User Committees: A Potentially Damaging Second Wave of Decentralisation?

Abstract

Decentralisations in the 1980s transferred powers to multi-purpose local governments. In recent years, international donors and central governments are increasingly turning towards single-purpose user committees. Although these committees appear to be less democratically accountable and less representative than local government, donors view user committees as a mechanism to give local peoples greater say over the development decisions that affect them. Central government officials establish user committees at the insistence of donors but then manipulate them by selecting committee members and by reigning in their powers. This contribution explores how these proliferating single-purpose committees are undermining the democratic processes that were presumably institutionalised with the creation and strengthening of elected local governments in Third World countries. This new approach fragments local participation, reducing its coherence and effectiveness; the poor may even be worse off than before. These co...