National policy in local practice: the case of Rwanda

Malin Hasselskog and Isabell Schierenbeck

Third World Quarterly, 2015, vol. 36, issue 5, 950-966

Abstract: Far reaching decentralisation reform has been launched in Rwanda, intended to contribute to socioeconomic development as well as to reconstruction and reconciliation. While the reform is well in line with the international trend of a ‘local turn’, the Rwandan government makes a point of not letting donors or other external actors set the agenda. Determined to formulate its own policies, thus claiming ‘national ownership’, it has, within the frame of decentralisation, launched several development programmes to be locally implemented and to promote local participation and downward accountability. However, the reform and programmes are designed and decided upon in a top-down manner by the central national leadership. This article analyses local experiences and perceptions of decentralisation and related programmes, and investigates whether and how such reform provides for local participation and downward accountability. It concludes that nationally owned reform is not necessarily an alternative to externally initiated and driven reform; neither local participation nor downward accountability was enhanced. The study builds on official policy documents and semi-structured interviews with Rwandan residents and local officials.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2015.1030386 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:ctwqxx:v:36:y:2015:i:5:p:950-966

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1030386

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().