<p><font face="Times New Roman"> <p align="left">This study focuses on the Performance Management System in the South African local government with specific emphasis on policy implementation.</p> </font></p>

<p>Despite a highly centralised system of government, Tanzania, has attempted several measures aimed at achieving decentralisation of its immense powers to allow people to have a say on matters affecting their respective areas of jurisdiction. By discussing the autonomy of local government in Tanzania, this research will highlight whether or not local government in Tanzania has the autonomy to exercise its functions without undue interference from the central government. There is not much literature on the local government laws of Tanzania .Therefore, this research will contribute to the concept of decentralisation in Tanzania in particular and Africa in general.</p>

<p>There is a realisation that urbanisation has overstretched the ability and efforts of central governments to serve from the centre, thus, giving rise to the search for a robust decentralisation policy that vests urban local governments with some level of autonomy.1 It is in this context that decentralisation has become critical in order to sufficiently respond to the varied service delivery challenges brought about by increasing urbanisation. However, all efforts to capacitate urban councils through the process of decentralisation are futile if the urban local governments lack the necessary financial means to fulfil their responsibilities.</p>

This study, therefore, inquires into whether the regional states are discharging their constitutional obligation of creating adequately empowered local government. It will attempt to do so by examining the decentralisation programme of four of the nine regional states of the Ethiopian federation.The argument in this study is developed in the following manner. First, it will be examined whether decentralisation is favourable for democratisation, development and accommodation of ethnic minorities. Second, institutional frameworks will be identified which will be used to examine whether Ethiopia’s local government is indeed empowered enough to achieve these objectives. Third, the structural organisation, powers and functions of local government of four of the nine regional states of Ethiopia will be described. The regional states are Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and Southern Nations and Nationalities and Peoples’ regional states. Fourth the Ethiopian local governance system will be assessed in light of the institutional principles that are identified in chapter 2.

Many African countries have embarked in the process of decentralising the decision making process to local bodies. Decentralisation is an ambitious and a difficult goal for countries such as African ones, that suffer from a lack of resources and a tradition of dirigism or centralism. In the context of the current African State crisis, devolution of power to elected bodies closer to people (decentralisation) is considered to be one of the answers, which can promote democracy, increase the legitimacy of the State and bring development. Decentralisation in South Africa is all the more interesting because what is at stake there , is the rehabilitation of the State and the creation of a South African identity through a democratic praxis. Because of apartheid, South Africa has been a puzzle of territories and identities. The State apparatus with all its bodies (including the other spheres) has to make out of each South African a South African citizen . It is at the local level where problems are concrete and where communities are divided because they belong to a specific area. It is at the local level that a South African citizenry will emerge (or not), through the consciousness of the inter-dependence which exists between the groups. So, studying the decentralisation process in the 90s in South Africa, is looking at a country trying to (re)invent by itself; new ways of creating a nation , a citizenship, a sense of common belonging, through economic development, symbols; popular participation etc. In KwaZulu-Natal, the extent of the transformation of local government during the past 6 years has been impressive. New territories, new councillors, new organisation of the bureaucracy, new consultation processes and an emphasis on the disadvantaged, all these are necessary conditions to address global needs and create a sense of local citizenry. But in practice, there is always a limit to the capacity of adaptation of minds and systems to novelty. After 6 years of turmoil , one can reasonably say that the framework is set up but that councillors and officials have still to find their place in the system. They have to define their respective roles. But what is even more important, they have to integrate the " revolutionary" meaning of decentralisation and try to apply their minds to changing the structures they are heading in order to enable significant interactions with the population, a coherent development of their jurisdiction and their hinterland and an identity which goes beyond divided interests. Besides, local councillors have to become real sources of authority and have the courage to find their place amidst other spheres of government, competing powers and people who have technical knowledge. They have to frame strong policies backed by their constituencies. If not, local government will only become a place where conflicting interests reconcile, and not a source of power on its own. But maybe this will be demanding enough, although the process will be more akin to a new power relationship inside the same system with the same rules, than a revolutionary process. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

Between 1990 and 2010 sub-Saharan Africa experienced some of the highest levels of deforestation anywhere in the world. The problem has been particularly acute in what are known as the miombo woodlands of southern Africa. These occupy a unique ecological niche and are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of people in the region, yet are disappearing rapidly. The aim of this thesis is to identify the structural causes of this phenomenon in two of the miombo countries, Zambia and Mozambique. Standard ‘resource based’ explanations for deforestation in both countries tend to focus primarily on demographic and economic factors, emphasising the impact of economic reforms, population growth, rural migration, poverty, minimal access to electricty and a lack of institutional resources. However I argue that these explanations do not account for Mozambique’s relatively better record on deforestation during the period in question, and that a more convincing account is offered by a ‘governance based’ explanation, which emphasises different forms of forest governance and institutional arrangements affecting the forest sector in each country. Specifically, Mozambique has fared better than Zambia thanks to its more secure system of traditional land tenure, the implementation of more progressive legislation and a sustained commitment to community based natural resource management. The implication is that future initiatives to curb deforestation in these countries should concentrate on addressing institutional and policy based shortcomings before implementing market based mechanisms designed to encourage conservation.

The thesis is concerned with the evaluation of factors in Local Authority housing maintenance requirements in the City of Manchester. Since 1982, expenditure in housing maintenance and repair works has consistently accounted for more than 50% of total expenditure on maintenance and repair work. In turn, maintenance and repair work accounts for almost 50% of total construction output in the UK. Given this level of sectorial contribution, it is apt to understand the factors which affect defects in dwelling buildings and hence maintenance requirements. This thesis reviews the catalogue of building defect causative factors leading to the conclusion that social and tenants' characteristics are equally important. The study is based, chiefly, on a postal questionnaire survey of building surveyors involved in day-to-day identification of defects as well as tenants of the sampled dwellings; and computer cost records of maintenance on dwellings within the sample. A total of 45 completed questionnaires from building surveyors, and 252 Council tenants with corresponding computer cost records formed the data base for the analyses conducted. The building surveyors' questionnaire assisted in the identification of defect-cause criteria which relate to the internal attribute of the dwelling building. The consistency of the resulting data was confirmed by the use of Kendall Coefficient of Concordance. An analysis is described of the manipulated data set using regression analysis. The analysis found that Changing standard contributes (38%) of (building structure related factors') impact on maintenance requirement variance, construction factors (23%), design factors (22%), vandalism (12%) and age factors (6%). The intercorrelations among these five defect-cause criteria within the building object necessitated further analysis using the principal component analysis. This resulted in the extraction of nine significant factors showing how the initial five factors combine to exert their influence on the building. In all, this family of building structure related factors contribute 32% of the variation in maintenance requirements. Combining the data from the tenants' questionnaire, computer cost information and dwelling survey, regression model testing was employed to identify the significant factors. This was facilitated with the use of three indices of housing maintenance requirements as the dependent variables, namely; reactive maintenance cost, property condition and satisfaction among tenants. Nine factors (six of which relate to tenant's characteristics) pertaining to tenant, environmental and housing management were significantly influential.

This thesis examines the way in which decisions about the treatment and disposal of solid waste are analysed in the English counties. The emphasis is on decisions with strategic dimensions rather than on tactical issues relating to plant operations. On the basis of an examination of legislation, government advice to local authorities, and literature from both the political and management sciences, alternative hypothesis sets about the analytical process which might be expected to exist are developed. These hypotheses are then tested, using evidence, drawn from surveys, interviews and field studies. A justification for the use of multiple hypotheses and multiple data sources which centres around the trade off between the precision of a result and its importance is offered in the thesis. The evidence supports the conclusion that the analysis process in existence can best be viewed as an attempt at rational comprehensive planning but one which is severely constrained in various ways. It is argued that the process is a barrier to both effective and efficient operations. The final chapters of the thesis adopt a more reformist approach. It is argued that collection and disposal systems should be recombined and that co-operation between county authorities should be encouraged. An appropriate analytical process is also defined.

As the level of goverrument closest to the people, local authorities have been credited with a key role in action towards sustainable development (United Nations, 1992). This thesis describes research which addresses mechanisms for evaluating sustainable development practice by local govemment. A review of approaches to measuring progress, in economic, social and environmental terms, identified sustainable development indicators as an evaluation framework whose applicability to local government warrented further research. A review of research literature highlighted the need for a dynamic and cyclical research approach which would acknowledge the contested and valueladen nature of both sustainable development and the research endeavour. The fieldwork is written up in three stages. The first stage explores the scope for transferring experience from public sector quality and performance indicators work. The second stage is a thin and linear description of the process of Fife Regional Council's role as a pilot authority in a Local Government Board Sustainability Indicators project. The third stage uses the wide range of written and experiential data gathered through the role of Project Consultant/Researcher to the Fife project to present a rich description of 'Sustainability Indicators for Fife'. The dialectic and hermeneutic framework adapted for this study enabled a detailed examination of the iterative movement between the sustainable development framing of the whole report and the process of crafting individual indicators. The study concludes that sustainable development indicators have considerable value as a performance management tool for use in local government, particularly in the context of the Local Agenda 21 and Community Planning initiatives. However, it is the quality and approach to local governance that will have an overiding impact on the achievement of effective action towards sustainable development. Recommendations are made for good practice and for further research.

Uganda has been considered one of Africa's few "success stories" over the past decade, an example of how a country can be transformed through a committed state bureaucracy. The thesis questions this view by looking at the experiences of development and change in a subparish in eastern Uganda. From this more local-level perspective, the thesis discusses the weakness of the state in the countryside, and incorporates the importance of religious and customary institutions. In place of a narrow view of politics, focused on reforms and policies coming from above, which rarely reach rural areas in a consistent or predictable way, the thesis describes political developments within a rural community. The thesis rests on two premises. First, that the state in rural Uganda has been too weak to support an effective bureaucratic presence in the countryside. Second, that politics at the local-level is an "open-ended" business, better understood through investigating a range of institutional spaces and activities, rather than a particular set of actions, or a single bureaucracy. Oledai sub-parish, which provides the empirical material for the thesis, was far removed from the idea of state-sponsored success described in the literature. Villagers had to contend with a history of violence, with recent impoverishment, and with the reality that the rural economy was unimportant in maintaining the structures of the government system. The thesis shows that the marginalisation of the countryside came at a time when central and local government structures had become increasingly reliant on funding from abroad. Aside from the analysing the weakness of the state bureaucracy, the thesis goes on to discuss broader changes in the life of the sub-parish, including the impact of a violent insurgency in the late 1980s. The thesis also looks at the role of churches and burial societies, institutions which have been largely ignored by the literature on political developments in Uganda. Religious and customary institutions, as well as the village court, provided spaces where political goals, such as settling disputes, building a career, or acquiring wealth, could be pursued.