society. Concerns of the grass root people form the need for decentralization and local governance. People’s involvement in the planning on the village level and all local government units, makes the identification and solving of the problem easier. High participatory levels of all the people especially the marginalized, encourages innovation to source for the appropriate solutions to the common problems that face society. It therefore calls a decentralized system that caters for the voters’ preferences while providing for their services. The people’s concerns call for local planning and the transfer of power to the public so that services are brought nearer to the people. This study will cover the aspects of local government and decentralization such as good governance, democratization, civil society, deconcentration, devolution and delegation, and its relation to the development of societies.

An exploration of why some decentralization reforms have led to viable systems of local governance in Africa, while others have failed. It outlines the key issues involved, provides historical context, and identifies the factors that have encouraged or discouraged success.

'Development' is what most people see as progress in the places where they live and in the ways they live. It has to do with public services, the ways to complain when these are not delivered properly, and the spaces to change power structures. It is related to the economy, the opportunities to access a secure job, a sustainable livelihood and increased welfare while caring for the planet and others. It is also linked to the institutions that allow people to live life well, using resources ethically and doing business responsibly in relation to other communities and future generations. This edited collection examines the interconnections between local governance, economic development and institutions, by focusing on what initiatives work and under what conditions they do so. Based on a variety of theories and empirical data, it presents evidence from current experiences around the world, revealed by researchers across different continents and several generations.

The primary purpose of this edited collection is to evaluate critically the relationship between local government and national economic development. It focuses on how the relationship between local government and development is structured, and the specific institutional arrangements at national and subnational levels that might facilitate local government's assumption of the role of development agent. In light of the contradictory outcomes of development and implied experimentation with new modalities, post-development discourse provides a useful explanatory framework for the book. Schoburgh, Martin and Gatchair's central argument is that the pursuit of national developmental goals is given a sustainable foundation when development planning and strategies take into account elements that have the potential to determine the rate of social transformation. Their emphasis on localism establishes a clear link between local government and local economic development in the context of developing countries.

Successful reforms need coherent approaches in which a range of stakeholders are willing to share responsibilities and resources in order to achieve the ultimate outcome of poverty reduction in developing countries. This book provides a framework to access intended outcomes generated by decentralization measures implemented in Asian and African countries. It is based on comparative analyses of different experiences of decentralization measures in six developing countries.

Since its adoption in 2015, the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development has shaped not only international development cooperation but also the design of national trajectories for social and economic development. In tandem with other global agendas adopted that year (such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda) it remains the global and regional blueprint for sustainable development despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The term "localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)" has been used to capture the importance of subnational governments for achieving national SDG agendas. However, there is little deeper analysis of the required nexus between fiscal, political, and legal arrangements for SNGs; their involvement in national policy arenas (which discuss and decide on national SDG strategies); and the need for locally disaggregated data systems on the one hand, and effective SDG localization strategies on the other hand. It is this aspect which the present publication explores in greater detail by using country examples and conceptual analyses. The text will be of interest to policymakers, scholars, students and practitioners in public policy and public administration, decentralization, and sustainable development, with a focus on the Asia and Pacific region. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO).

An examination of the transformation of South Africa's apartheid local government system into a development-oriented system of municipal governance, requiring, however, continuing short and long-term interventions on the part of both the central and provincial governments if it is to deliver its desired outputs.