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"DECENTRALIZATION ACCOUNTABILITY"
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Decentralized governance and accountability : academic research and the future of donor programming
At the end of the twentieth century, academics and policymakers welcomed a trend toward fiscal and political decentralization as part of a potential solution for slow economic growth and poor performance by insulated, unaccountable governments. For the last two decades, researchers have been trying to answer a series of vexing questions about the political economy of multi-layered governance. Much of the best recent research on decentralization has come from close collaborations between university researchers and international aid institutions. As the volume and quality of this collaborative research have increased in recent decades, the time has come to review the lessons from this literature and apply them to debates about future programming. In this volume, the contributors place this research in the broader history of engagement between aid institutions and academics, particularly in the area of decentralized governance, and outline the challenges and opportunities to link evidence and policy action.
Book
Upward and downward accountability in local government: The decentralisation of agricultural extension services in Tanzania
A key assumption behind decentralisation in developing countries is that it enhances the accountability of local government and results in policies that reflect the preferences of the local community. However, previous research shows that local politicians and administrators in many developing countries to a large extent behave as if they were primarily accountable to central government, not local communities. The literature suggests various explanatory factors but does not provide insight into their relative weight and into how different factors interact. This paper combines comparative case-study research with in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with local government politicians and officials involved in the delivery of agricultural extension services in Tanzania. It shows that limited administrative and political decentralisation and centralistic human resources management restrict downward accountability to the community. Downward accountability is also constrained by the social rules that local politicians and administrators observe. For downward accountability to materialise, formal systems of public administration need to introduce incentives to that effect.
Journal Article
Promoting Social Accountability for Equitable Fisheries Within Beach Management Units in Lake Victoria (Kenya)
The decentralisation of resource management through co-management assumes that the devolution of power benefits resource users. This assumption is often premised on the democratic election of leaders within resource user organisations. In this article, we investigate the validity of co-management assumptions about who benefits from a devolution of decision-making power through a case study analysis of political equity in fisherfolk organisations of Beach Management Units (BMUs) in Lake Victoria (Kenya). From the analysis of the distribution of political power, we identify how, where, and for whom greater accountability can work to address the current political inertia of fisherfolk, who form a majority of the BMU membership. We also identify the relationships between the empowerment of fisherfolk, the accountability of the BMU leaders, and the distribution of political power determining decision making in co-management. We conclude with identifying how other mechanisms of social accountability beyond elections can improve accountability of elected leaders of resource users for improved co-management outcomes.
Journal Article
Ecuador : an economic and social agenda in the new millennium
Ecuador has suffered from high external vulnerability, poor macroeconomic performance, and poor governance. A succession of external adversities—linked to the volatility of oil prices and violent variations in capital flows—and natural calamities, all in combination with poor economic management, resulted in macroeconomic imbalances, with negative impact on growth and social development. These deficient economic policies were partly caused by weak and too-often-changing public management, and the governance problems that traditionally characterize oil-producing countries.This book represents an agenda with a broad and integrated vision of economic and social development in Ecuador, and is meant to be informative.
eBook
Multi-level governance
Seeks to develop understanding of the notion of multi‐level governance through a critical exploration of its definitions and applications by scholars with very different concerns within the broad discipline of Political Studies. Despite the different concerns of different authors, four common strands emerge that provide a parsimonious definition of multi‐level governance that raises clear hypotheses for future research. First, that decision‐making at various territorial levels is characterized by the increased participation of non‐state actors. Second, that the identification of discrete or nested territorial levels of decision‐making is becoming more difficult in the context of complex overlapping networks. Third, that in this changing context, the role of the state is being transformed as state actors develop new strategies of coordination, steering and networking that may protect and, in some cases, enhance state autonomy. Fourth, that in this changing context, the nature of democratic accountability has been challenged and need to be rethought or at least reviewed. The book concludes that future research on multi‐level governance should pay particular attention to the implications for democracy of empirical developments and, related to this, to the design of frameworks of accountability that adopt a positive‐sum gain in relation to the accountability versus efficiency debate.
eBook
Decentralization, Democratization, and Informal Power in Mexico
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many countries in Latin America freed themselves from the burden of their authoritarian pasts and developed democratic political systems. At the same time, they began a process of shifting many governmental responsibilities from the national to the state and local levels. Much has been written about how decentralization has fostered democratization, but informal power relationships inherited from the past have complicated the ways in which citizens voice their concerns and have undermined the accountability of elected officials. In this book, Andrew Selee seeks to illuminate the complex linkages between informal and formal power by comparing how they worked in three Mexican cities. The process of decentralization is shown to have been intermediated by existing spheres of political influence, which in turn helped determine how much the institution of multiparty democracy in the country could succeed in bringing democracy “closer to home.”
eBook
Securing federated learning with blockchain: a systematic literature review
Federated learning (FL) is a promising framework for distributed machine learning that trains models without sharing local data while protecting privacy. FL exploits the concept of collaborative learning and builds privacy-preserving models. Nevertheless, the integral features of FL are fraught with problems, such as the disclosure of private information, the unreliability of uploading model parameters to the server, the communication cost, etc. Blockchain, as a decentralized technology, is able to improve the performance of FL without requiring a centralized server and also solves the above problems. In this paper, a systematic literature review on the integration of Blockchain in federated learning was considered with the analysis of the existing FL problems that can be compensated. Through carefully screening, most relevant studies are included and research questions cover the potential security and privacy attacks in traditional federated learning that can be solved by blockchain as well as the characteristics of Blockchain-based FL. In addition, the latest Blockchain-based approaches to federated learning have been studied in-depth in terms of security and privacy, records and rewards, and verification and accountability. Furthermore, open issues related to the combination of Blockchain and FL are discussed. Finally, future research directions for the robust development of Blockchain-based FL systems are proposed.
Journal Article
Decentralization in client countries : an evaluation of the World Bank Support, 1990-2007
The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) assessed the effectiveness of Bank support for decentralization between fiscal 1990 and 2007 in 20 countries, seeking to inform the design and implementation of future support. Given the difficulties of measuring the results of decentralization, the evaluation used intermediate outcome indicatorssuch as strengthened legal and regulatory frameworks for intergovernmental relations, improved administrative capacity, and increased accountability of sub national governments and functionaries to higher levels of government and to citizensto assess the results of Bank support in these 20 countries. To examine potential lessons at a sectoral level, the evaluation also assessed whether Bank support for decentralization improved intermediate outcomes for service delivery in the education sector in 6 of the 20 countries.
eBook
What conditions enable decentralization to improve the health system? Qualitative analysis of perspectives on decision space after 25 years of devolution in the Philippines
Decentralization is promoted as a strategy to improve health system performance by bringing decision-making closer to service delivery. Some studies have investigated if decentralization actually improves the health system. However, few have explored the conditions that enable it to be effective. To determine these conditions, we have analyzed the perspectives of decision-makers in the Philippines where devolution, one form of decentralization, was introduced 25 years ago.
Drawing from the \"decision space\" approach, we interviewed 27 decision-makers with an average of 23.6 years of working across different levels of the Philippine government health sector and representing various local settings. Qualitative analysis followed the \"Framework Method.\" Conditions that either enable or hinder the effectiveness of decentralization were identified by exploring decision-making in five health sector functions.
These conditions include: for planning, having a multi-stakeholder approach and monitoring implementation; for financing and budget allocation, capacities to raise revenues at local levels and pooling of funds at central level; for resource management, having a central level capable of augmenting resource needs at local levels and a good working relationship between the local health officer and the elected local official; for program implementation and service delivery, promoting innovation at local levels while maintaining fidelity to national objectives; and for monitoring and data management, a central level capable of ensuring that data collection from local levels is performed in a timely and accurate manner.
The Philippine experience suggests that decentralization is a long and complex journey and not an automatic solution for enhancing service delivery. The role of the central decision-maker (e.g. Ministry of Health) remains important to assist local levels unable to perform their functions well. It is policy-relevant to analyze the conditions that make decentralization work and the optimal combination of decentralized and centralized functions that enhance the health system.
Journal Article