Reconfiguring local governance and community participation in South Africa and Botswana

Kedibone Phago and Keneilwe Molosi-France

Local Economy, 2018, vol. 33, issue 7, 740-756

Abstract: While the questions of governance and community participation are distinct, their operationalisation in the context of local government is not always mutually exclusive. As a result, issues of governance and community participation have continued to be of interest in most developing countries. For local government as an important sub-national government structure within the Southern African Development Community, there are a myriad of both opportunities and problems associated with the decentralisation of their powers. This article argues for a need to reconfigure governance and community participatory models so as to maintain the relevance of local government structures in African countries. Anstein’s public participation model is propounded for the purpose of analysing these participation models. Embedded in the discussion is the legislative and functional consideration regarding configuration and governance of local government. The examination of the ward committees in South Africa and village development committees in Botswana as institutionalised and legitimate participatory fora for local community members remains a key focus. In the final analysis, an analogue and critique regarding opportunities and challenges for local governance and participation issues in South Africa and Botswana are provided.

Keywords: governance; local government; participation; value-add; ward committees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269094218809615 (text/html)

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:sae:loceco:v:33:y:2018:i:7:p:740-756

DOI: 10.1177/0269094218809615

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Local Economy from London South Bank University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().