Commonwealth Local Government 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).

The post-2015 Global Agenda – a role for local government

Introduction:The Commonwealth Local Government Conference 2015 – Local Government 2030: Achieving the Vision is taking place at a crucial time of flux and change. The period of implementation for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is drawing to a close, and the global community has been and indeed, still is, actively debating what should replace them. Local government is working hard to ensure that the post-2015 global development agenda reflects the important role of local government in defining, implementing and monitoring the new targets. It is a unique opportunity for local government to make its voice heard, to promote the importance of localisation in the debate, and to position local government as a key partner in the implementation of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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.

New Century Local Government: Commonwealth Perspectives

This ambitious and highly informative volume is premised on both the seismic shift in the perceived developmental role of local government across the globe, and the challenges that local governments will face as their key role in achieving the post-2015 sustainable development goals is increasingly being recognised within the global policy fora. New Century Local Government brings together an impressively wide geographic spread of country case studies from across the four regions of the Commonwealth, and pulls together work by leading scholars of local government who are all members of the Commonwealth Local Government Research Advisory Group (CLGF-RAG). It provides a plethora of detailed country case studies arranged around three themes: decentralisation in the Caribbean, Pakistan and England, local government finance and local economic development in India, South Africa and Tanzania, and new approaches to governance in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Not only do the papers provide detailed accounts of the changes in policy and practice within their focus country cases – but many of them, notably the papers by Brown, Reid, McKinlay and Sansom include a comparative perspective with developments from Commonwealth countries in other regions, which is one of the key strengths of the volume. It is also the raison d’être of comparative work across the countries of the Commonwealth, given the shared legal and administrative histories and the dominance of English as the academic and often administrative lingua franca. It would have been great to see more of the cross-regional and cross-country lessons being drawn out from across the contributions in a final concluding chapter, but the editors leave this to the reader – possibly to ensure they read the volume in full.

Editorial

This issue is published on the eve of the CLGF Research Colloquium, hosted by Ugandan Institute of Management on 13/14 May 2013 in Kampala, to launch the 2013 Commonwealth Local Government Conference. The theme − Developmental Local Government: Putting local government at the heart of development − ushers in some exciting new papers, covering issues of urban finance and development, strengthening local democracy, local economic development, and the crucial Post- 2015 agenda, which will be published in the next edition of CJLG. Our thanks to Rose Namara and Sylvester Kugonoza, coordinators at UIM, Philip Amis of the University of Birmingham, who chairs the CLGF research group, and Gareth Wall who organised the Colloquium.

Review of the Commonwealth Local Government Good Practice Scheme

The overarching objective of the Commonwealth Local Government Good Practice Scheme (GPS) was to contribute towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals at the local level; there were four expected outputs:1. Increased capacity of local authorities to plan and deliver services, through successful implementation of CLGF-funded projects focussed on the following nationally agreed themes, relevant to the achievement of the MDGs;2. Measurable and/or assessable improvements in individual and/or departmental/local authority management efficiency and effectiveness delivered through the GPS projects;3. National local government associations possess effective knowledge management systems and dissemination networks working nationally - and internationally through CLGF;4. Utilisation of expertise of local government practitioners in partner countries to improve local government performance more widely.

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.

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.

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.

Can International Local Government Partnerships Make a Difference? Lessons from the Australia – Papua New Guinea Good Practice Scheme

This article explores the contribution that local government to local government partnerships can make in bringing about more effective and sustained decentralisation through developing the capacity of local governments to deliver improved services to the communities they serve. After almost 15 years of decentralization many of Papua New Guinea’s local governments struggle to maintain essential functions. Building on existing relationships, the Commonwealth Local Government Good Practice Scheme seeks to utilize the resources and knowledge of Australian local councils in partnership with those in Papua New Guinea to build capacity and improve the management and delivery of services to communities. This article examines the program to date, outlining both the successes and failures, but also the potential role such partnerships can play in the deepening of democratic governance at the local level.

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.

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.

Building capacity for local government to perform

This paper looks at the practitioner’s challenge of building capacity for local government to perform. It does so by ways of responding to some of the policy recommendations put forward at the Commonwealth Local Government Conference (CLGC) held in the Bahamas in May 2009.It is suggested that capacity building in local government, particularly in the least developed countries (LDCs), is riddled with rhetoric. There is no common reference point for the concept. The following text is therefore drawn from practice: that of a local government practitioner – the author – with experience in diverse countries (Scotland, England, Malawi and Tanzania), and of an organization wedded to the fundamental importance of local government to local development, and with sound understanding of capacity building interventions – the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

Editorial: Sustainable Democracy, Development and Environmental Policies

Urbanisation, climate change, footloose economies, multi-culturality and resource constraints pose unprecedented challenges for local governments today. In the developing world the gulf between needs and finance remains acute. Many western countries forced to reduce public spending in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis, are struggling to reconcile the need for efficiency savings with local pressure to maintain service standards and working conditions. This special double issue of the journal features a selection of papers presented at the third Commonwealth Local Government Research Colloquium held in Cardiff on 13-15 March 2011 which explored these and other important contemporary challenges. Hosted by the School of City and Regional Planning and the Centre for Local and Regional Government Research at Cardiff University, the colloquium provided a valuable opportunity for scholars from across the Commonwealth to present research on three key themes: sustainable democracy and governance, sustainable economic development and environmental sustainability.

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.

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.

The 2011 Commonwealth Local Government Conference: Energising Local Economies: An Overview

In the current economic climate, creating the right environment for local enterprise, inward investment, and business and skills development, is an important factor in ensuring the prosperity and wellbeing of local communities. The impact of the global financial crisis has not been uniform across the Commonwealth and countries are using different strategies to overcome their financial difficulties. Local government increasingly plays an important part in this. More and more local governments in countries across the Commonwealth have responsibilities and powers for local economic development: in some countries local authorities can already show how their policies and actions are helping energise their local economies, while in other countries local councils are just beginning to get to grips with these responsibilities.