scholarly journals Taking stock of Rwanda’s decentralisation: changing local governance in a post-conflict environment

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Benjamin Chemouni
Keyword(s):  
Local Governance ◽  
Post Conflict

Evolving local government in post conflict South Africa: Where to?

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 710-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
PS Reddy
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
South African ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
African State ◽  
Main Role ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Role Players ◽  
Basic Functions

Protracted negotiations between the main role-players steered in the new South African state on 27 April 1994 and final Constitution, 1996 , which constitutionalised local government. A cursory analysis points to some municipalities which are pockets of excellence; however, local government generally is in ‘distress’. Local communities are rapidly losing confidence in the system as the majority of municipalities are unable to discharge even basic functions. Local government has been characterised by violent service delivery protests; abuse of political power and increasing corruption; financial challenges; poor infrastructure planning/maintenance/investment; political strife and factionalism and staff turbulence. Despite governmental interventions to improve local governance, there are still major constraints hampering good governance, namely political posturing and factionalism; corruption; lawlessness and poor service delivery, symptomatic of virtually all post conflict states. Good local governance is an integral part of post conflict reconstruction and development and is key to building a new local government dispensation.

scholarly journals Effect of Imposed Self-Governance on Irrigation Rules Design among Horticultural Producers in Peri-Urban Kenya

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6883
Author(s):  
Mwangi Joseph Kanyua
Keyword(s):  
Deviant Behavior ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Irrigation Management ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Management Regime ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Resource Condition ◽  
Industrial Water Demand

While high urban vegetable demand has driven unprecedented intensification of small private irrigation in peri-urban Kenya, absence of appropriate local governance mechanisms has necessitated interventions by concerned state agencies. Based on Ostrom’s design principles for sustainable commons, this paper evaluates the robustness of the irrigation management regime emanating from involuntary self-governance among peri-urban farmers. Findings show that since conflicts were fueled by water scarcity peaks corresponding with market price peaks, the interventions overemphasized facilitating water sharing among users. With conflicting users viewed as the problem by the agency, their experiences with the resource system, existing social structures, and resource use dynamics causing conflicts were largely ignored in the change process. Consequently, narrowly focused use rules that failed to properly define important resource parameters resulted. Further, user drawing rights have no significant input requirement, monitoring of water resource condition and sanctioning of deviant behavior are overlooked due to a lack of sufficient social capital and commitment to the collective establishment. Although inherent conflicts signify high economic valuation of water access by users, the lack of local ownership of the transition process made the policy interventions fail to produce rules that can guarantee sustainable irrigation development in an environment characterized by intensive irrigation and agrochemicals application, and growing domestic and industrial water demand. Therefore, recognizing water as a commercial input, recognizing conflicting users and their experiences as an essential solution, and integrating them in a participatory manner in subsequent institutional change is deemed necessary for effective governance in the post-conflict setup.

Trust and Prospective Reconciliation: Evidence From a Protracted Armed Conflict

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-315
Author(s):  
Andrés Casas-Casas ◽  
Nathalie Mendez ◽  
Juan Federico Pino
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
The Impact

Traditional approaches to international aid deal with post-conflict risks focusing on external safeguards for peacebuilding, leaving local social enhancers playing a subsidiary role. Trust has long been highlighted as a key factor that can positively affect sustainable peace efforts by reducing intergroup hostility. Surprisingly, most post-conflict studies deal with trust as a dependent variable. Using a cross-sectional multi-method field study in Colombia, we assess the impact of trust on prospective reconciliation in the midst of an ongoing peace process. We find that trust in ex-combatants and in government increases the likelihood of having positive attitudes towards future reconciliation and willingness to support not only the peace process but reconciliation activities after war. We offer evidence supporting the idea that rather than drawing exclusively on economic and military capabilities, investing in local governance infrastructures that promote prosocial behaviour and positive belief management in the pre-reconciliation face offers a complementary alternative to help societies exit civil wars while tackling barriers to peacebuilding efforts in the initial stages of a post-conflict.

Colombia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donny Meertens
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Land Distribution ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
History Of ◽  
Successes And Challenges ◽  
Land Restitution

Using Colombia as a case study, this chapter focuses on women and land rights in post-conflict societies. It begins with a brief history of land rights for women in Colombia both before and during the conflict and explores the roots of Colombia’s protracted armed conflict in unequal land distribution policies and peasant exploitation. The chapter describes challenges associated with land restitution in Colombia through an examination of the successes and challenges of the Victims and Land Restitution Law. It focuses on gendered obstacles related to security and local governance, the general informality in land tenure, and patriarchal practices and culture in rural society. The chapter closes with a call for an increased focus on women’s economic and social rights in transitional societies and articulates a vision of restitution laws as having the potential for transformative, forward-looking change.

scholarly journals Transitional Local Governance and Minority Political Participation in Post War Sri Lanka

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Esther M. McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
National Level ◽  
Northern Province ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War

In 2011, two years after the end of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war that spanned three decades, there were more than 600,000  Tamil minority citizens in the country’s Northern Province eligible to vote in local government elections, which took place for the first time since 1998 . The Sri Lankan Tamils, the country’s largest minority group, make up 15.9% of the total population and are geographically concentrated in the northern province where they make up 93% of the population. The northern province looms large in the contemporary socio-political history of Sri Lanka. It was not only the physical battleground between the state’s army and the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but is symbolic of an ideational clash about how the state should deal with ethnic difference (De Silva 1996; Uyangoda 2007).  The defeat of the secessionist LTTE which formerly administered  parts of the northern province combine with the state’s preference for a unitary and centralized structure, suggests that it is now in the realist parameters of decentralized local spaces that the elected representatives of Tamil minorities must realize the ideals of local self-government, facilitate the complex needs of minority citizens and engage the Sinhalese-Buddhist nation state. This paper analyses several key acts, the National Policy on Local Government (2009) combined with secondary and empirical research to explore the political underpinnings of decentralization. It argues that understanding the multiple and complex ways in which minority citizens interact with, and participate in, political processes is fundamental to understanding the practice of local representation and self-government at the sub-national level, and within the wider polity of post war Sri Lanka. It contributes to the paucity of empirical research on post-conflict local governance transitions (Shou and Haug 2005, Jackson and Scott, 2006).

scholarly journals APPLICATION OF THE “SMART-CITY” CONCEPT TO THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPHERES OF CITY LIFE IN THE POST-CONFLICT TERRITORIES OF UKRAINE

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
L.O. Zhylinska ◽  
◽  
H.Yu. Kucherova ◽  
O.V. Tarasevych ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
National Development ◽  
City Management ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
City Life ◽  
Mobile Access ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Status

The issues of restoration and development of living conditions in post-conflict territories through the application of the concept of “SMART-city” are highlighted. The effectiveness of the SMART approach to local governance and the promotion of dynamic urban development has been proven. To determine the feasibility of applying the development of the concept of “SMART-city” to the tasks of restoration and development of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the problematic issues and conditions in which their life processes take place are highlighted. A schematic representation of the logical interrelationships of the structural elements of the concept of Smart city of directions of restoration, development of spheres of life of cities in post-conflict territories is presented. It was determined that the concept of “SMART-city” is based on the interaction of 6 basic structural elements: smart economy, mobile access, smart environment, smart housing, progressive people, modern management, which fully ensures a guaranteed solution to the problems of restoration and development of the spheres of life of cities on post-conflict territories. It has been determined that the processes of implementation and development of the “SMART-city” concept are only gaining momentum around the world, therefore, modern strategic documents of territorial and national development should be revised in terms of integration and correlation with the principles of “SMART-cities” development. Some available mechanisms for implementing the Smart city concept are given. It is argued that the orientation of city management towards the concept of “SMART-city” will allow changing the status of territories from post-conflict and subsidized to “smart” without going through intermediate stages of recovery and development, which, on the one hand, requires much more funding, on the other, minimizes the time spent on recovery and will accelerate the receipt of future income, expand development prospects.

The generational contract in flux: intergenerational tensions in post-conflict Sierra Leone

2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Boersch-Supan
Keyword(s):  
Local Governance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
Generational Groups ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Social Cleavage ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

ABSTRACTIntergenerational solidarity and reciprocity are fundamental building blocks of any society. Simultaneously, socio-generational groups constantly struggle for influence and authority. In Africa, disproportionately male, gerontocratic and patrimonial systems governing economic, social and political life lend a special explosiveness to the social cleavage of generation. This paper draws on the concept of the generational contract to explore whether Sierra Leone's civil war – labelled a ‘revolt of youth’ – catalysed changes in the power asymmetries between age groups. I argue that youth question fundamental norms of intergenerational relations, and challenge local governance structures demanding changes to the generational contract. Amidst a strong continuity of gerontocratic dominance and counter-strategies from elders, youth draw on organisational forms and a local human rights discourse to create spaces for contestation and negotiation. These openings hold potential for long-term rearrangements of societal relations.

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