{"title":"Governing authorities in the same boat and a tale of two schedules: Marius Nel v Hessequa Local Municipality (2015)","authors":"A. D. Plessis, Oliver Fuo","doi":"10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6076","url":null,"abstract":"This article responds to the tension inherent in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 which lists ‘the environment’ proper as a function of national and provincial government. The authors discuss one of the arguments raised in the recently decided case of Marius Nel and Others v Hessequa Local Municipality and Others (2015) with particular emphasis on what the court’s reasoning adds to the growing body of jurisprudence on local government’s authority to govern environmental matters and the need for cooperative environmental governance in the South African context. The article features an overview of the relevant facts and findings in the Hessequa case, followed by a discussion of the implications of the court’s judgment.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"71-82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6076","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70734088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who is responsible? Local government and accountability for service delivery in Kenya’s devolved health sector","authors":"K. Ochieng","doi":"10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6085","url":null,"abstract":"One of the arguments in favour of local governments is their ability to deliver public services better because of their proximity to demand. This is typically achieved through decentralisation – the transfer of some level of formal responsibility, authority and/or resources to smaller, lower tiers of government. This paper examines service delivery in the health sector in Kenya within the context of the country’s newly introduced devolved system of government, which created 47 county governments under the 2010 Constitution. It examines three key responsibilities: i) resource mobilisation, distribution and administration, ii) decision-making, and iii) political accountability, and their bearing on outcomes for delivery of health services. The paper argues that devolution of the health function in Kenya has been only partial, leading to challenges of coordination between the national and county governments and ambiguity over responsibility for service delivery; both factors which risk undermining the opportunities that devolution creates or promises.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"158-171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6085","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44054160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rural policy, rural quangos – searching for clarity in West Dorset, south west England","authors":"Gordon Morris","doi":"10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6022","url":null,"abstract":"The research discussed in this paper arose from the writer’s interest in United Kingdom (UK) rural policy, government and governance. Its aims were to: 1) find out the extent to which the participants in the research, many of whom are involved in UK local government, were aware of the non-governmental advisory and support organisations that, from 1909 until 2013, were involved with rural policy; and 2) establish the loci of influence in relation to aspects of rural policy. The data, gathered from interviews and an online questionnaire, suggests that political influence lies primarily with the Conservative Party, whose elected members run the district and county councils. Other sources of influence include the middle and landed classes. There is ambiguity, however. Some clerks and councillors admitted that they do not know where influence lies; suggesting that they, at least, do not believe it lies with them. Awareness of the organisations is unsurprisingly varied according to the participants’ backgrounds. Overall, the data suggests that the more remote organisations were physically from ‘work on the ground’, and the more years that have passed since their closure, the lower the awareness of their existence and work.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"6022-6022"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43145152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fiscal decentralisation frameworks for Agenda 2030: understanding key issues and crafting strategic reforms","authors":"P. Smoke","doi":"10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6024","url":null,"abstract":"Local and regional governments (LGS) will be important actors in ensuring that the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are translated into action that is tailored to the most pressing needs of their communities. Despite broad recognition of the subnational dimension of the SDGs, the specific roles that LRGs can and should play and the capacities and resources they require have received insufficient official consideration to date. If LRGs are to maximise their developmental impact, countries require robust intergovernmental frameworks and policies that empower, finance, motivate and support local and regional governments and citizens. The paper examines the requirements and options for subnational government finance and provides suggestions for strategic implementation, concluding by linking fiscal decentralisation reforms to the SDGs.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"6024-6024"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44825011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review: Local Government in England: Centralisation, Autonomy and Control by Colin Corpus, Mark Roberts, Rachel Wall","authors":"Jonathan Carr-West","doi":"10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6021","url":null,"abstract":"Local Government in England: Centralisation, Autonomy and Control is a serious book and an important contribution to the scholarship around local government. It opens however, with a pleasingly comic tableau as academics from England, Portugal and Poland bicker amiably at a conference and on Twitter about whose country is really the most centralised. The rest of the book is devoted to showing why the English academics were right, why it matters and what should be done about it. \u0000 \u0000The main thrust of the text is an analysis of the impact of the dominant policy narratives around centralism and localism. The argument that Copus, Wall and Roberts put forward could be boiled down to the assertion that the problem with local government in England is that it is neither local nor government. But to make this case they first helpfully unpack several sets of concepts that are all too often elided together.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"6021-6021"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44753910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review: Directly Elected Mayors in Urban Governance: Impact and Practice edited by David Sweeting","authors":"A. Walker","doi":"10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6020","url":null,"abstract":"The introduction of directly elected mayors is one of the most significant recent developments in the structure of governance of the UK. The first mayor of London was elected in 2000, and the model has spread slowly but surely to other cities across the country, with varying powers and parameters attached. \u0000 \u0000In May 2017 there were elections in six English city-regions for directly elected metro mayors. These new positions as figureheads of combined authorities were a prerequisite of the transfer of powers from Whitehall arranged by George Osborne when he was at the treasury. \u0000 \u0000Mayoral roles and responsibilities are fairly clearly defined and circumscribed in legislation and the contractual arrangements with government, but there are still plenty of unknowns within what is a novel form of governance and power in the UK. David Sweeting’s volume is a timely and useful guide to the issues and argument. It takes a number of the key debates around the salience of directly elected mayors in urban governance and fleshes them out with useful case studies that look in-depth at cities around the world.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"6020-6020"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CJLG.V0I20.6020","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48723536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women’s local government representation in Auckland – does size matter?","authors":"K. Webster, J. McGregor","doi":"10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6023","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines women’s local government representation following amalgamation to form a super-sized city authority, Auckland, which covers a third of New Zealand’s population. Using a gender perspective, it analyses the promise implicit in amalgamation rhetoric that democratic gaps in representation, including the gender gap, would diminish. It examines the question of whether size has made a difference. Prior to local government amalgamation, women’s representation had not significantly increased over a period of seven election cycles. Women’s descriptive and substantive representation are examined at national and city levels and the gendered implications of local government reform are considered from the perspectives of female elected representatives at councillor and local board levels. Evidence shows that local government reform has yet to be the catalyst for improving women’s descriptive and substantive representation, although there are tentative signs of entry-level improvement at community board level which raise the prospect of a pipeline effect. Interviews with elected female representatives after amalgamation show that while they do not identify themselves as speaking for women, they see themselves as women speaking for their communities and doing it better than men. The results suggest the influence of gender backlash politics and also confirm the need to think about the performance of elected women as more than ‘articulated’ representation.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"6023-6023"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/cjlg.v0i20.6023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43748393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Australian local governments and the early national broadband network roll-out: an online survey","authors":"T. Alizadeh, H. Shearer","doi":"10.5130/CJLG.V0I19.5448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CJLG.V0I19.5448","url":null,"abstract":"A recent decision by the Australian Federal Government to reassess the scale of the National Broadband Network (NBN) will leave the country with a patchwork of different levels of access to the infrastructure. This intensifies the need to investigate and evaluate the implications of telecommunication at the local level. The paper opens a discussion on the different approaches taken by local government authorities towards the NBN in the early roll-out localities. Building upon the international literature, it analyses the empirical data collected from the Australian local governments involved with the early NBN roll-out using an online survey. The findings reveal an interesting diversity in the approaches taken at the local level, and show how decision-making at higher levels of government can impact local outcomes.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"40-57"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CJLG.V0I19.5448","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41623935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mind the gap: Australian local government reform and councillors’ understandings of their roles","authors":"S. Tan, A. Morris, Bligh Grant","doi":"10.5130/CJLG.V0I19.5447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CJLG.V0I19.5447","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last two decades a feature of local government reforms globally has been the introduction of New Public Management (NPM). Under this broad approach to public administration there is an expectation that councillors play a greater strategic role and move away from involvement in day-to-day management. This research, carried out in the state of Victoria, Australia, examines councillors’ understandings of their roles. Based on 17 in-depth interviews and two focus groups, we found that despite the evolving legislative requirements framing councillors as policymakers not managers, most councillors continued to seek involvement in the day-to-day management of councils. We argue that this gap may be linked to the diversity of views concerning the role of the councillor and the idea of representation and how both play out at the local level. It may also signal a lack of awareness as to how the legislatively inscribed role for councillors has changed over time.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"19-39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CJLG.V0I19.5447","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48161230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Provincial–regional ANC politics in the Northern Cape: corruption or everyday informal practices?","authors":"Thina Nzo","doi":"10.5130/cjlg.v0i19.5490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/cjlg.v0i19.5490","url":null,"abstract":"Research over the last decade on local government in South Africa has highlighted that some municipal councils under the political leadership of the Africa National Congress (ANC) have shown weak political leadership, coupled with strong patronage systems, rent-seeking and corruption which have had an impact on the institutional functionality of municipalities in South Africa. Although patronage politics have been predominantly used to analyse the dynamics of post-apartheid local government ANC politics and councillor representation, this prevents us from understanding the representational focus of ANC councillors in decision-making processes. This paper offers an ethnographic insight into experiences of ANC councillors and the political complexities involved in council decision-making. Using ethnographic research, this paper will analyse how a political decision by the ANC provincial party, which was supported by the ANC regional party at local level – to erect a statue of Nelson Mandela in one of the municipalities in the Northern Cape – generated tensions amongst ANC councillors who strongly viewed their primary role as promoters of better ‘service delivery’ rather than approving the allocation of scarce municipal resources for erecting a statue. The paper reveals how the dominant presence of ANC sub-regional structures at local level contribute to the complex interaction of both ANC party political and municipal organisational rules and norms that influence and shape councillors’ choices in decision-making.","PeriodicalId":43511,"journal":{"name":"Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance","volume":"1 1","pages":"96-118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/cjlg.v0i19.5490","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48804781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}