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SUMMARYIn spite of the great enthusiasm and arguments supporting decentralization in Africa, its performance has frequently fallen well below expectations. However, a number of self‐initiated, local governance efforts have been quite successful. The article finds that all governance initiatives face a number of collective action problems that they must overcome to succeed. These include issues of collective choice, free riding, principal–agency, and constitutional design. The article explores two cases of locally initiated self‐governance initiatives where smaller population size, the ability to focus on only a few services, and the ability flexibly to redesign their institutions were important in their success in overcoming these governance challenges. In one case, challenge by and negotiation with formal governance institutions furthered their success. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractAlthough Many African states have pursued substantial decentralization reforms in the previous twenty years, many of these reforms are still experiencing problems in bringing about effective local governance. Often these problems grow from the difficulty in translating general reform initiatives into specific working arrangements at the local level that are effective in several key processes and operations. Specifically these include planning and capital investment, budgeting and fiscal management, personnel systems and management, and finance and revenue. A combination of central reluctance to relinquish authority in these key areas and the complexity of organizational redesign to support decentralization seem to explain these problems. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The political revolution of contemporary Africa has so far largely been
limited to the centre and to re-establishing the same institutional forms and
processes which failed Africa in the 1960s. These regimes are already showing
signs of erosion. This problem can be understood through the theory of
public goods. Key collective or 'public' goods problems impede the collective
action necessary for institutional development. Top-down strategies cannot
surmount these problems because they cannot integrate and unify the population
or structure consensual and sustained collective action.As currently constituted, national levels of government in Africa will be
poor partners with local communities in development, be it of democracy or
of the economy. In many cases, national regimes only exist at all because
minimal contributing sets or political monopolists controlled, were given, or
mobilised the resources to establish constituting rule systems which they used
to sustain their existing relative advantages during the break-up of imperial
systems. As this advantage is usually at the expense of the majority which
lives outside the capitals, resources and policies to improve these areas are
slow in coming. The slow, bottom-up process by which a true public constitution
is built, one which reflects and elaborates generally held values, is
built on existing political relationships, and protects social diversity, has
never been allowed to develop.Refounding the African state must resolve these problems if it is to succeed.
Ethnically and religiously diverse peoples will rule themselves better under
federal and consociational systems which give local leaders space to lead local
institutional development, authority to play a role in national governance, a
process to develop consensus on central policy and to check the centre when
there is no consensus. This requires a foundation of viable, real, developed
structures of local governance if it is to succeed.

AbstractAs we enter the 1990s, scholars and practitioners of development administration in the Third World share a deep concern with its disappointing performance. Looked to as the primary agent of modernization during the optimistic first days of independence, many now blame it for the development stagnation of much of the Third World over the past two decades. Reinforced by the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe, calls for privatization and radical cutbacks in the state are increasing. Indeed, while the causes of Third World development stagnation are undoubtedly multiple and diverse, it is difficult to refute the charge that the hierarchical, bureaucratic, centrally‐led strategy has not achieved what was expected of it. The question which faces responsible and concerned scholars, practitioners and officials today, is what can and should be done about all this? This paper recommends avoiding grand and precipitous changes in organizational strategies: indiscriminate privatization and dismantling the state, it argues, would be just as much an error as the earlier whole‐cloth commitment to centralist‐bureaucratic organization. Instead it argues that theoretical and analytical tools effective in making more subtle and refined choices among institutional alternatives must be developed. It presents a preliminary analysis of one strategy which might offer this, and illustrates how it can be used to design organizations more likely successfully to deliver services and sustain investments in the Third World.

Vergleich zwischen zentralistischen und dezentralen Strategien und Organisationsformen im Kontext von Infrastrukturvorhaben; beide Formen haben enttäuschende Ergebnisse gebracht. Der Verfasser schlägt als Alternative vor, das Individuum künftig stärker zu beachten und sich auf die Analyse der Faktoren zu konzentrieren, die als Leistungsanreize bzw. als -hemmnisse auf die Menschen wirken, die in einer Organisation tätig sind. (APAF-Glz)