Contributions from
the Column
InWEnt Forum

Public service: Working for commun welfare

Private-sector growth in Africa


8-9/2006		  

[ Local governance ]

“Focussing only on individuals won’t do”

In many developing countries, the public sector must be professionalised and stabilised, especially at the municipal level. Often, laws that devolve powers from the central government are well designed, but not well enforced.


[ Interview with Eugen Kaiser ]

What are the major problems that South-African decision-makers face in municipal affairs? InWEnt is deeply involved there.
Our partners in South Africa face a number of problems, from the lack of management capacity to the lack of funds to huge expectations of the people. People are waiting for their standard of living to rise after years of democratisation and decentralisation. The main concern is provision of crucial services – be it water, schools or health-care facilities. If no progress is seen in these areas, frustration grows. In other words, when municipal affaires are handled too ineffectively, the entire political system can be destabilised. And that is not only true of South Africa.

The legitimacy of the state depends on local governments?
Exactly. The local level is where citizens truly have contact with their state. They judge it in terms of whether the services they need are provided where they live. This is especially so after major political upheavals have occurred. People want to see progress. This is why the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development explicitly calls for decentralisation in its “Africa profile”.

You say that the fiscal situation of South African cities and villages is often problematic. But don’t municipal administrations all over the world complain about lack of funds? They certainly do in Germany.
Yes, but from a very different set of expectations. In Germany, we have created a completely different base for infrastructure requirements in decades of local self-administration. For instance, citizens in Germany are willing to spend quite a bit on local fees and levies. You are quite right that municipal administrations everywhere face tight budgets. And that is exactly why it is so important that citizens understand what efficiency is about, and be willing to play their part. Unfortunately, this does not go without saying in developing countries.

I don’t think fees and levies are really the main issue. Don’t local authorities in Germany depend on federal funding?
Yes, they do. But the revenue they generate independently, to a great extent, boosts their ability to act on their own. Unfortunately, local decision-makers in many poor countries do not seem interested in making use of such options. Instead, they demand money from the national government or external donors. Naturally, the policies they can then pursue on that base are anything but sustainable. Moreover, there is a rampant propensity to evade taxes. Citizens who do not experience the state as a valuable partner in their home town will hardly be prepared to finance it.

Do local politicians in developing countries enjoy the leeway they need? In colonies, governors generally decided everything themselves. After colonies became independent, national governments often carried on in that mould.
Well, decentralisation law is fairly well advanced in a number of our partner countries. Tasks and mandates are increasingly being devolved from national governments to local and regional bodies. That is not only so in South Africa, but also in a lot of other countries. But while the laws themselves are not that bad, they are often poorly enforced for a lack of political will at the central level. After all, that is still where important decisions are ultimately made…

... for instance, on how taxes are collected and revenue allocated. Let’s face it: it is typical of national governments to use their budgets in support of local administrations headed by their own parties, whereas they attempt to starve off the opposition parties’ centres of power.
You are quite right. A democratic culture will never be installed overnight. It has to grow. All relevant actors have to develop an understanding of their tasks and mandates – and that goes beyond immediate power considerations. That is why we do not only work at the municipal level when we want to promote local capacity-building. We also talk to political leaders and legislators who are, so to speak, involved in decentralisation from the top.

How do you reach out to these partners?
In various ways. One of InWEnt’s interesting instruments is staging regional-dialogue events. In fall, we will be holding a conference with policy-makers from 16 sub-Saharan countries. The conference will be devoted to fiscal decentralisation. How can we design that? How can national-level politicians check whether things are running smoothly at the local level? What methods of revenue sharing have proven useful elsewhere? These are questions the people affected are quite interested in. We have invited top-level policy-makers from the ministries of finance, the ministries of local administration as well as municipal leaders and their pressure groups. Such conferences help to define and enforce governance standards.

That sounds great. But we know from Germany that federal and state governments try again and again to pass on tasks to the municipal level, which lacks appropriate funds. For years, that was what the debate on welfare reform in Germany was about.
Right, and we address such frictions. In Germany, city and village administrations have long since established national associations of local authorities to handle such matters. Our partner countries similarly need that kind of pressure groups; otherwise, local administrations will never have the influence on the central government they need to get their own jobs done. We can help partners set up such structures because we do not only work on building capacities individually. Rather, we advise our partner institutions on strategy and on human-resource needs. Moreover, we involve many other important players in political discourse.

Corruption is a problem in any society, and it is often especially widespread at the local level.
There is that risk. And that is why we need to make sure that decentralisation does not stop in city halls. Participation and transparency are crucial elements for good local governance. The discussion on good governance often focuses on the federal level, but that does not suffice. Capacity building cannot but benefit from competent local-affairs journalism. In addition, committees and initiatives that involve citizens directly are also very important. For instance, South Africa has Ward Committees, which are neighbourhood committees that mediate between citizens and administrative bodies. This is especially important in poor neighbourhoods. The South African law on local administration appropriately specifies that such committees be set up.

But didn’t you just say that laws that are good in theory are often only poorly enforced in practice?
Yes, I did; and that is exactly why citizen participation is so important. It takes a long time to set up administrations that perform their duties well. There is a number of political obstacles. For instance, new mayors tend to fire the staff hired by their predecessors and replace them with “their own” people. The people affected probably feel more personal loyalty to “their” mayor than to the citizens they are actually supposed to serve. The public sector not only needs to be professionalised, but also stabilised.

Is there no competition for qualified professionals working in local administrations?
Yes, there is – and that can become a problem itself when you are trying to train local officials to do their work well. Job conditions are often more attractive in authorities higher up in the hierarchy, so it is easy for them to poach the best local officials. Again and again, we see people we have trained move on into the ministerial bureaucracies. In principle, that is fine, if they do their jobs well. But the municipal bodies that originally employed them will, at best, only benefit indirectly from their training. Again and again, these cases prove that, in capacity building, focussing only on individuals simply won’t do.

Questions by Hans Dembowski.


Eugen Kaiser
directs the InWEnt Department for the Promotion of Democracy and Administrative Reform.
eugen.kaiser@inwent.org