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

“自治的阴影下”：加纳和卢旺达的权力下放、市政决策者和当地情况

• 批准号: 439734012
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Dieter Neubert
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Politik Afrikas und Entwicklungspolitik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/439734012?language=en
• 关键词: shadows; autonomy; Decentralization; municipal; decision

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.

与其他地方一样，撒哈拉以南非洲分散的地方当局应该对地方需求作出反应，打击腐败并追究官员的责任。这一前提取决于当选官员作出地方决定的自主权。这意味着，议员和市长将负责有效提供服务和消除贫困的关键决定。然而，目前的研究通常侧重于正式结构（即地方行政管理，效率和问责制）及其政治控制，忽视了当地的情况下，显着影响日常决策过程。特别是，理事会内部和周围的日常生活及其行为者仍然受到忽视。议员们竞选公职的动机和理由在很大程度上被忽视了。政府内外的地方行为者之间的关系几乎没有得到考虑。这是令人惊讶的，因为权力下放改革试图限制半正式和非正式的决策方式，因为这些方式往往被视为腐败的迹象。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填补这一研究空白。我们认为，日常生活中的权力下放取决于国家，其地方代表，市议员（作为决策者）之间的关系，以及地方的权力下放的背景。我们的双重目标是：第一，分析在两个市政局竞选职位的行为者的逻辑;第二，探讨议员如何利用他们的政治角色和网络来影响他们在当地环境中的决定，以及议员本身如何需要考虑当地的权力结构。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。根据当地的理解，这包括对市政服务的评估。我们认为，只有将权力下放工作的背景化，才能为理解和规划有效的权力下放行政结构提供必要的内部视角。这也提供了关于国家可能干预权力下放决策的信息。