‘In the shadows of autonomy’: Decentralization, municipal decision-makers and local contexts in Ghana and Rwanda

与其他地方一样，撒哈拉以南非洲地区权力下放的地方当局应该对当地需求作出反应，打击腐败，并追究官员的责任。这一前提取决于民选官员在地方决策方面的自主权。不言而喻，议员和市长将负责有效提供服务和消除贫困的关键决策。然而，目前对正式结构（即地方行政、效率和问责制）及其政治控制的研究通常强烈关注，忽视了对日常决策过程有重大影响的地方背景。特别是，理事会内部和周围的日常生活以及它们的参与者仍然被忽视。议员竞选公职的动机和理由在很大程度上被忽视了。政府内部和外部的地方行动者之间的关系几乎没有被考虑。这是令人惊讶的，因为权力下放改革试图限制半和非正式的决策方式，因为这些通常被视为腐败的迹象。在加纳初步研究的基础上，我们的目标是通过与卢旺达的比较研究来填补这一研究空白。我们认为，权力下放的日常生活取决于国家、地方代表、市议员（作为决策者）和权力下放的地方背景之间的一系列关系。我们的双重目标是：首先，分析竞选市政委员会公职的行为者的逻辑；其次，探讨议员如何利用他们的政治角色和网络来影响当地情况下的决策，以及议员自己如何需要考虑地方权力结构。我们还对议员竞选公职的动机以及他们对地方决策的实际影响感兴趣。这包括根据当地的理解对市政服务进行评估。我们认为，只有将权力下放工作置于背景中，才能提供必要的内部观点，以理解和规划有效的权力下放行政结构。这也提供了国家可能干预分散决策的信息。

Decentralized local authorities in sub-Saharan Africa, as elsewhere, are supposed to be responsive to local needs, fight corruption and hold officials to account. This premise is contingent on the autonomy of elected officials to make local decisions. Impliedly, councillors and mayors would take charge of crucial decisions for effective service delivery and the fight against poverty. However, the usually strong focus of current research on the formal structure (viz. the local administration, efficiency and accountability) and its political control overlooks the local context that significantly influences everyday decision processes. In particular, the everyday life in and around the councils as well as their actors remains neglected. Councillors’ incentives and rationale for running for office are largely ignored. The relations between local actors in and outside the administration are hardly considered. This is surprising because decentralization reforms seek to limit semi- and informal ways of decision-making as these are often seen as signs of corruption. Building on a preliminary Ghana study, our aim is to fill this research gap through a comparative study with Rwanda. We contend that everyday life of decentralization is contingent on sets of relations between the state, its local representatives, municipal councillors (as decision-makers), and the local context of decentralization. Our two-fold objective seeks to: firstly, analyse the logics of actors who run for office in municipal councils; secondly, explore how councillors use their political roles and networks to influence decisions in their local contexts and how the councillors themselves need to consider local power structures. We are also interested in the motivation for councillors to run for office as well as their actual influence in local decisions. This includes an assessment of municipal services, according to local understanding. We presume that only the contextualization of decentralization efforts offers the necessary inside view to understand and plan effective decentralized administrative structures. This offers also information on the state’s possible interference with decentralized decision-making.