UNCDF Working Paper
Policy & Institutional Analysis & Programming
Strategies
Annexe Note 1
Corporate Local Government Bodies & Development Committees - Implications
Prefectural Regimes: "Deconcentration Plus Consultation"
In many countries an alternative to - even a substitute for - democratic local government is constituted by a local administration controlled by a centrally appointed Governor, Prefect or District Commissioner: this is often referred to as the Prefectural model.
The Prefect will be the supreme authority at his/her level. He/she generally works with some form of "consultative" or "coordinating" body (such as a "Provincial Development Committee"), usually comprised of a mix of local department heads, often with other nominated persons representing various local interests.
Such arrangements may often appear attractively "apolitical" (though this is often misleading); indeed in many countries it may be the only form of local administration with which to work. But there are major drawbacks:
- Weak local accountability. Such appointed arrangements represent a very weakened form of local accountability - when interests conflict, accountability is more likely to be "upwards" to the appointing authority. Responsiveness to local demands for service provision is also correspondingly weakened.
- Undermining of potential/emergent local government. Historically, very often such "deconcentrated" arrangements have been used by central authorities either (a) to preempt the need for moves toward real democratic devolution and/or (b) to undermine pre-existing elected local authorities, particularly when these are in (actual or potential) opposition to the central regime (e.g. see Kenya District Focus, Tanzania from 1973-82, and Malawi before 1994).
- Weak coordinating powers. Under such arrangements, while these mixed bodies may be given authority to allocate special investment budgets, line departments generally continue to manage their own recurrent budgets; this greatly undermines the extent to which the deconcentrated authority can effect real inter-departmental coordination of resource allocation at the local level. It also greatly weakens their role as service providers, particularly in sectors such as health or education where recurrent budget and staff management is so important.
Further, such arrangements to some extent run into the problems highlighted further below, consequent to their lack of autonomous legal status.
Significance of Corporate Body Status
This is to some extent a corollary of the point above. It is important to ascertain that local government has a corporate status defined in the Constitution (the strongest guarantee), or by parliamentary legislation - in other words that it can enter into contractual arrangements with third parties and, at least in principle, sue or be sued (such status of course will almost inevitably accompany the statutory establishment of local government authority).
The implications go well beyond what might be considered an Anglo-Saxon fixation with issues of legal redress. Without such status it is practically very difficult for the local institution to be entrusted direct responsibility for the range of activities which accompany basic service provision: i.e. to engage in staff employment, contracting, financial resource or recurrent budget management, etc..
Consequently, these bodies can generally do little more than plan for investment budgets. The other tasks related to service provision must fall back onto other bodies with legal status, typically central or deconcentrated government line departments, whose line of accountability is ultimately upward and not downward.
Consequently, a purely administrative body such as a development committee is a weaker institutional channel for service delivery than an autonomous local government body because of various "institutional splits:"
- local accountability is undermined because of an institutional split between investment decisions and subsequent investment management, recurrent budget management and service provision responsibilities
- coordination and efficiency is undermined because of the split between investment decisions and recurrent budget management and staff deployment functions.
In other words, the lack of legal personality which almost inevitably characterises such "administrative" arrangements, while apparently a mere contingent detail, is a very serious constraint to efficient and accountable service provision.
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Typically, the consultative or coordinating administrative arrangements ("Development Committees") which are established to assist deconcentrated authorities in many countries lack corporate status and thus fall foul of the problem noted above - e.g. see the Provincial Rural Development Committees in Cambodia, District Development Committees in Malawi and Kenya (set up in opposition to District Councils), and Thana Development Coordination Committees (which replaced Upazila local government) in Bangladesh. For lack of clear independent legal status such a body cannot itself assume real execution responsibility for programme implementation or for service provision. It can only plan and allocate limited investment resources. This is a severe limitation in key service sectors such as health and education, where personnel deployment and recurrent budget management is far more critical to service delivery than capital investment,. This said, it may still be preferable to other local institutional options, and where there is as yet no local government, it may represent an embryo from which this can be built. Equally, it may be a pretext for not instituting local government at all. |
