Local Government Law, Development and Cross-border Trade in the Global Cities of SADC

Pieterse Marius ()
Additional contact information
Pieterse Marius: School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Yale road, Braamfontein, Johannesburg2050, South Africa

The Law and Development Review, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 127-157

Abstract: The ways in which cities function and are governed matter economically. While the growing literature on ‘global cities’ shows that city governments often pursue economic competitiveness, not much work has been done on whether the formal powers and competencies of cities and towns, as well as the ways in which these are wielded, are conducive to the achievement of developmental and socio-economic objectives. This article considers the interactions and interdependencies between local government law, urban governance, developmental objectives and formal as well as informal cross-border trade between cities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. While supporting increased devolution of local government powers, it cautions that cities of SADC must take care to wield their powers in ways that ensure the economic flourishing of the majority of their inhabitants. In particular, this requires a change of mindset in relation to the municipal regulation of informal economic activity.

Keywords: local government law; urban governance; international trade; informal trade; SADC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ldr-2019-0055 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:lawdev:v:13:y:2020:i:1:p:127-157:n:7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ldr/html

DOI: 10.1515/ldr-2019-0055

Access Statistics for this article

The Law and Development Review is currently edited by Yong-Shik Lee

More articles in The Law and Development Review from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().