![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article examines how socio-economic status and social mobilisation are linked to local government performance management in Nepal. As part of local government reform, Nepal adopted a social mobilisation policy in selected local governments to empower communities for their effective participation. Our results show that socio-economic status and social mobilisation have a significant relationship with performance management. Female literacy, for example, is strongly and significantly associated with performance management, while area has a significant positive relationship but population has only a weak positive relationship. In contrast, poverty has a significant negative correlation. More importantly, mobilisation has a significant, though modest, positive association with performance management particularly in participatory planning and budgeting, fiscal discipline, and administrative management. This indicates that improving the socio-economic status of citizens and their mobilisation for empowered collective action can be one important strategy to improve the performance capacity of local government.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to Ikuo Shimomura, Mashahiro Horie, Koji Yanagishima, Mitsuhiro Nakagawa, Phadindra Paudel, Govinda Prasad Sharma, Katerina Petchko, Hari Sharma, Mahendra Lawoti, Shree Krishna Shrestha, Teertha Raj Dhakal, Ram Mainali, and two anonymous reviewers, whose guidance and support greatly enhanced the quality of this study. We also extend our sincere thanks to Chakrapani Acharya for analyzing data, and extensive feedback to improve the quality.
Notes
1. We define effective citizen participation is a process in which citizens can considerably influence the decisions of local government and thereby it can substantially improve the decisions.
2. Here we define ‘performance management’ as a system and process of performance interventions that help to achieve the organisational effectiveness. It differs from ‘performance’ that focus on output or outcomes or the effectiveness of public organisations.
3. The HDI is a composite index that shows the levels of human development measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living. The HDI value can vary between 0 and 1 with higher values indicating higher levels of human development.
4. The gender empowerment index seeks to measure the levels of women empowerment to take part in public life, such as economic and public participation and decision-making, in relation to men. Its value ranges from 0 to 1 with higher values denoting higher empowerment of women and vice versa.
5. We also estimated the relationship between literacy rate and levels of performance management but it showed a weak relationship. The coefficient of adult literacy was significant at 10% level of confidence for the success rate (coefficient estimate 0.36 and t-statistics 1.73) and at 1% level of confidence for the continuity of success (coefficient estimate 0.74 and t-statistics 4.77).
6. Interestingly, after reviewing extensive literature, Yang and Callahan (Citation2005, Citation2007) suggested a local government size-paradox, due to the trade-off between proximity and capacity. They noted that ‘small is beautiful’ as small constituency may offer more participation opportunities, better understanding of, and responsiveness to, citizens’ needs due to closer relations, deeper knowledge about community issues, and a greater sense of community feeling (for similar claims, see also Avellaneda and Gomes Citation2015). Contrastingly, they also claimed that ‘bigger is better’, particularly for the economies of scale in terms of strategic capacity and resources to address socio-economic problems, and more issues that stimulate more participation.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ganesh Prasad Pandeya
Ganesh Prasad Pandeya is a researcher and PhD candidate at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). His research focuses on, and he has published papers on, citizen participation, local governance, political representation, and governance reform in a developing country context.
Tatsuo Oyama
Tatsuo Oyama is a professor emeritus at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). His research focuses on the application of operations theory to public sector decision-making, policy analysis and evaluation. He has published many papers on optimisation theory, mathematical programming, and their applied areas.