Iron Houses in the Tropical Heat: Decentralization Reforms in Africa and their Consequences

Abstract

Decentralization reforms introduced to Africa have not always delivered the intended outcomes. Through interaction with the broader historical, political, social and economic context, reforms seem to have engendered political consequences beyond decentralization itself. Most of the literature on decentralization and development emphasizes questions of institutional design and policy, but here we expand the focus of analysis and incorporate the harder-to-pin-down political patterns marking the workings of decentralization in Africa. Through the case-studies of Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ethiopia and Uganda we seek to connect the debates on development with the scholarly literatures on comparative federalism, comparative decentralization and local democracy. The conclusion that emerges is that no magic formula which can turn countries into peaceful, stable and prosperous democracies overnight exists. And, importing formal institutions without regard to the local historical, political, social and economic context risks leaving us with elegant but dysfunctional iron houses in the tropical heat.

Key Words:

• Decentralization
• development
• institutional design
• democratic reform
• local government
• Africa

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Nicola McEwen, Nicholas Blarel, Corinna Jentzsch and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and comments. He also thanks all the contributors to the volume.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For the scholarly disciplines of public administration and development economics, the notion of decentralization also includes ‘deconcentrating’ central policies to the field offices of national departments and ‘delegating’ national competences to third parties (Erk, 2014: 550). But the notion of decentralization is more often used to denote the territorial devolution of political authority to the local government level. It is this territorial variety of decentralization that forms the basis of the analyses in the special issue Decentralization, Democracy, and Development in Africa.

2 The iron house metaphor might be a little too polemical for some observers. And indeed the metaphor does not do full justice to successive decentralization initiatives that have unfolded over longer time periods, interacting and evolving with the local context. Furthermore, some students of decentralization lending their expertise to international organizations have resisted the decontextualized and unconditional embrace of ‘best practices’. James Manor's influential book written for the World Bank concludes with a section on where decentralization has ‘considerable’ promise for development, areas where it has ‘modest’ and where it has ‘little’ promise (Manor, 1999: 88–107). But the sheer number of programmes through which international organizations and donor agencies export ‘best practices’ to the Global South dwarfs such scholarly reflection, even-handedness and prudence (for more on this, see Erk, 2015).