Synthesis Reporton
Africa Local Council Oversight and
Social Accountability (ALCOSA)
February 2010
1
Executive Summary
This report, based on a cross-country analysis of four East African countries- Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya, analyzes how local government councillors oversee local administration and are in turn held accountable by citizens. The report is primarily based on the findings of a World Bank Project- Africa Local Council Oversight and Social Accountability (ALCOSA).
Council oversight (referring to the mechanisms or sanctions by which councillors hold their executive in check) can only truly function if public officials are held accountable to citizens through the electoral and party systems and social accountability mechanisms. In addition, councils need to have institutional and individual capacities to carry out their mandates. The report examines these aspects of council oversight and finds that decentralization in all four countries has focused little on the lowest level of governance. In terms of legislative structure, except for Ethiopia, in the other three countries there is clear separation of the legislature (elected councils) and the executive (bureaucrats). Furthermore, in allfourcountries local governments have councils with standing committees to oversee specific aspects of the administration
The political environment in the four countries varies significantly with Kenya on one end with fairly robust multi-party politics and Ethiopia on the other end with a predominantly one party system and the incipient multiparty systems in Uganda and Tanzania.Uganda has the strongest local governance system because it has directly elected mayors and chairpersons and MPs have limited role in local government affairs (though centrally appointed RDCs can sometimes interfere with council functioning). The chairpersons and mayors in Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya councils are not elected through universal suffrage. Also in Kenya and Tanzania, MPs have considerable say in local government functioning. Ethiopia does not have MPs at local level but the central party has a strong presence and control over local government functioning. Recall candidate provisions seem to be either non-existent or abused in all four countries. In Kenya there is no recall provision for poor performing councillors. In Tanzania generally citizens cannot recall a councillor before elections if the only reason is poor performance. In Ethiopia and Uganda, the system of recalling councillors exists but does not work effectively.Independent candidates are not allowed to run for local office in Kenya and Tanzania. While they are allowed to run in Ethiopia and Uganda, the provision is generally misused.
Various avenues of social accountability exist in all four countries. Village meetings are the most common mechanisms through which councilors give feedback to citizens in Uganda. However, given the irregularity of village meetings, this mechanism is not always effective. Similarly in Tanzania, village assembly meetings are required to be held every three months but they were rarely or never held. In Kenya, there are no legal requirements for local governments to provide citizens with information on council operations except for a summary of the annual budget (and even that is not obligatory but permissive.) In the absence of formal forums, public “barazas”, that is public meetings are convened by the provincial administration. In Ethiopia, there are periodic public assemblies held in kebeles that are chaired by the kebele or woreda administration or the agenda is provided by the kebele administration.Posting of local government information on notice boards and newspapers seem more common in Uganda and Tanzania compared to Ethiopia and Kenya. The radio is becoming a common mechanism of communicating with citizens in all four countries.User committees are increasingly involved in service planning and operation under sector specific programs. In all four countries local councilors are represented and support and oversee the performance of these committees and account back to the community members.
Strong local informal institutions and forums exist in all four countries. These institutions either function independently of the local government system or their leaders are also leaders in local government. In either case, they are yet to serve as an alternative means of holding local governments accountable to citizens.
To further empower citizens, there is need for strong legislation mandating councils to share information with citizens and requiring citizen participation in planning and budgeting processes. There is also need to intensify civic education focusing on rights and responsibilities; strengthen radio programs to communicate major council decisions; revive village meetings for giving feedback; and clarify the oversight and accountability roles and relationships between user committee, CSOs and local councils. Apart from playing an active role in planning, budgeting and monitoring services, CSOsshould also be encouraged to work with citizens in building their capacity to access information and demand accountability.
Councillors in all four countries are poorly facilitated with regards to finances and infrastructure facilities. While Uganda and Kenya have strong local government associations, the association in Tanzania is weak and Ethiopia is yet to set up a similar institution. In terms of individual capacities, in Uganda, while the district chairperson has to fulfil minimum academic qualifications to be eligible for the post, no similar criteria exist for political heads at other levels as well as councillors. In Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya there is no educational requirement to become a councillor.
For local accountability to take root there is need for clear mandate and resources for local councils without which local level participation will be frustrated. Lack of discretionary funds renders citizens' engagement in planning and budgeting a mere theoretical exercise and limited visible investment reduces local citizens’ interest in the process and undermines local accountability. Therefore council oversight and downward accountability in planning and budgeting processes are analyzed within the discretionary space local governments operate in. In all four study countries, central transfers account for about 90% local government revenue. Moreover, own revenues form a miniscule percentage of local government revenues. In fact in Uganda and Tanzania, central government abolition of the main source of local own-revenue (graduated tax in Uganda and development levy in Tanzania) has further made the local governments upwardly accountable. Although central government oversight is important, in all four countries, excessive administrative control and multiple un-coordinated oversight activities have created undue transaction costs and diminished the discretionary space local governments operate in.
A significant constraint to effective local council oversight and accountability arises from limited council control over personnel. The interference from central government in staff matters such as central transfer of local staff due to political and other reasons have led to frustrations and lack of motivation for councillors. Reforms that seek to enhance local council autonomy in human resource management are a prerequisite to effective local council oversight. Reform interventions should ensure that local councils regain the autonomy in determining the size of the establishment, setting terms and conditions of service and incentive schemes and be able to hire and fire their staff. While Uganda has developed the innovative District Service Commission, the other three countries are still struggling to obtain the right balance between central control and local oversight.
Procurement is the most lagging among the studied issues in local council oversight. In Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, procurement functions have been recently taken away from councillors and granted to a separate independent body controlled by the centrally appointed local chief officer. This change in responsibility was a central government response to politicization and corruption of procurement processes by councillors. While in Tanzania, the council still retains control over hiring of procurement unit staff, in Uganda and Kenya, the procurement units are hired independently. In all three countries, council still retains the mandate to go over procurement plans and budgets, but its role seems quite minimal and perfunctory. In Ethiopia, procurement is independently carried out by the local administration and does not seem to require council approval in any region. Thus councillors and citizens have no oversight function in this regard. Under national standards and guidance, local governments should have the discretion to develop procurement strategies, identify associated processes, and issue contracts for goods and services.While removing procurement planning from core council functioning may reduce patronage in the short run, it also takes away the crucial oversight role of councillors required to keep the local governments accountable to citizens. Citizens who are represented by elected leaders are inadvertently disempowered and have almost no role in the procurement process; hence the extent to which they can hold local governments accountable is limited. Legislation, enforcement and local capacity building have to be improved in this regard.
Thus, local council oversight and accountability depends to a large extent on the level of local autonomy and the existence of conducive legal, administrative and institutional framework for local decision-making in areas such as planning, budgeting, priority-setting, human resource management, procurement and implementation. Formal and informal civil society organizations have to take on a stronger role in keeping local governments accountable to citizens.
TABLE OF CONTENT
1. Introduction
2. ALCOSA Background and Methodology
3. Local Government System in the Study Countries
3.1 Local Government System and Council Oversight Structure in Uganda
3.2 Local Government System and Council Oversight Structure in Tanzania
3.3 Local Government System and Council Oversight Structure in Ethiopia
3.4 Local Government System and Council Oversight Structure in Kenya
4. Institutional Assessment of Councils
4.1 Electoral System
4.2 Party Politics
4.3 Social Accountability
4.4 Council Capacity
5. Council Oversight in Planning and Budgeting
5.1 Planning and Budgeting in Uganda
5.2 Planning and Budgeting in Tanzania
5.3 Planning and Budgeting in Ethiopia
5.4 Planning and Budgeting in Kenya
6. Council Oversight in Human Resource Management
7. Council Oversight in Procurement
8. Conclusion
Reference
1. Introduction
Democratic decentralization ‘brings government closer to the people’ which is expected to improve service delivery by making governments more responsive to citizen needs (Blair 2000, Bardhan 2002). Existing literature suggests that management of local government officials’ political incentives and the existence of mechanisms fostering local accountability of governments are necessary preconditions for effective local government performance—and thus for the success of democratic decentralization. Nevertheless, most of the existing theoretical and empirical research has dealt with the impact of intergovernmental administrative and fiscal relations on the performance of the governance system as a whole and insufficient emphasis has been paid to local accountability systems in the new institutional environment created by decentralization policies (Eckardt 2008). The unfinished research agenda in the theory and practice of decentralization thus demands the exploration of how local accountability systems function and how they in turn affect local government performance and service delivery (Eckardt 2008). This report conducts an institutional assessment of councils in four countries- Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya- and analyzes how councils oversee local bureaucracy in planning and budgeting, human resource management and procurement, within the discretionary space provided to local authorities by central governments.
Local councils are the core units of decentralized governments. They make laws—as representative bodies for collective decision-making—and they work with the local government’s executive branch to deliberate on policies and implementation. At the same time, they are assumed to represent citizens—by giving voice to individual citizens, civil society organizations, and business groups—and by representing the needs of local constituents in policy-making. It could be argued that local bureaucrats are also accountable to the citizenry through the “short route of accountability” (World Bank 2004) wherein citizens as clients hold service providers directly accountable, but in public sector production the direct link of client power is frequently missing(World Bank 2004). The lines of accountability usually run from bureaucrat to elected representative to citizenry wherein the administration is accountable to the council and not directly to citizens. Though bureaucrats should be responsive to citizens (this responsiveness is one of the measures of good democratic local governance), they should be accountable to elected officials.
Several institutional factors interfere with the oversight responsibility of local councillors such as their status. Although executive positions are generally considered to be full time, in many settings, councillor positions are low paying and part time. In some developing countries, such as Ethiopia, there are no safeguards against dual structures of accountability; councilors often occupy roles as full-time executive functionaries dependent on, and accountable to, higher-up bureaucracies as well as elected local officials. Also in many countries, councillor positions overlap with key patrimonial, social, or other structures in the locality, thus blurring the lines of accountability.Council oversight (referring to the mechanisms or sanctions by which councillors hold their executive in check)can only truly function if public officials are held accountable to citizens through the electoral and party systems and social accountability mechanisms. In addition, they need to have institutional and individual capacity to carry out their mandates.
Free, fair, regularly scheduled elections anduniversal suffrage are the most direct mechanismsfor ensuring that those who govern areaccountable to citizens. But electionsare crude instruments of popular control,since they occur at widely spaced intervals andaddress only the broadest issues(Blair 2000, Devas and Grant 2003).Also vote buying, as observed in Uganda, is a common feature of local level electoral practicewhich excludes those who cannot afford such political purchases (Devasand Grant 2003). In many systems, opposition political partiesmake for a powerful engine for enforcing accountability.The party in power oftenhas strong incentives to evade accountability,but opposition parties have their own incentivesto uncover wrongdoing andpublicly hound incumbents for their misdeeds.They present a constant vision of a viable alternative for doing public business in a differentand perhaps better way (Blair 2000). Such an alternativehelps keep the party in power on a pathof rectitude. However, this scenario requires a strong party systemat the local level, which is often notthe case.
Social accountability mechanisms can give the poor and marginalized people a more direct voice in the policies that local governments formulate and implement. Such mechanisms are often part of broader efforts to deepen democracy and ensure a robust public sphere for citizens to give feedback and control government action. The practical form of participatory practices and arrangements include public meetings, citizen juries, forums for various social groups such as the young or the elderly, neighborhood assemblies, multi-choice referendums accompanied by active public debate and discussions, and activism by nongovernmental organizations and other community groups. In some settings, citizens are excused from work and asked to meet to make recommendations about local issues, drawing even the normally passive and disinterested citizens into public life and activism (Lankina 2008). The study countries have adopted some related measures in their decentralization processes as discussed under section 4.3.Examples include participatory expenditure tracking surveys, village assemblies, as well as other participatory monitoring and evaluation techniques. Yet, the link between these tools and local councils are often weak and hindered by capacity constraints such asweak council capacity in accounting and record-keeping and skill and pay differentials between local administration officials and councillors. These capacity constraints create tensions and render elected representativesunable to make the necessary decisions or to monitor and enforce accountability from officials.
Even if sound social accountability mechanisms and high local capacity were to exist, councils can only perform their oversight role within the discretionary space provided by central governments. Inconsistencies in central government functioning such as shortfalls in central fund transfers, cuts in unconditional grants and approval of unrealistic local budgets oftenundermine the potential of local councils (Devasand Grant 2003). Within this space, how is bureaucratic accountability to local public officials established?
The relationship between elected local councillors and executives pertains to planning and budgeting, human resource management and procurement. Local councillors are supposed to oversee the local government’s executive branch during the entire public financial management process and provide local executives with constant feedback. This requires establishing a link between planning and budgeting (whether budgets reflect planning) and between planned and executed budgets (budget execution performance), and producing policy-oriented budgets (outcome-oriented budgeting responsive to demands and preferences of local citizens).These links are usually established through standing committees within the local councils similar to public accounts committees at the national level. Best practices suggest thatunder these standing committees there are also specialized committees to oversee specific areas of interest to the local communities such as education, health or water. These committees –provided that they build enough capacity to do so- periodically monitor the activities of the local governments based on the budget cycles – namely, planning and formulation, execution, and reporting cycles- as well as service delivery performances. Closely related to such a scrutiny mechanism is the oversight over human resource management of the local government. Finally, local government’s procurement processes affecting local communities and businesses need to be subject to local legislative oversight.