Decentralisation

Policies of "Indirect Rule" under the British and "Association" under the French created an "institutional segregation" in which most Africans were relegated to live in a sphere of so called "customary" law (or the "indigenat") while Europeans and urban citizens obeyed civil lawcustomary law being an administratively driven form of State ordained and enforced regulation.... By uncritically privileging local government and "customary" authorities,... recent decentralizations and rural participatory development projects and policies can maintain and even deepen this ongoing legislated apartheid.

Cette review examine les liens entre les expertises scientifiques et les priorités publiques, à commencer par celles de l’État, à propos de la relation des services publics et de la ville. Leurs relations peuvent être appréhendées sous trois angles : l’offre territoriale des services, leurs rapports avec l’environnement et les normes permettant de penser et justifier les mutations à l’œuvre. Quelle que soit la dimension privilégiée, trois registres de discours sont identifiables autour des figures de la diversité, de l’éclatement et du rapprochement. Le corpus rassemblé, produit pour l’essentiel dans les années 1990, consiste en un entrelacs de travaux hétéroclites, plus ou moins soumis aux vicissitudes de la commande publique, laquelle porte avant tout témoignage des transformations et hésitations de l’État face aux mutations sociales et urbaines.

Are States in contemporary Europe subject to new forms of convergence under the impact of economic crisis, enhanced European steering and international monitoring? Or is the evolution of governance (national and sub-national) driven fundamentally by diverging, mainly domestic pressures? Drawing on extensive new data, the article combines analysis of the State Modernisation and Decentralisation reform programmes of the Hollande-Ayrault administration, drawing comparisons where appropriate with the previous Sarkozy regime. The limits of President Hollande's anti-Sarkozy method were demonstrated in the first 2 years; framing state reform and decentralisation in negative terms prevented the emergence of a coherent legitimising discourse. The empirical data is interpreted with reference to a comparative 'States of Convergence' framework, which is conceptualised as a heuristic device for analysing variation between places, countries and policy fields. The article concludes that the forces of hard convergence are gaining ground, as economic, epistemic and European pressures continually challenge the forces of institutional inertia.

Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state, and one of the most spatially diverse nations on earth in its resource endowments, population settlements, location of economic activity, ecology and ethnicity. The regional socio-economic data base now extends over 30 years, and so it is possible to draw conclusions about the country's regional development dynamics since the 1970s. In this paper, we examine economic growth, inequality, convergence, structural change and social indicators for a consolidated group of 26 provinces, ie, the 27 of the late Soeharto period excluding East Timor.

This paper retraces: (1) the promulgation of protectionist wildlife policies by colonial administrators at the turn of the 19th Century in Zimbabwe, and their evolutionary trajectory over distinct time periods, (2) the paradigmatic shift and the extent of evolution of wildlife policies with respect to the devolution thrust and local community participation to date. The aim is to re-ignite and keep alive the debate for the improvement of local community livelihoods by meeting their aspirations and addressing poverty. Another section explores the robustness of local community institutional framework following decades of research on their efficacy in the face of internal weaknesses and external pressures. This is discussed in the context of contested devolution and decentralisation concepts which not in the distant past became fashionable rhetoric in the field of local community empowerment in natural resource management. Areas of contests have been explored using a case study approach. Extensive literature consultation and gleaning of 127 published and relevant sources cutting across national, regional and global realms reveal that Zimbabwe and most southern African countries have evolved progressive policies. However, consistent with most literature, the implementation of these otherwise progressive policies remains problematic. Hence, the question, 'when will community-based wildlife conservation initiatives like communal areas management programme for indigenous resources (CAMPFIRE) achieve their initially intended goals of devolution?' remains largely unaddressed.

Water is a fundamental resource for human life, ecosystems, and the economy. Population growth and accelerating economic development in all water use sectors together with climate change impose huge demands on global water resources. The need for sustainable use of freshwater resources is globally recognised in the water field and literature which has led to developing and researching new approaches to water resources and river basin management. The transition towards more integrated management methods is accelerating in the field of water management. The concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), which includes elements of good water governance such as coordination, participation, equity, sustainable development, and inclusiveness, is a generally accepted approach to developing water resources management. The Mekong River and its tributaries form a source of living for over sixty million people. They constitute one of the richest freshwater fisheries in the world, but are increasingly under threat from accelerating economic development (hydropower, agriculture, tourism, and transport) and pollution. To meet future challenges and increasing complexity, the water sector needs to build resilience into the way water resources are managed at different scales and levels. Therefore it is important to implement integrated management methods in the Mekong region countries, including Lao PDR, to manage their water resources in a sustainable way. This research aims to contribute to the discussion about water management by looking beyond the much acclaimed integrated water resources management (IWRM) approach along with the main elements attached to it, namely integration, participation, and decentralisation. These elements have been derived from IWRM literature, most importantly the Dublin Principles (GWP, 2004; Rogers & Hall, 2003) and a paper from Xie (2006) which are relevant and core issues as regards the contents of the author's four research articles in the context of the Lao People's Democratic Republic's (Lao PDR's) water regime. Also the political and socioeconomic context of Lao PDR has impacted and led to the selection of these core IWRM themes to be studied. The Management and Transition Framework (MTF) approach and the IAD framework give a general and conceptual water management framework perspective for analysing IWRM. The author's published articles illuminate the implementation process of IWRM from different aspects in various water use sectors. The IWRM principles concerning the operational level of water management are studied in the contexts of hydropower and irrigation. Several Western and highly industrialised countries have already adapted IWRM approaches with success. In the case of Lao PDR, implementation of IWRM is special and challenging as the country is one of the last communist countries in the World. The country seeks to implement the IWRM approach and related principles in its context and it is interesting to analyse how successfully the elements of IWRM can be transferred and implemented in such a political environment. The singleparty socialist republic is built on a top-down government approach. On the other hand, the political context and decision-making environment provide a more 'plain' and simplified institutional environment compared to the complex and multistakeholder environments of the West where decision-making is multifaceted with many channels impacting decision-making and organisations are quite free to make and implement their own decisions. In a way, Lao PDR can be seen as a 'critical' case as the experience and lessons learned from Laotian IWRM implementation can increase understanding regarding the mechanisms and processes attached to IWRM processes. The aim is to produce contextualised knowledge on this specific case and to find out the logic behind the action of the IWRM processes. The articles reveal the importance of local level/bottom up participatory processes to successful IWRM implementation as well as a need for top-down policy implementation. It is crucial to create necessary conditions for the practical implementation of IWRM. IWRM literature widely emphasises the government's role to provide and develop an environment with legal and clear institutional base, public awareness, political will, conditions for all concerned parties, participation, and capacity building system at different levels from local and river basin levels up to national and regional levels. It is also crucial to take the differences in local contexts into account and to support solutions appropriate to a given context instead of universal 'blueprints' as discussed for example by Bach et al. (2011) and GWP (2000). The author hopes this research increases understanding and stimulates discussion on integrated water management approaches and practices. It aims to enhance knowledge on promoting the wise use, management, and development of water resources towards a more equal and sustainable path. The author is grateful to all who have provided valuable feedback at different stages of the research. First of all, the author wants to thank Professor Ilari Karppi from the University of Tampere School of Management who supervised the thesis, for his valuable guidance and encouragement throughout the process. The Author feels deep appreciation for the many Laotian authorities from Water Resources and Environment Administration (WREA), Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), especially Director of Executive Planning Division of Department of Electricity, Khamso Kouphokham, who has greatly facilitated research by organising numerous high-level interviews, helping with data gathering and sharing his valuable insights during the FREPLA2020 project. Many thanks belong also to the many consultants and officials working in different development projects and NGOs in the country. The author also wants to thank the FREPLA2020 project director Jari Kaivo-oja and Professor Jyrki Luukkanen from Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC) of University of Turku for their valuable comments on some of the research articles of the thesis. Many thanks also belong to many colleagues from FFRC and the University of Tampere School of Management who have provided feedback and comments during the research process. Sincere thanks also belong to author's family; her supporting husband Petri and children Emma and Lauri who have delighted some burdensome thesis-writing days. The author is grateful to her wonderful parents Riitta and Mauri Vilen, and parents-in-law Seija and Taisto Jusi who have provided support and made it possible to find the time necessary to complete the doctoral thesis.

Despite pervasive exurban development in the United States (US) over the last several decades, a lack of relatively precise data has hindered basic research, including classification of the types of emerging exurban settlement patterns. But because exurbia transcends the traditional dichotomy of urban versus rural and metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan, standard census data are of limited value in analyzing these regions. To address this gap, we made use of a spatially explicit population database to indentify and examine the configuration of exurban settlement. We developed a multidimensional spatial patch index, which captures the variation exurban settlement across the landscape, along the lines of shape, size and contiguity typology of exurban patches. This index reveals substantial heterogeneity in fine-scale pattern not reflected by aggregate measures of exurban settlement density.

It is common to understand the governing of rural space as the outcome of a conflict between some romantic protectors of a lost past on the one hand, and the people who worry about creating economic values on the other. However, the power to shape the rural should not only be searched for in the open struggle between protectors and developers, but also should be analysed at the level of discourse, in the play between discourses about how to deal with the rural. In this paper I therefore present a modernist discourse and demonstrate how taken-for-granted truths about the rural – its history, its present and its future – are made possible by this discourse. Secondly, I will reveal how rurality takes on a different meaning in an alternative to the modernist discourse, emphasizing local and regional autonomy. In demonstrating that rurality is contingent upon a play between these two discourses, I want to provide some new insights into an important force behind the persistence of ideas a...

Globally, decentralisation has become the dominant paradigm for environmental governance. This paper explores the linkages between green governmentality approaches to subjectivity and Gramscian notions of hegemony to examine recent efforts in Rajasthan, India to decentralise groundwater governance through targeted formal regulations and outreach activities, such as water awareness campaigns (Jal Abhiyaan).The latter seeks to alter the beliefs and practices of farmers by institutionalising their support for state groundwater conservation efforts, including privatisation. The paper draws on household surveys and interviews with farmers and government agents to examine the relationship between the political economic motivations for and practices of state subject-making and differential resistance to these efforts based on farmers' multiple subject positions. Findings suggest, first, that the state is motivated through its monetary and advisory relationship with donor agencies, such as the World Bank. Through both outreach activities and coercion, it attempts to gain 'consent' for its proposals, which devolve state control rather than truly decentralising decision-making, to make self-conducting and willing subjects of specifically neoliberal groundwater conservation. But, second, these attempts are being resisted by some farmers through protests, informal discussions, non-participation, and the collectivisation of access to groundwater and irrigation through irrigation partnerships. Third, resistance to these efforts, or support for them, is different between farmers based on their multiple subjectivities (caste, class and ecological conditions). The paper advances both our understanding of the processes of environmental subject-making and of the devolution of environmental governance, by integrating the lessons from governmentality and Gramscian approaches to social power and subjectivity.

This paper discusses contradictory movements in centralization and de-centralization by examining two groups of policies: those that are meant to regulate fiscal relations between national and subnational governments and those that have redefined responsibilities relating to the provision of certain social services. It is maintained here that, from the point of view of inter-governmental relations, the Brazilian federation is a complex arrangement within which centralizing and de-centralizing tendencies co-exist, impelled by different forces, responding to different motivations and producing a variety of results.

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Community participation in school management—and in hiring and firing of teachers in particular—has been actively advocated as an effective reform to improve school and teacher accountability in the Global South. This paper examines whether such reform functions in practice as suggested in theory, drawing on the findings of a case study of community schools in rural Zambia. Using the concept of the 'context of practice', efforts have been made to understand the local meanings of community participation in school management rather than that of the central government or development partners. Such analysis illuminates the important roles that local economic and cultural capital, complex cultural norms and unexpected micro politics play in shaping the way parents and communities are actually willing and able to participate in school management, and how these issues influence school and teacher accountability. The findings also underscore the difficulty that teachers face when attempting to respond to the local demands, especially in the context of grossly inadequate resources being allocated to them by the state. The paper concludes by arguing, first, that community management of schools in Zambia was an unfunded and unclear policy that shifted financial responsibility to already marginalized rural communities and, second, that direct hiring relationships between parents and teachers will dilute the importance of the political accountability of the state to ensure quality education for all.

The performances of urban growth management are often criticized because their original objectives are frequently inconsistent with local development facts. Underlying the many reasons for this are the political and institutional contexts that influence policy-making and development activities. The urban fringe, a zone is managed to against urban sprawl in many countries, represents the conflicts between urban management system and local development resulting from political transformation. This study examines the case of decentralised-concentration strategy, one of the most important metropolitan growth management in Beijing since the 1990s, and sheds some lights on the performance of the growth management in the transformation context. The results suggest that the aims of municipal growth management to concentrate developments in urban fringe have partly been achieved through actual local developments; however, some unexpected and illegal local developments outside the planned areas are counterproductive from the perspective of municipal growth management. The performance of the present growth management is being challenged by new trends towards political decentralisation and locally fiscal responsibilities. In the interest of future policymaking, the dominant central planning system in Beijing should take these decentralisation trends into growth management account, compared with the great progress in decentralisation in economy system. The urban policy needs to shift from the dictatorial manner and put more efforts into creating a harmonious relationship between municipal growth management and actual local demands on development.

The impact of administrative decentralisation on equity in health and health care is an important unresolved issue in the health policy debate. Predictions from the limited theoretical literature and the relevant empirical research are both insufficient to draw any firm conclusions. Many countries are nevertheless experimenting with decentralisation policies in the absence of research evidence. This paper presents an exploratory empirical analysis of decentralisation by investigating the spatial dimensions of health-related equity in Canada, a highly decentralised setting. Using data from the 2001 Canadian Community Health Survey, we apply a decomposition method of the Concentration Index to explore whether income-related inequalities in health and inequities in the use of health care are more likely to be due to gaps between rich and poor Canadian provinces rather than to differences between rich and poor individuals within them. The results show that within area variation is the most important source of income-related health inequality, while income-related inequities in health care use are mostly driven by differences between provinces. 7 However, as for the HUI, the health status measure used in this study, when the variable of interest lies between 0 and 1 the bounds of the CI depend on the mean (m): as the mean increases the range of the CI decreases. For large samples, the minimum value of the CI is given by mÀ1 and the maximum value is equal to 1Àm . 8 We use the convenient regression (Kakwani et al., 1997) to calculate CI, CI B , CI j and their standard errors. EQUITY IN HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE IN A DECENTRALISED CONTEXT 381 equivalent income ¼ ðincome=ð1 þ 0:5 Ã ðhouseholdsize À 1 À number of childrenÞ þ 0:3 Ã childrenÞÞ 13 For analytic convenience, the (small number of) observations with negative scores have been excluded from our sample. EQUITY IN HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE IN A DECENTRALISED CONTEXT 383

As we enter the 1990s, scholars and practitioners of development administration in the Third World share a deep concern with its disappointing performance. Looked to as the primary agent of modernization during the optimistic first days of independence, many now blame it for the development stagnation of much of the Third World over the past two decades. Reinforced by the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe, calls for privatization and radical cutbacks in the state are increasing. Indeed, while the causes of Third World development stagnation are undoubtedly multiple and diverse, it is difficult to refute the charge that the hierarchical, bureaucratic, centrally-led strategy has not achieved what was expected of it. The question which faces responsible and concerned scholars, practitioners and officials today, is what can and should be done about all this? This paper recommends avoiding grand and precipitous changes in organizational strategies: indiscriminate privatization and dismantling the state, it argues, would be just as much an error as the earlier whole-cloth commitment to centralist-bureaucratic organization. Instead it argues that theoretical and analytical tools effective in making more subtle and refined choices among institutional alternatives must be developed. It presents a preliminary analysis of one strategy which might offer this, and illustrates how it can be used to design organizations more likely successfully to deliver services and sustain investments in the Third World.

Responding to David Harvey’s critique of my paper ‘Why a radical geography must be anarchist’, I once again reiterate the importance of anarchist perspectives in contemporary politics and geographical praxis. In challenging Harvey on the limits to Marx, I urge him to think again about the hidden vanguardism, implied statism, and veiled hierarchy that continue to lurk within the Marxist project, and importantly how these specters constrain both our collective political imagination and the possibilities of radical geography. I am admittedly very critical of Harvey, but I nonetheless refuse to close the door on dialogue between the Black and Red, even in the face of ongoing Marxist ridicule of anarchist politics. Accordingly, I propose an agonistic embrace of a ‘postfraternal’ or ‘postsororal’ politics on the left, where we come to appreciate ongoing conflict as a sign of a healthy leftist milieu. In doing so we can move beyond the misguided idea that all disagreements over strategies, tactics, and organizing methods will ever be resolved. Ultimately, what I have dubbed ‘the condition of postfraternity’ keeps us alert to the continually unfolding possibilities of a thoroughly politicized and forever protean space. By embracing this shifting horizon, not as a static limit to our politics, but as a beautiful enabler of visionary possibilities, the rhizomes of emancipation grow stronger.

After a decade of devolution and amid uncertainties about its effects, it is timely to assess and reflect upon the evidence and enduring meaning of any 'economic dividend' of devolution in the UK. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach utilising institutionalist and quantitative methods, this paper seeks to discern the nature and extent of any 'economic dividend' through a conceptual and empirical analysis of the relationships between spatial disparities, spatial economic policy and decentralisation. Situating the UK experience within the historical context of its evolving geographical political economy, we find: i) a varied and uneven nature of the relationships between regional disparities, spatial economic policy and decentralisation that change direction during specific time periods; ii) the role of national economic growth is pivotal in explaining spatial disparities and the nature and extent of their relationship with the particular forms of spatial economic policy and decentralisation deployed; and, iii) there is limited evidence that any 'economic dividend' of devolution has emerged but this remains difficult to discern because its likely effects are over-ridden by the role of national economic growth in decisively shaping the pattern of spatial disparities and in determining the scope and effects of spatial economic policy and decentralisation.

Agent-based approaches in application development seem to meet the requirements of adaptability, scalability, decentralization, and flexibility imposed by complex software systems. In open applications, interactions among agents are one of the most important issues that must be faced carefully. In this paper we propose the BRAIN framework, which aims at supporting the different phases of the development of interactions in agent-based applications, relying on the concept of role to model agent interactions. Roles carry different advantages in modeling interactions and, consequently, in exploiting derived infrastructures to support multiagent systems. Besides the interaction model, the BRAIN framework includes XRole, an XML-based notation to express roles in an interoperable way, and Rolesystem, an interaction infrastructure that implements the proposed model. An application example shows the advantages of our approach in application engineering.

Decentralisation policies in Africa increasingly place responsibilities and resources for the provision of public services in the hands of public bodies at the lowest level, for example in School Management Committees (SMCs). This paper questions whether elite capture, which is considered a major reason for the ineffectiveness of the management of public services at a national level, also characterises SMCs. On the basis of field research in Uganda, it is argued that elite capture does not trickle down to the lowest levels in the management of public services. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The need to enhance the relevance and quality of pre-and in-service teacher education in India has long been recognised in official commentaries. Despite the structural innovation of District Institutes of Education and Training to enhance systemic responsiveness to local contexts, training messages mediated through DIETs are largely not having the expected impact on classroom processes. Using qualitative data generated from six case study sites, this paper examines in-service training in DIETs and how they have responded to teacher development challenges. It finds that formal teacher education continues to have low 'ecological validity', and highlights tensions in the recruitment and technical expertise of DIET staff, and in their attitudes towards elementary teachers, that constrain engagement with local contexts. The paper then considers several aspects of elementary teachers' local knowledge which underline the need for a review of the dominant 'skills and knowledge' approach to teacher development pursued by DIETs. It argues that training must shift its focus from skills to an engagement with the pressing question of teachers' will to adopt training messages in current contexts. The paper closes with discussions of how teachers' professional agency can be promoted, and further considerations of how teacher education can be strengthened in pursuit of quality in a context of decentralisation. 

Hoping to achieve the current Japanese administration's goals of decentralisation and privatisation, the Japanese government has granted substantial latitude to local governments and individual schools as part of its recent reform of foreign language education. In introducing English at elementary schools, micro-language policies have been actively enacted at the local level along with slow but somewhat tactical top-down policies. The driving force behind the implementation of English in Japanese elementary schools is not simply a desire to prepare students for a global economy but also a result of multiple social and political factors. The most fundamental challenges that EES in Japan currently faces relate to issues of equity and growing diversity.

In the Mediterranean area, there is increase in demand for summer cooling satisfied by electrically driven units in domestic and small commercial sectors; this involves electric peak loads and black-outs. Consequently, there is an increasing interest in small scale polygeneration systems fuelled by natural gas.

This article joins the continuing policy debate over the social responsibility of corporations, particularly in the mining indusrry. The ciuthor urgues that the 'old school mining ortiiodo~'-cipproacking rhe exploitation qf mineral deposits solely from the technicril and economic points of view-is long dead. Mining companies must also enconipass the social dimension. New policies ,for the mining industty lire discussed in terms of recent worldwide trends and movements, e.g. globalization, economic interdependence cind decentrulization of governmental authority, and the rise of civil society as a political factor. These trends, together with the United Nutions policies in quest of sustainable development and the consensus expressed at internation~il conferences during the lust decade, have deepened social awareness and set the stage f o r enhanced social re.si~ori.siveness,frt,rii the private sector. Socially responsible corporate policies include decentralization of decision-making to the field level, reaching out to stakeholders cind shareholders, supporting governments which provide oficial development cissistance ,for good governance and building broad partnerships to reduce sociul exposures.

In response to slow and ineffective agrarian reform in South Africa, an integrated and inclusive rural economy is proposed through the active engagement of a capable and developmental state. This noble-sounding official ambition raises concerns of potential authoritarian populism. Through a review of recent agrarian polices and strategies in the dimensions of policy development, management and intergovernmental relations, we find that the concept of policy-driven institutional incoherence in the local provision of public goods frames the growing evidence of corruption, elite capture and exclusion better. Two cases from within local government illustrate further how unclarity or incoherencies in the rules-in-use are driven by ill-defined mandates, overlapping jurisdictions, incomplete implementation or contradictions between policies.

A major challenge for many researchers and practitioners relates to how to recognize and address cross-scale dynamics in space and over time in order to design and implement effective governance arrangements. This editorial provides an overview of the concept of multi-level governance (MLG). In particular we highlight definitional issues, why the concept matters as well as more practical concerns related to the processes and structure of multi-level governance. It is increasingly clear that multi-level governance of forest resources involves complex interactions of state, private and civil society actors at various levels, and institutions linking higher levels of social and political organization. Local communities are increasingly connected to global networks and influences. This creates new opportunities to learn and address problems but may also introduce new pressures and risks. We conclude by stressing the need for a much complex approach to the varieties of MLG to better understand how policies work as instruments of governance and to organize communities within systems of power and authority.

This article examined community participation in the delivery of water and primary health care services in the Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in Tanzania. This was the descriptive research study which employed both qualitative and quantitative research designs involving a total of 208 respondents. Where 127 respondents filled in the questionnaires, 51 respondents participated in the in-depth interviews and 30 respondents participated in the Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). The results indicate that decentralization reforms have facilitated the formation of health and water services governance structures that facilitate community participation in the service delivery. The findings further revealed the means through which community participated in the delivery of services, i.e., from participating in the meetings, project initiation and management, to membership in various statutory services boards and committees.

This paper studies the relationship between corruption and decentralisation from a macroeconomic perspective. Providing a macroeconomic analysis may help to understand better the links and channels between corruption, decentralisation and economic development. The analysis presented in this paper is unique in that provides an explicit formulation of the relationship between corruption, decentralisation and economic development. We bring together the theoretical and empirical predictions of both the traditional and modern fiscal federalism theories and find that the effect of decentralisation on development depends crucially on the existence and extent of corruption. Without corruption, decentralisation is unambiguously the best outcome for development. However, if corruption is pervasive, decentralisation may be associated to lower capital accumulation than centralisation. This result is more likely to be observed in developing countries with weak local political institutions and si...

Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of durable and stable chemicals, which have been used in non-stick cookware, fire retardant materials and stain resistant carpets and have found their ways to Nation's drinking water stream through landfill leachate. Clark Technology's LeachBuster system was used to remove these contaminants from leachate streams for over 4 years. This article is a summary of the results of this study. Concentration of these substances ranged from around 0.5 Nano grams/liter (ng/l) to around 500 ng/l. The system remove all of these compounds from the leachate to under 2 ng/l which is well below the required discharge limits for most of the regulatory bodies.. Introduction:

Decentralisation has returned as a key theme in English health policy in recent years in policies such as Patient Choice and Foundation Trusts, among many others. The goal of these policies appears to be to stimulate self-sustaining incentives to continuous organisational reform and performance improvement through creating a pluralist model of local provision. However, the ability of local organisations to exercise autonomy and to deliver such performance is highly contingent upon their local context, not least in terms of existing patterns of dependencies.

With deepening European integration, domestic interest groups have increasingly engaged in multi-level venue shopping. Regional authorities are no different and have represented their interests through both intra- and extra-state channels. There is some disagreement, however, over which of these channels are most frequently used. Similarly, there is little consensus on the ways in which partisan, institutional, and identity logics can affect the dynamics of venue shopping. To gain some insights into these questions, the article surveys 122 regional administrations in their home country. It finds that, when trying to influence the EU policy-shaping process from home, European regions use extra-state channels more frequently than intra-state ones. Party politics, institutions, and identity
logics all affect venue selection, though differently. The general trend towards extra-state channels is indicative of the nature of the EU political system. The findings also have implications for questions of representation and democracy within such a system.

Geographically decentralized plannirLg and management is an emerging theme within the health sector in many OECD countries. Advocates of decentralization argue that providing greater authority to local decision-making bodies can improve both the technical and allocative efficiency with which health care systems operate. Using concepts drawn from organizational theory and the economics of organizations, we examine the potential of centralized and decentralized planning and management structures to be efficient in light of the informational problems that musl be overcome to allocate resources efficiently. We focus in particular on the need to integrate information regarding: (1) the effectiveness and efficiency of alternative clinical interventions and of alternative ways organize the delivery of health care; (2) the needs, values, and preferences in the population; and (3) local circumstances that affect delivery of care across regions. Informational concerns suggest that decentralized structures have greater potential to be efficient. We then briefly discuss some principles for the design of decentralized structures to aid in realizing these potential efficiency gains.

Local government initiative to attract colleges, in spite of being formally excluded from the higher education system, is shown to represent urban entrepreneurialism, in which strategies undertaken -reactive or proactive, competition or co-operation, and means of support -are influenced by location. However, such decentralised forms of local governance do not indicate a diminishing role of the central state, but rather reshape regulation -decisions reflecting greater pluralism, becoming more exposed to external pressures for market-oriented initiatives in high demand locations, and for publicly supported colleges in less attractive locations. Local entrepreneurialism is particularly influential at the intra-regional level, but saturation could emphasise the need to move from local entrepreneurialism to competitive regionalism.

The paper revisits participation and decentralization in relation to local clientelism, arguing that they share the personalization of links between residents and the State and the local possibility to adapt state policies. The line between decentralization-participation on the one hand, and clientelism on the other, is therefore easily blurred. The paper thus argues that clientelism is not per se anti-democratic, some forms allow for local and immediate accountability of politicians. However, in most cases, it contributes to fragment or sedate local organizations or social movements and it prevents contestation of existing policies and dominant power structures. The paper thus challenges the idea that the promotion of decentralization and participatory institutions intrinsically leads to more democratic forms of government. The two stories that follow take place in a low-income inner city neighbourhood of Johannesburg divided into two electoral wards, both marked by significant electoral competition, an exceptional occurrence in Johannesburg prior to the 2008 elections, where the African National Congress (ANC) had a strong majority in most wards. This competition had led, in both wards, to the victory of opposition parties in the 2006 municipal elections: one led by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the other by the Democratic Alliance (DA). While this makes the stories specific, perhaps rendering more visible issues of accountability and clientelism, they are far from exceptional in low-income areas of post-apartheid Johannesburg. Here, we use these stories as emblematic of local political dynamics, 2 as a means to query assumptions made about the relationship between practices of local democracy and clientelism. Story One In this low-income inner-city neighbourhood, the municipal administration wanted to distribute food parcels to the poor – only a limited number were to benefit as resources were scarce. In the name of 'proximity' to the ground and a better knowledge of needy households (of which there were many in the area), the City asked SANCO (South African National Civic Organisation, a major residents' organization in the area 3) to choose the beneficiaries and organise their distribution. It seems that SANCO distributed the parcels to its own members, no less needy than non-members: in a context where poverty is rife and public goods scarce, what legitimate criteria can distinguish those in need, especially for such insignificant public goods? 4 However small these advantages are, they play an important role in residents' everyday hopes, expectations, and tactics. These types of advantages can explain the civic's sustained popularity in the neighbourhood, in spite of many rumours about some level of dishonest practices. One of these, reported by several residents and local leaders, mentions in particular the collection of fees from members in exchange for a promise of access to public housing. 5 Another, more ambiguous in its effect, reports that SANCO, generally known for defending ormer version of a paper published in

Focusing on the case of South Africa, this study examines how decentralisation policies and inter-party politics have affected urban servicedelivery responsibilities and resources. Service delivery does not appear to be worse off in Cape Town than in Johannesburg, even though the former is controlled by the opposition Democratic Alliance. While there have been political attempts to undermine the authority of its officials, the fiscal elements are protected by a relatively strong and well-managed department of finance. Consequently, both donors and the national government steer money towards Cape Town because they know it can deliver on its obligations.

A major obstacle to the provision of health services is lack of an effective workforce. Human resource management (HRM) can improve the effectiveness of the workforce, though this is difficult in large bureaucratic organisations. Decentralisation is a common reform strategy and this ...

While, in theory, decentralisation offers many benefitsincreased efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision, reduced horizontal inequalities, and an associated consolidation of the social contract between states and their citizens, empirical evidence of these benefits remains limited. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Burundi in 2011, this paper argues that the current donor emphasis on institution building alone as a support to the Burundian process proves insufficient. Evidence is presented to show that current support, while consolidating the authority of local political elites, reinforces political and horizontal inequalities thereby paving the way for further disaffection and conflict. Reflecting back to the initial aims of the process, a reorientation in support is proposed, moving the focus beyond elite state actors and institutions and bringing citizens back into the process of state building and transformation.