Reshaping the public domain: Decentralization, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and trajectories of local democracy in rural India
Reshaping the public domain: Decentralization, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and trajectories of local democracy in rural India
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DOI：
10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.09.013
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发表时间：
2019-08-01
影响因子：
6.9
通讯作者：
Ali, Syed Shoaib
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fischer, Harry W.;Ali, Syed Shoaib
在过去的三十年里，世界各国政府都进行了权力下放改革。这些改革是基于这样一种信念，即更多地民主参与地方治理将为农村发展、公共服务提供和环境治理带来更好的结果。然而，这些努力的效果在实践中变化很大。大量文献研究了与政策利益不同结果相关的因素，但我们仍然缺乏对地方民主如何随着时间变化而变化的权力关系的了解。在本文中，我们将两种主要的学术思路结合在一起，它们分别强调民主深化的社会和制度维度，通过公共领域的概念镜头对地方政治变革进行分析。我们将公共领域定义为包括三个不同但又相互关联的要素：(a)构成“公众”的公民，(b)他们能够获得的“公共产品”的集合，以及(c)他们寻求影响决策的手段和渠道。通过对印度比哈尔邦、北方邦和喜马偕尔邦三个地方政府的案例研究，我们展示了圣雄甘地全国农村就业保障法（MGNREGA）的分散架构如何与当地社会和制度变革的历史相互作用，从而导致了不同的政治转型轨迹。该法案是迄今为止向地方民选政府进行的最大的向下转移资源。虽然根据《地方政府和地方行政区划法》下放资源改善了获得国家资源的机会，增加了对总体发展规划的参与，但影响的强度、公平程度和范围因地方政治关系的性质而异。通过对地方治理如何随着时间的推移而演变的关系和过程的理解，公共领域为权力下放通过地方民主中“公共”的新表达重新定义公民身份的方式提供了新的见解。(C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd.版权所有。
Over the past three decades, governments around the world have undertaken reforms for decentralization. These reforms are founded on the belief that more democratic participation in local governance will lead to better outcomes for rural development, public service delivery, and environmental governance. However, the effects of these efforts have been highly variable in practice. Extensive literature has studied the factors associated with different outcomes of policy interest, yet we continue to lack knowledge of how local democracy evolves through changing power relationships over time. In this article, we draw together two dominant threads of scholarship, which have emphasized the social and institutional dimensions of democratic deepening respectively, to develop an analysis of local political change through the conceptual lens of the public domain. We define the public domain as comprising three distinct yet interrelated elements: (a) the citizens that are constituted as a "public", (b) the collection of "public goods" that they are able to access, and (c) the means and channels by which they seek to influence decision-making. Through case studies of three local governments in the Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, we show how the decentralized architecture of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) the largest downward transfer of resources to local elected governments to date has interacted with local histories of social and institutional change, leading to different trajectories of political transformation. While the devolution of resources under the MGNREGA has improved access to state resources and increased participation in development planning overall, the intensity, equity, and extent of influence varies according to the character of local political relationships. By offering a relational and processual understanding of how local governance evolves over time, the public domain lends new insight into the ways that decentralization is redefining citizenship through new articulations of the 'public' in local democracy. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.