Decentralisation is the process through which Central Government transfers authority and functions to sub-national units of the Government and it traces its origin in Uganda from the “ bush” period (1981 – 1986) when Resistance Committees were established by the NRM/A in the Luwero triangle. The Mamdani Commission Report of 1987 on the Local Government system in Uganda recommended devolution of powers. Subsequently, decentralisation was launched in 1992, constitutionalised by the 1995 Constitution, and operationalised by the Local Governments Act (LGA) in 1997. Among the services devolved were education and health, which this study used as case studies to illustrate whether decentralisation has enhanced development in Uganda during the period 1993 – 2006. The study used both primary and secondary data in analysing the linkage between decentralisation and development in the two selected districts in Uganda, namely Masindi and Sembabule. Primary data was collected through interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions while secondary data was gathered through a literature survey of relevant textbooks, newspapers, reports, legislation and journals. The findings of the study established that if decentralisation is properly planned and implemented it can make a meaningful contribution to enhancing development. However, since decentralisation is a process and not a once-off project, it evolves from one stage to another and, as it does so, it also unfolds new challenges and contradictions that need to be effectively addressed. These challenges include aspects relating to the legal framework, as well as political, fiscal and administrative decentralisation. The study recommended mitigation measures to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, transparency, and subsequently the quality of services delivered (development) under decentralised local governance in Uganda.

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The research establishes a context-specific sense of strategic risk in English local authorities. Uncertainty is found to be central to understanding risk but current practice is found not to reflect this, presenting risks with a false and misleading precision. Risks are identified to have varying, multiple characteristics. Risk assessment models which embrace these characteristics are developed and tested using a consistently applied bespoke risk data set developed for the research. Issues of control confidence and the betrayal of stakeholder trust are explored within these risk assessment models. The research proposes an accessible, fuzzy risk assessment model with an ability to inform decision-making beyond the mere ranking of risks provided by current practice approaches.

The adoption of the 2013 Constitution of Zimbabwe heralded a new era with high expectations from ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe. Among other matters, the Constitution provides for a multilevel system of government with government organised at the national, provincial and local levels. The design of this system of government is linked to the need, inter alia, to realise development, build democracy and sustain peace in Zimbabwe. Provincial and local governments are expected to play a role in the realisation of these goals. The question is whether the law and policy governing provincial and local governments in Zimbabwe enables these governments to play that role. It will be argued that the law and policy hinders the role of provincial and local governments in realising development, building democracy and sustaining peace. The national government has excessive supervisory powers over provincial and local governments which limit the minimum level of local discretion required if these lower governments are to assist in realising development, building democracy and sustaining peace. Moreover, the legal and institutional design emphasises coordinative rather than cooperative relations among governments, thereby undermining opportunities for effective multilevel governance. It will be argued that the 2013 Constitution, however, provides the foundation upon which an effective system of multilevel government can be built. Mere alignment of the legislative framework with the 2013 Constitution is nevertheless unlikely to give full effect to the non-centralised system of government envisaged by this new Constitution. What is required is the development of a policy, institutional and legislative framework that gives effect to the constitutional spirit of devolution of power and cooperative governance. / Doctor Legum - LLD

It has been recognised that organisational learning (OL) possesses considerable potential for developing workers and, through them, organisations. Although its relevance to the public sector has been acknowledged, a relatively small amount of empirical work has been undertaken. Where it has been, emphasis on learning embedded in daily practices has been lacking. This study fills a significant gap by providing a holistic and empirically-based exploration of OL within the public sector based on three diverse case studies in the Welsh Government. This study illustrates how OL practices in the Welsh Government emerged from mediations between individuals and six structures – namely physical, accountability, development, management intervention, workplace social and work task-based. OL is shown to be a locally formulated and pluralist phenomenon, based on the capacities of individuals involved and the highly nuanced dynamics created by and among the six structures. A new framework for the comprehensive investigation and analysis of OL emerges from the analysis. Some key findings from the study are that learning involving identifying and assessing new ways of doing things was neither practised nor required in all areas, that engagement in change during the undertaking of day-to-day work activities was a stimulant for learning, that different work tasks presented different possibilities for making and remedying mistakes, that the absence of a target-driven environment was an important enabler for staff to pursue off-the-job learning, that different work tasks presented varying opportunities for engaging with people, that engagement with people tended to happen only when staff felt that it would result in them being able to perform their roles more effectively, that inter-OL was not generally part of working life and that efforts to capture knowledge were generally not made unless there was a clear purpose or value seen for doing so.

This research measured the impact of decentralisation on the promotion of good local governance in the Lilongwe District Assembly. The study explored the condition of local governance by examining the status of the facets that underpin local governance namely participation, transparency and accountability, gender equity and efficiency. It highlighted dilemmas associated with implementing decentralisation in areas where there are no functioning local institutions and where tendencies of centralisation still loom large.

The thesis is an exploration of the elections and governance in a contemporary Chinese village. It is a qualitative case study of one village in Shandong Province, China, using in-depth interviews with villagers, village candidates, township officials as well as national, provincial, township and village documents. It reveals how the clientelist system functions in and shapes the process of the village elections and governance. Drawing upon the qualitative data and empirical evidence collected in the field site, the thesis challenges the liberal-democratic view that the implementation of direct village elections and self-governance, which is generally considered to be “village democracy”, has empowered villagers to resist the state and may mark the beginning of a bottom-up democratization in China. In contrast, it argues that even procedurally “free and fair” village elections largely fail to deliver meaningful results, and that village governance, although in the name of self-governance, actually continues to be dominated by the Chinese local state. This is because clientelist structures, embodied in vertical patron-client alliances between political elites and villagers, have strongly influenced the actors and functioned to facilitate and supplement the authoritarian control of the state. The thesis also contests interpretations of village elections and self-governance that stress the state’s formal administrative capacity over controlling and manipulating village politics. While it shows some of the formal mechanisms by which township government control village affairs, it demonstrates also that after the implementation of the “village democracy” the state is still able to maintain its authoritarian capacity by taking advantage of the informal clientelist interaction between local state officials and the village elites.

This dissertation is an evaluation of some of the basic assumptions of the literature on governance and their utility for understanding a specific case - that of Mexico. It argues that Mexican municipalities, like their counterparts in Europe and the United States, have experienced a change towards a way of policy-making based on broader policy-networks, fragmentation in governmental and societal bodies, participation of an increasing number of self-organised actors, and the resulting blurring boundaries between the public and private spheres. Mexican urban municipalities are evolving from traditional patterns of governmental interventions to dynamisms of local governance. This shift, however, has taken place in an uneven way, shaped by factors such as the complexity of urban problems, the political alternation, the federal policies on transfers, the different policy areas and issues, the looseness of networks and the way in which they operate. As a result, Mexican local governance has been developed in policy sectors that have a high legitimising potential or that are in great need for citizens’ resources. This has generated a picture of ‘patches’, where stronger policy networks and citizens’ involvement in policy-making coexist with traditional governmental mechanisms. The dissertation is a contribution to the differentiated accounts of local governance recently developed, which use diverse contexts to argue that there is not a ‘one size fits all’ form of governance. It is a reconsideration of the importance of local contexts in shaping policy-making through networks, as opposed to the initial context-free governance understandings. The conclusion recognises the relevance of the main arguments of governance literature. The thesis makes use of empirical evidence gathered in three urban municipalities. It employs qualitative methodological criteria, discussed in the methodological appendix. The main research techniques used were elite interviewing and documental analysis.

This neo institutional study analyses the dynamic interaction between formal/informal rules and agents’ behaviour inside a political institution, examining these relationships through primary research on local partnerships in Greece. The theoretical assumptions of this analysis derive mainly from normative neo institutionalism but also include insights from rational choice and the historical institutionalism. Consideration is also given to the way in which theories of the structure/agent duality are related to neo institutional propositions on the relationship between rules and agents’ strategic behaviour. The neo institutional approach to local partnerships is also situated in relation to concepts and empirical observations from the literature on urban governance, urban regimes and Europeanisation. This research adopts the critical realism stance which acknowledges a reflexive approach to reality and it applies an embedded case study strategy. The case study consists of two local partnerships in the region of Crete, which were established under the EU Community Initiatives Programmes EQUAL II and LEADER+ and coordinated by the Local Development Agency of Heraklion. A triangulation method is selected, making use of interviews, storytelling, a short questionnaire, direct observation and secondary analysis of documentation. The research data reveal that the formal rules of the partnerships are not indicative of what actually happens. It is the configuration of formal and informal rules that offers a deep understanding of partnership. It is concluded that some formal rules are realised (albeit with deviations along the way), like partnership and programming, while others are remained mostly on paper, like community participation, decentralisation and innovation. In these cases, the informal rules appear to be conflicting with the formal rules, leading to different results than those expected. The research also shows the importance of agents' intentionality in the process of institutional change. Specific actors within the partnership, such as established local leaders and institutional entrepreneurs, select and reinforce particular features of formal rules that restrict partners’ freedom and promote values of efficiency within the partners. Moreover, the findings confirm a gradual changing of local policy making and an increase of local social capital. EQUAL II and LEADER+ partnerships create new possibilities for the empowerment and participation of new actors such as NGOs and vulnerable groups in the local policy-making process. They also promote the establishment of policy networks and enhance the development of collaborative learning processes (trust building and sharing understanding). Finally, they lead to the re-articulation of mayors-chief executives’ relationship inside local authorities and of central state’s position by creating new possibilities for broadening local authorities’ autonomy.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS. / It is widely assumed that the development of a country depends generally on the organization and the management of the state apparatus. Ostensibly the relative development of South Africa and the underdevelopment of Zaire would seem to confirm this. This study sets out to examine the validity of these assumptions by investigating the way the state apparatus is organized in Zaire and South Africa. The central role the state has played in the developmental process is the main concern of this thesis. The thesis attempts to understand this process through an in- depth investigation of the political and economic framework in both countries. It will present its arguments in five parts. The first outlines the conceptual framework necessary to compare and evaluate the political institutions by establishing the distinction between a "soft state" and a "hard state". The second part deals with the political system of both countries and the third contains an empirical analysis of their economic structure. The fourth provides a comparative institutional and process analysis of the state’s capabilities in Zaire and South Africa and largely emphasizes the state’s organizational strategies adopted to solve problems. A brief conclusion supplies an overall comparison and explanation of relative state capacity in the two countries and the consequences for development in each case of the state’s degree of competence. / Andrew Chakane 2018