local government: under what conditions local governments are successful and when fail

Local Government; under what conditions Local Governments are successful, when they are not successful

Muhammad Waseem Sajjad M.Phil. Public Policy PIDE School of Public Policy , Islamabad 21 December 2014

Issues in Public Policy

Local Government …is the life blood of Development.

John Lothrop Motley

Overview

What is local government?1

Importance of Local Governmnets2

Under what Conditions Local Governments successful3

When Local Governments are not successful?4

Conclusion 5

Reference 6

Qusestions & Answers7

What is Local Government?

Local Government:

Local government, in its simplest sense, is government that is specific to a particular locality; for example, a village, district, town, city or county. More particularly, it is a form of government that has no share in sovereignty, and is thus entirely sub ordinate to central authority – or, in a federal system, to state or regional authority.

(Heywood2013)

Importance of Local GovernmnetsIn the local government literature many scholars

highlighted the importance of local government for a society. Tocqueville; said that local governments are pillars of democracy and a nation. Local government is same important as the primary schooling for the students. J.S. Mill and Bryce consider the Local government is the similar of the “democracy”.

Conditions for Local Governments success and Faliures

Each local government in the world tries to achieve its objectives and goals and deliver services to the citizen of it community. The success and survival of an institution depend on the certain conditions and legalities and the local government institution itself depend on some condition for success and survival.

Conditions for Local Governments success and Faliures

Administraive

Financial

Political

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1. Political:

The political ownership of a local government is one most important condition for the success and failure of local government in worlds. In some countries, local government use as a tool of legitimization for state control by non-representative governments/regimes (Cheema et. Al. 2006).

Local government should have a strong legal support means that local government is legitimize by the constitution of the country. The assembly legislate the Acts which make the constitutional provisions for making of the local government functional (Sarkar 2010).

1. Political:

In some countries like Pakistan governments didn’t give the constitutional cover to local government and in these countries local government dies own it. “Neither the British nor the Zia regimes gave constitutional cover to local tier” (Cheema, Khwaja, and Qadir).

When military take over democratic setup then to counter the support of democratic politicians, military government built substitutes in shape of new politicians that will be likes a channel among non-representative government and society to communicate the problems of local people (Cheema, khan,Mayerson 2014).

1. Political:

The other countries are motivated for decentralization and local government through their ideological base or multilateral conditions (Cheema et. Al. 2006). But in Pakistan when military takeover then establish local government for legitimization and strength over state. A report Devolution in Pakistan by International Crisis Group launched in 2004 and report said that;

“Local governments have proved to be the key instruments in the Military’s manipulation of the Pakistani polity to ensure regimes survival. District Nazism used public funds and other state resources to stage pro-Musharraf rallies during the April 2002 presidential referendum and to support Pakistan Muslim League (Q)”

2. Administrative:

The main purposes of the local governments are to meet the needs of citizens for public services in a more effective and appropriate way (Gargan 1997).Administrative power of the local government is a main element of determining the success and failure of local bodies. In different countries the influence of central and provincial government is more on the local government and this influence inversely effect on the performance of the government.

I. In North America’s (Canada and the United States) most provinces and states, planning still is predominantly a local government function (Sellers 2007).

2. Administrative:

II. In mostly countries electricity is the central function but in china electricity came under the local governments (Nickson et. Al. 2007)

When transfer function from provincial or state government to local government and the main problems faced by local administration is capacity, skills and human resources issues (Cheema 2004). Decentralization reforms and assigning greater autonomy to local governments requires training and capacity building for local administration personnel in the Asian Pacific countries (Brillantes 2006)

2. Administrative:

Central government also influence on local government for selecting, transferring and promoting local staff due to this local government did not select employees according to their needs.

In china, Chinese communist party perform all function related to local staff (Nickson et. Al. 2007).

In Asia, Korea is one country that handles capacity building issues and Korea emphasized on knowledge management as a main element (Kim & Kim, 1997).

3. Financial:

There are many factors and conditions that affect the local government functioning and one factor is financial constraints that inversely effect on local government performance (Zaidi 2005).

Local governments need finance for delivery services and there are two main resources of finance a) local taxes and b) state grants. The specific way of funding to local government varies from countries to countries.

The capacity to generate owns revenues are one of the essential principles of local government or decentralization (Letaief, Mback, Mabassi, Ndiaye 2007).

3. Financial:

A quantitative analysis seventy-five developing countries found that administrative centralization alone did not improve public services delivery Enikolopov and Zhuravskaya (2007), there is also need of financial decentralization and vice versa.

Preferably, for a local government financial resources very important and should be enough to deliver all public services. But in Pakistan, India and the Philippines financial resources insufficient for public service delivery that effect on the local government work (Vera and Kim 2003).

3. Financial:

China has been a very centralize countries and it has transfer all economic power to local government (Arif & Farooq 2012). So, local governments have depended on national and provincial governments for economic support.

For meeting local demand, there is need to lose the restriction on local borrowing, so, local govt. meets their needs. Local borrowing practice has been most general in USA (Sbragia 1988).

In India, many larger municipalities have issues bonds and in state of Tamil Nadu develop collaboration between smaller municipalities to issue municipal bonds (De Vera 2003).

Conclusion:

Conditions for Success and

Faliur of Local Govt.

1. Financial :I. Enough FundingII. Reveneue generation/Collection III. Loans/Borrowing IV. proper Mechanism for transfering funds

2. Administarive Powers:I. Decentraliztion of powers II. Create a compettion b/w LGIII. Educated and Skilled staff

3.Political:I. Ownership of LGII. Party Base electionIII. Ease relation between Provincial & LGIV. Decentarlization from Federal-to-Provinces-to LG

Reference

Applied Economic Research Centre (AERC) (1990). Local GovernmentAdministration in Pakistan. Karachi: unpublished manuscript.

Boston, J., 1996, the use of contracting in the public sector: Recent New Zealand experience, Australian Journal of Public Administration 53 (Sept.): 105-110.

Bird, Richard M. and Francois Vaillancourt. 1998. Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries: An Overview. In Richard M. Bird and Francois Vaillancourt, eds. Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Blair, H. (2000). "Participation and Accountability at the Periphery." World Development 28(1):21-39.

Bryce, James, Modern Democracies, Manillian, NY,1921 Crook, R. and J. Manor (1998). Democracy and Decentralization in South Asia

and West Africa.Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

De Vera, Roberto and Yun-Hwan Kim, “ Local Government Finance, Private Resources and local credit Market in Asia”, ERD [ Economics and Research Department} Working paper No. 46, Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2003

Echeverri-Gent, J. (1993). The state and the poor: public policy and political development inIndia and the United States. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Encyclopedia of the social sciences, VOL. IX-X, P, 584-576 Foster, A. and M. Rosenzweig (2001), `Democratization, Decentralization and the

Distribution of Local Public Goods in a Poor Rural Economy’, Mimeo, Brown University.

Gargan, John J., ed. 1997. Handbook of Local Government Administration. New York: Marcel Dekker.

Hallerberg, Mark and Patrik Marier. 2004. Executive Authority, the Personal Vote, and Budget Discipline in Latin American and Caribbean Countries. American Journal of PoliticalScience 48 (3)

Thank you for your attention!Any Questions?