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1. Local accountability in Mozambique

Author:
Julia Bastian
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
The debate on decentralization has identified local accountability as a key factor for successful decentralization processes in developing countries, stressing that the account ability of subnational governments towards the national level may prove detrimental to their accountability to the citizens. Based on the distinction of formal and informal institutions and the discussion of accountability as a concept, this Working Paper identifies accountability mechanisms relevant at the local level and analyses their functioning, interaction and factors that influence their effectiveness. This analytical grid is then applied to the case study of Mozambique, in a structured and focused comparison of the municipalities of Beira and Catandica. The analysis shows that accountability mechanisms at national level do not necessarily undermine accountability towards the citizens, but even may have an activating effect on other accountability mechanisms. Funding, access to information, political competition at the local level and informal influences that emanate from formal organizations, such as political parties, are factors that influence the effectiveness of accountability mechanisms at the local level.
Topic:
Government, Governance, and Reform
Political Geography:
Mozambique

2. Good Governance. Ein universelles Leitbild von Staatlichkeit und Entwicklung?

Author:
Franz Nuscheler
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
The World Bank blamed a „crisis of governance“ for the increasingly challenged success of international development cooperation, in particular in Sub‐Sahara Africa. After development cooperation got rid of the burden of the Cold War the international donor community consequently made Good Governance (i.e. rule of law, respect for basic human rights, fighting corruption) a precondition for effective development cooperation. At the same time economic and development theory underwent a change of paradigm beyond the neoliberal Washington Consensus taking up the insight of institutional economics: Institutions matter. Good Governance became the universal model for efficient government and development. This normative model was not spared ideological criticism, because it was suspected of paving, the way for Western concepts of „Good Governance” by means of external subsidies and political conditionalities. What proved to be much more difficult were the problems with promoting the establishment of democratic structures from outside, especially in fragile states.
Topic:
Cold War, Globalization, Government, International Cooperation, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Africa

3. Stakeholder Participation in Poverty Reduction, INEF-Report 86

Author:
Walter Eberlei, Birte Rodenberg, and Thomas Siebold
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) have become the most important policy instrument in more than 60 developing countries around the world. One of the core principles of the approach is country ownership, built on broad-based participation of stakeholders inside and outside the governments, including parliaments, civil society organizations, private sector representatives and other stakeholders at national as well as local levels. How this theoretical approach has been realized in practice – especially beyond the strategy development – is a matter of debate since its introduction in 1999.
Topic:
Government, Non-Governmental Organization, and Poverty

4. State Failure Revisited II: Actors of Violence and Alternative Forms of Governance

Author:
Tobias Debiel and Daniel Lambach
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
This INEF report is the companion piece to “State Failure Revisited I: Globalization of Security and Neighborhood Effects” (INEF Report 87/2007). While the first working paper mainly took a structural perspective and dealt with the global and regional level, the contributions in our new study put those actors in the spotlight who shape national and local arenas.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa

5. The Democratic Legitimacy of Private Governance. An Analysis of the Ethical Trading Initiative

Author:
Susanne Schaller
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Private actors increasingly influence global governance and generate transnational rules and regulations. By creating soft law, they adopt governance tasks that were traditionally in the responsibility of sovereign states. These modes of “private governance” are quite disputed. Some hope that by including private actors, democracy on a global level can be enhanced. Others fear that private governance circumvents democratically legitimated governments and that private regulation competes with national and international law. Thus, questions arise about the legitimisation of private actors and about the democratic legitimacy of private governance.
Topic:
International Relations, Democratization, Government, and Privatization

6. Privatisation in Deep Water? Water Governance and Options for Development Cooperation, INEF-Report 84

Author:
Annabelle Houdret and Miriam Shabafrouz
Publication Date:
01-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Water is an essential factor for human development and health, but also for agricultural production, the development of the tourism sector and industrial growth. The increasing scarcity of the resource contributes to high competition between these user groups. Growing tension and conflict over water allocation urge for new approaches in demand management.
Topic:
Development, Government, Health, and Privatization

7. Towards a New Profile? Development, Humanitarian and Conflict-Resolution NGOs in the Age of Globalization

Author:
Tobias Debiel and Monika Sticht
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Both the significance and the profile of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have undergone a fundamental transformation in the past twenty years. In development cooperation new fields such as ecological sustainability and the promotion of democracy have emerged besides 'traditional' issues like poverty reduction. Furthermore, confronted with the realities of war and state decline, developmental NGOs pay increasing attention to crisis prevention and the resolution of conflicts; even a new type of nongovernmental organization has appeared, conflict-resolution NGOs. The change has been particularly dramatic in the area of humanitarian aid: even before the end of the Cold War some NGOs – Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) at the head of all of them – freed themselves from the “straitjacket” of only conducting humanitarian operations with the permission of the (often illegitimate) local government; meanwhile the concept of sovereignty has been substantially redefined. NGOs, however, also con- formed to the imperatives of globalization and commercialization, and formed oligopolies on the market for humanitarian aid. At the same time, they are also confronted with their own “powerlessness” in conflict zones: actors of violence and power-holders successfully attempt to instrumentalize humanitarian aid for their own purposes, and western military forces threaten the independence of humanitarian work by demanding subordination to political and strategic goals.
Topic:
Globalization, Government, Humanitarian Aid, Non-Governmental Organization, Privatization, and Sovereignty

8. Key Factors of Structural Change in North Rhine-Westphalia

Author:
Claudio Maggi
Publication Date:
06-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
Recent years have seen the re-emergence of industrial policies and policies for the promotion of economic activity in both industrialised and developing countries, flanked by regional and national strategies for enhanced integration into increasingly globalised international markets, improved competitiveness and sustainably dynamic economic growth. The growing popularity of these policies is also a reflection of recent currents in international economic debate, notably the argument that the recipes for stability staunchly championed by neo-liberals, which gave rise to the Washington Consensus in the early eighties, need to be complemented by more committed policies designed to strengthen international competitiveness.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Globalization, Government, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Europe, Washington, and Westphalia