Iron Houses in the Tropical Heat: Decentralization Reforms in Africa and their Consequences

Erk, Jan

doi:10.1080/13597566.2015.1114921

Cited by 20 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Given the scholarship which demonstrates how institutional culture persists over time, it is important to further investigate the role of modern-day sub-national institutions (Tabellini, 2008;North, 1990;Young, 1994;La Porta et al, 1999;Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012). Second, over the past two decades, many African states have been undergoing an accelerated process of devolution (see Bratton, 2012;Erk, 2015). While the experience of different African states has been diverse (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quality of Sub-national Government and Regional Development in Africa

Iddawela

Lee

Rodríguez‐Pose

2021

The Journal of Development Studies

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Despite widespread interest in government quality and economic development, the role of sub-national government has been largely overlooked. This represents an omission in Africa, given ongoing processes of devolution in much of the continent. In this article, we consider the impact of sub-national government institutions on economic development in 356 regions across 22 African countries. We create a novel index of sub-national government quality based on large-scale survey data and assess its impact on regional economies using satellite data on night light luminosity. To address causality concerns, we instrument subnational government quality with data from pre-colonial societies. Our results show a positive and significant relationship between sub-national government quality and regional economic development, even when controlling for the quality of national level institutions. Better subnational governments are a powerful but often overlooked determinant of development in Africa.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quality of Sub-national Government and Regional Development in Africa

Iddawela

Lee

Rodríguez‐Pose

2021

The Journal of Development Studies

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“…Problematically, however, it is not simply that context has been ignored or depoliticized in the international circuit of development reforms-and in particular decentralization-exported to Africa, but that context is itself has been often blamed for the failures of such reforms. This point is made forcefully by Erk who argues that the contextual environments into which reforms have been introduced in Africa since the 1990s are often pinpointed as the drivers for the failures of reforms-an ex-post consideration of context which centers blame on the "recipients", as opposed to an ex-ante one, which would more appropriately point to the failures of reform advocates to consider contextual realities and histories to begin with (Erk, 2015(Erk, , 2014. Others too note how "good governance" is often cited as the missing ingredient in the implementation of decentralization reforms across the African continent.…”

Section: Political Fidelities Clashing With Reform Rationalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legacies of mistrust

Carolini

Hess

2021

plaNext

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National authorities across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa have implemented various forms of fiscal decentralization over the past three decades with equivocal results. The design of such reforms has long rested on theories based on the experiences of high-income countries’ efforts at increasing local autonomy, accountability, and basic service efficiencies. Critics of the global advocacy for fiscal decentralization, however, point to several challenges with its implementation across diverse political economies that differ significantly from those in high-income environments. Nonetheless, these critiques often obscure the impact that colonial regimes and their legacies have on current efforts to fiscally decentralize. In two post-colonial environments where fiscal decentralization projects have unrolled, namely Mozambique and Mexico, we show how colonial imprints remain critical to understanding efforts at fiscal decentralization. Our focus in these cases is on how race-based caste systems introduced under colonial administrations fed the development and evolution of dual governance systems across spaces and peoples that bred mistrust between residents, local authorities and central authorities. We argue that the conflicting rationales in evidence between stakeholders involved in fiscal decentralization projects today are rooted in the social mistrust and power struggles born from these colonial experiences. In conclusion, we contend that fiscal decentralization reforms must explicitly grapple with these spatialized and racialized legacies of mistrust and the diverse rationalities guiding stakeholders in both the design and evaluation of public policies meant to strengthen local autonomy, transparency, and efficiencies.

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“…In contrast, a decentralized system of government can encourage experimentation and innovation as individual jurisdictions are largely free to try new approaches to public policy (De Visser, 2005: 24). The advantage of decentralizing policy choices to local governments is that several different policies can be considered simultaneously, in the process uncovering new ways to accelerate the realization of development goals; or as the introduction to this special issue puts it, "turning local governments into laboratories of policy-making and implementation" (Erk, 2015).…”

Section: The Promises Of Decentralizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lesson then seems selfevident: when designing decentralization programmes, it is crucial to include an adequate consideration of the contextual political, economic and social environment. As the introduction to this special issue argues, we might otherwise end up with "iron houses in the tropical heat" (Erk, 2015). Questions of this nature which seek responsive crafting of policies to the local environment are still relevant to present-day democratic decentralization reforms in Africa.…”

Section: The Promises Of Decentralizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralization in Africa and the Resilience of Traditional Authorities: Evaluating Zimbabwe's Track Record

Chigwata

2015

Regional & Federal Studies

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This paper looks at one of the most important endogenous factors influencing the workings of decentralization in Zimbabwe. Successive waves of formal institutional change that took place during Zimbabwe's colonial and post-colonial history have been unable able to uproot the influence of traditional leaders. Due to their home-grown legitimacy, various traditional authorities continue to play an ever-present role in the lives of people in rural areas. But, as it is the case throughout most of Africa, the powers of traditional leaders have mostly been uncodified under modern law and these power relations tend to be rather informal and culturally inaccessible to most outsiders. Consequently, the scholarly literature has not been able to systematically acknowledge their pervasive influence. The article concludes with a reflection on how the influence of traditional authorities can be translated into the democratic and progressive empowerment of rural populations in the developing world.

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Iron Houses in the Tropical Heat: Decentralization Reforms in Africa and their Consequences

Cited by 20 publications

References 23 publications

Quality of Sub-national Government and Regional Development in Africa

Quality of Sub-national Government and Regional Development in Africa

Legacies of mistrust

Decentralization in Africa and the Resilience of Traditional Authorities: Evaluating Zimbabwe's Track Record

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