Contemporary local governance and indigenous institutions: the case of the Sidaama, Southern Ethiopia*

ABSTRACT In the contemporary world, enormous changes and improvement are taking place in governance practices throughout the world. Democratic decentralization, in particular, has become a serious concern in many countries, especially in developing countries like Ethiopia. Successive Ethiopian governments have introduced and implemented modern governance system. This happened despite the existence of indigenous institutions which have been playing an indispensable role in guiding the social-political lives of the societies, especially for the rural area communities in filling the gap of the formal state institutions. Given the limitations of modern institutions, relying on traditional institutions could be an attractive option to improve local governance. This is because, when compared with state institutions, traditional institutions do not need to build from the beginning. At the local level creating new and efficient state institutions can be difficult and costly and time-consuming. Accordingly, the qualitative research methodology was employed in the study for its appropriateness to investigate indigenous institutions and local governance by collecting practical evidence from Sidaama province. Eventually, the findings of the study revealed that properly employing indigenous institutions are good mechanisms for improving the performance of formal local governance institutions in the study area.