Commonwealth Local Government Forum Research Articles

Commonwealth Local Government Forum’s support of Local Councils Associations in Pakistan

After a brief overview of the recent developments in the legal framework for local government in Pakistan, this paper summarises the objectives and activities to date of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum’s project ‘Strengthening the Associations of Local Governments and their Members for Enhanced Governance and Effective Development Outcomes in Pakistan’. The project seeks to strengthen local democracy and good governance through the local council associations in the four provinces of Pakistan: Baluchistan, Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The project seeks to support local government to deal with the unique challenges of inclusive representation and equitable and effective service delivery. Building on the recently promulgated provincial local government acts, the project aims to strengthen the capacity of the local councils’ associations to raise the voice of local government and ensure they are able to play their appointed developmental role at the local level. The project main components are to strengthen how the local council associations actively provide services to their members and advocate for the betterment of local government in Pakistan and pilot the territorial approach to local development (TALD) so as to align the general methodology to the Pakistan context.

Supporting local governance and local economic development – some experiences from Swaziland

In the December 2012 issue of this Journal, Lucy Slack and Susan Rhodes (2012) of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) introduced a new CLGF programme focussing on improving governance and service delivery at local level in selected Commonwealth countries in Southern and West Africa and South Asia (CLGF no date; CLGF 2015). The initiative is in the third year of its four-year lifespan and it is opportune to examine progress made so far towards achieving the development aims sought by the programme funders, CLGF and partners in 2012. This contribution will explore the operationalisation of the programme to date through a snapshot of implementation in one country under the Southern Africa component of the programme, Swaziland. It will briefly describe how the project emerged, what it intends to achieve, examine progress to date and conclude with some observations around what has been learned so far. The paper draws on the author’s work as Regional Adviser for the CLGF Southern Africa Programme based in Pretoria and project documentation (see Acknowledgements).

Editorial

The Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance is now co-edited and has a new look. Under the continued editorship of Prof. Alison Brown, the Centre for Local Government at the University of Technology, Sydney is pleased to partner with Cardiff University and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) to produce the journal. This new partnership will ensure the continued development of the journal as an important platform for local government researchers and practitioners to share knowledge and experience.

Bridging the divide: Making research matter to local government

The ‘Freeport Declaration on Improving Local Government: The Commonwealth Vision’, affirmed at the May 2009 Commonwealth Local Government Conference by 550 councillors, mayors, and senior officials from 48 countries, outlined the clear importance of research in public policy development. In the words of the Declaration: “practice oriented research should become more prominent in the work of CLGF,” and this is to be achieved through the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) Research Advisory Group, comprised of participants drawn from universities, training organizations and other research-related bodies in about a dozen member countries. These statements should be the basis of a radical change in how researchers engage local governments.

The Commonwealth Local Government Pacific Project: Seeking ‘most significant change’

The origins of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum’s Pacific Project date to a 1997 roundtable in Papua New Guinea. Substantial activity, however, commenced more recently in 2005 with the launch of a 5-year project to enhance the quality of local government in the small states of the Pacific Islands. The project was well-conceived and managed to establish strong ‘buy-in’ by major stakeholders and partners. A mid-term review was undertaken in 2008 and was generally positive. The project is now in the final stages of implementation of what it hoped will be only its first phase. In 2009-2010 its central task is to ensure that the ‘key results’ envisaged at the outset are achieved: donors are looking for evidence of real impact in participating countries; project administrators are refining management practices on the basis of the mid-term review (as well as the regular feedback they receive from participating countries); participating countries are being asked to realistically plan, and to better integrate project activities into their ongoing work-plans as evidence of both genuine development outcomes and future sustainability of lessons learned.

Some reflections on the Conference Background Paper: 'Improving Local Government: the Commonwealth Vision'

Even before considering its content, one has to admire the confidence of Dr. Philip Amis to undertake the preparation of a paper titled: Improving Local Government: the Commonwealth Vision. Dr. Amis, head of the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham and a trusted friend of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, would have understood the challenges of this assignment. There is no commonly accepted definition of ‘local government’ and practitioners have agreed that replicable models or templates for local government improvement are hard to find. Moreover, the Commonwealth is not much easier to define than local government and has been reticent historically to translate its various ‘vision’ statements into actionable plans.

In what sense ‘spaces of neoliberalism’? The new localism, the new politics of scale, and town twinning

This paper draws on a study of town twinning in Britain since 1945 to engage with narratives of ‘the new localism’ and ‘the new politics of scale’. It argues that town twinning is often used in technical assistance programmes such as the UK Government's Know How Fund and various schemes of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum. ‘Fast policy’ is a concept that can be usefully applied to these programmes and the broader field of interurban networking, urban policy mobility, and policy transfer. Town twinning plays an active yet overlooked role in fast policy. The paper also argues that town twinning is part of a longer history of bottom-up localism that includes the political arguments of John Stuart Mill, at least two moments of twentieth-century municipal internationalism, the municipal foreign policy movement of the 1980s, and the community development movement of the last three decades. This longer history suggests sources of localism other than statecraft, and problematises the conceptualisation of power and periodisation of history found in regulation theories of devolution.

Commonwealth Local Government Forum Pacific Project

The Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) Pacific Project works with local government and other stakeholders in nine Pacific Island countries – Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. It seeks to strengthen local democracy and good governance, and to help local governments deal with the increasing challenges of service delivery and urban management in the unique Pacific environment.Human settlement patterns in the region are changing rapidly. The Pacific has traditionally been a rural agricultural/subsistence society, but this is no longer the case. The accelerated pace of urbanisation has impacted significantly on Pacific nations and in the very near future the majority of Pacific Islanders will be found in urban areas. Already over 50% of Fiji’s population are urban dwellers. Rapid urbanisation brings with it unique challenges and opportunities. Local governments are at the forefront of this phenomenon, with the responsibility to manage urban development and the transition from rural areas to cities and towns. Their success or failure to manage urbanisation and provide the required levels of physical and social infrastructure will affect many lives in a new urban Pacific.The project now has three components – the main Pacific Regional Project and two country-specific programmes: the Honiara City Council Institutional Capacity Building Project and the Commonwealth Local Government Good Practice Scheme in Papua New Guinea.

Project Hetura: Reflections on an International Local Government Partnership

The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the Townsville/Port Moresby partnership activities and explore the challenges and benefits to both Councils from the perspective of a Townsville City Council employee associated with the program.Since 2002, Townsville City Council has been engaged in a capacity building project with the National Capital District Commission (NCDC) in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The project, named Hetura, means mateship or friendship in Moto, the predominant language group in Port Moresby. Project Hetura is coordinated through the Commonwealth Local Government Forum’ (CLGF) Good Practice Scheme with funding from AusAID. Townsville City Council provides in-kind support through the contribution of staff time and participation while the National Capital District Commission provides a budget allocation for the project.The overarching goal of Project Hetura is to strengthen management, planning, and governance within the NCDC and to improve the capacity of the organisation to deliver efficient, responsive, accountable services to the community. Rather than engaging in a traditional consultancy, the approach by participants of Project Hetura has been that of a partnership built through a relationship of trust and good-will developed over time between the two organisations. Within this partnership, the skills and contributions of all parties are valued, and team members work together to develop sustainable solutions to identified problems.

The Commonwealth Local Government Forum: An Overview

The Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) was established in 1994, coinciding with rapid moves towards decentralisation at that time, especially in Commonwealth Africa. It uniquely brings together national associations of local government and individual councils, ministries responsible for local government, and training and research institutes with an interest in local government, on a common platform. This reflects an understanding that local government needs effective central government and vice versa if decentralisation is to be truly successful, and that research, training and practice need to be brought together in a constructive and creative way.CLGF’s developmental work can be divided into three main categories:Promotion and advocacy of local democracy and good governanceExchange of experienceCapacity building This article provides a brief overview of the activities and projects which CLGF has underway in respect of these objectives. It will be complemented by more detailed papers on specific programmes and projects in this and future issues of the Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance.

Mutual capacity building: Mt Hagen local government and Orange City

Orange City Council and Mount Hagen Urban Local Level Government (MHULLG) in the Papua New Guinea Highlands have had a strong history of working in partnership to build capacity. This is based on a Sister City relationship extending to 30 years founded on the acceptance that to build better communities more than just physical infrastructure is needed. The Australian Government AusAID organisation funded the capacity building program, supported by the Commonwealth Local Government Forum who provide back-end administration and acts as a broker in drawing together a number of partnership agreements and AusAID funding applications in addition to information exchange. Council’s work has been recognised and supported nationally in PNG and by AusAID, and there has been a tight focus on assisting the 60,000 people that live in and around the township of Mt Hagen. So far, Council has worked on numerous issues including waste management, sanitation, traffic and pedestrian plans and governance.

Australia-Papua New Guinea Good Practice Scheme: Alotau-Sunshine Coast

In 2007 the CEO of the then Noosa Council became aware of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum’s (CLGF) Good Practice Scheme in the Pacific program through his involvement as the President of Local Government Managers Australia. He contacted the CLGF with a view to contributing to the program. Alotau Urban Local Level Government (ULLG) was chosen as Noosa’s partner for the program due to its enthusiasm to improve waste management practices in order to clean up the town and create an aesthetically improved environment. Noosa Council considered that it was well credentialed to assist in this regard. Later in November 2008, after Noosa had become part of the new Sunshine Coast Regional Council (SCRC) the Milne Bay Provincial Government and Alotau Urban Local Level Government (AULLG) sought further technical assistance for the preparation of an Urban Development Plan for Alotau and surrounds.