Unit 2.4:
How Does Democracy Work at the Local Level?
Handout
The Scenario
A Matter of Trust
In Kwale District at the Coast there was a project of the Ministry of Health that was focusing on strengthening the dispensary management committees. One issue was whether local councillors should be represented on the committees. The councillors themselves were quite clear that they should be represented. They argued that their communities had elected them and that they had a responsibility for overseeing the provision of all social services to their constituents.
However, the committee members and facility staff seemed very wary about closer contacts with the councillors. They talked of the dangers of ‘political interference’ – a common phrase in Kenya. They also accused councillors of working for their own good rather than for the good of the community.
‘The community representatives on the committees are there on a voluntary basis,’ said one of the members, ‘but the councillors would expect to be paid.’
‘Politicians will always be looking for things that will benefit themselves,’ said another. ‘And many of them are too open to bribes.’
‘Politicians are too ready to take the credit for any development project,’ said a third, ‘Because they are always looking for votes.’
‘If a councillor from one party takes over from a councillor from another party,’ said a fourth, ‘then he might well abandon a project just because it wasn’t promoted by him or his party.’
‘Anyway,’ added a fifth, ‘councillors know nothing about health services.’
Questions:
Some definitions
Deconcentration is the transfer of administrative authority and responsibility to lower levels of government – through the ministries and departments.
Delegation involves the transfer of managerial responsibility for specific functions from the central government to semi-autonomous organisations such as the parastatals.
Privatisation is the transfer of institutions and activities from the government to the private sector.
Devolution, in its most usual sense, is the transfer of political powers and duties from the central government to local authorities – the transfer to them of functions that they can perform without the direct control of central government.
The Kenya Local Government Reform Programme
The Kenya Local Government Reform Programme, started in 1996, seeks to enhance the ‘capacity, power, and responsibility of locally elected councils’ so as to improve ‘service delivery, enhance economic governance and alleviate poverty’. The programme has seen the reform of the business licensing process, easing the administrative burden on local authorities, and development of an integrated financial management system. It has also seen the establishment of the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF). The LATF was established to strengthen the financial base of many local authorities by providing them with a ‘discretionary’ (to use as they se fit) block grant to use for service delivery and other improvements. To get the grant, a local authority must submit a service delivery action plan prepared through a participatory process; time-bound budgets, with at least half of the grant amount allocated to capital projects; a statement from debtors and creditors and a debt reduction plan; and a revenue enhancement plan.
The Fund is allocated five percent of all income tax collected in the country. This amount is anticipated to gradually rise to 20 percent. Local authorities were estimated to have spent Ksh1.1 billion ($14.8 million) on 1,366 capital projects in the financial year 2001-02. Some 31% of this expenditure was on vehicles and council premises; 20% was allocated for roads – and 14% for water and sanitation.
To help ensure that expenditures are properly targeted, the local authorities have to prepare revenue enhancement plans and identify local priorities to be included in the annual budget by consulting with their citizens through a participatory process known as the Local Authority Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP). During the first year, more than 27,900 individuals participated in more than 900 LASDAP meetings. The Local Government Act enables the central government to take disciplinary action in cases of violation and non-compliance. It is anticipated that various LATF-linked reforms will be gradually institutionalised as Kenya's decentralisation policy is finalised.
Finally, NARC government has created the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), focusing on the constituency as the unit of development at the grassroots level. To finance the CDF, 2.5 percent of the national budget (equivalent to Ksh5.2 billion or $70 million) is allocated annually to the Fund. Each of the 210 constituencies is expected to receive about Ksh25 million ($337,000) per year. Funds under this programme go directly to local levels, to provide people at the grassroots the opportunity to make expenditure decisions that maximize their welfare. However, as the disbursement of funds is not linked to performance or financial discipline like the LATF, concerns about supervision of the utilisation of funds have emerged – especially the danger that it will become another tool of political patronage.
Background Information
Introduction: Decentralisation and devolution of power
The trouble with centralised representative governments is that they can become too centralised. When all decisions have to be approved by the relevant ministry in the capital city, government can become so remote from the people that it is sometimes unable to respond to their needs – for example, during a national disaster when the ability to marshal the needed food, equipment and rescue workers with speed and flexibility is all-important. Also, historically, right from colonial times, certain areas in Kenya modernised and prospered more quickly than others, and continued after Independence to enjoy better infrastructure and easier access to markets, schools and hospitals. Other areas not only fell behind economically but suffered government neglect in terms of development and infrastructure spending, for practical as well as political reasons. The north of Kenya, especially, has long complained of marginalisation in this respect, as the government in Nairobi often seemed more ready to send in security forces to keep local people quiet than to dig boreholes, build roads and open schools and hospitals.
Democracy, defined as ‘rule by the people,’ should be about involving all people in decision-making, including at the local level. People usually know what is best for them and can make their own decisions in line with their own needs and desires. Most development programmes can only be fully implemented if the actors at the local level embrace them, and one way to ensure that they do embrace them is to involve local people in the planning as well as implementation stages. Democratisation of the development process means the active involvement of people in different stages of the process and providing individual members of the community with a fair and equitable share of development benefits. Every person is part of the process and must be recognised as a contributor to, and beneficiary of, development.
Decentralisation is a strategy for achieving this by creating and strengthening institutions through which people can take part in public affairs at the local level. Through decentralisation, decisions are more likely to match the needs of an area.
In terms of sharing of powers between the state and its citizens, decentralisation means that the power of decision-making is brought closer to the citizens, encouraging their participation in public affairs. In practical terms, decentralisation refers to the transfer of administrative and political authority, power, resources, functions and responsibilities from the central government to subordinate units such as administrative departments and regions and semi-autonomous bodies such as the local authorities. This transfer includes authority to plan, collect rates or local taxes and charges, make independent decisions, and manage public affairs in the subordinate units’ areas of authority.
The degree of political or administrative power given to local units depends on the form of decentralisation that is used and the amount of support that the central government provides.
The participation of the people in the development process is important for a number of reasons. For example:
Kenya’s harambee (self-help) initiatives provide a good example of popular participation. Harambee means ‘let us pull together’. It refers to people joining hands and co-operating to carry out individual, group or community development activities. This co-operation involves people pooling their resources such as materials, labour and finances to put up basic facilities or provide basic services, such as schools and dispensaries, or to help needy members of the community meet extraordinary expenditures like school fees, medical and funeral expenses and so on.
Decentralisation
Decentralisation has undeniable benefits, including:
Types of Decentralisation
There are four major types of decentralisation of administrative and political power:
Deconcentration is the transfer of administrative authority and responsibility to lower levels of the government. These can be government ministries and departments.
Delegation involves the transfer of managerial responsibility for specific functions from the central government to semi-autonomous organisations such as parastatals, which are outside the regular bureaucracy of the government.
Privatisation means the transfer of activities from the government to the private sector.
Finally, devolution is the most important vehicle for self-governance and democracy at the local level. Devolution is the transfer of political duties, power and authority from the central government to semi-autonomous lower units or institutions such as the local authorities. Most important are the powers that give them revenue and expenditure autonomy. Transfer of power local authorities to make decisions independent of the central government strengthens their ability to deliver services and goods in their areas when and where they are needed.
In Kenya, local governments or ‘local authorities’ are established under the Local Government Act of 1977. These authorities comprise the city, municipal, town, urban and county councils. In theory at least, they provide a way for people at all levels to take part in the development process, as well making the mobilizing of local resources for purposes of development easier and matching that development to local needs and aspirations.
However, there are certain limitations to devolution in Kenya. The powers and duties of the Provincial Administration and its relationship with the local authorities are not well defined. Moreover, each government ministry has staff down at the district, division, and even at the location level in some cases, who report to their line ministries and are, therefore, not under the control of the local government.
Decentralisation in Kenya
In Kenya, there are administrative districts with staff from different government ministries. The districts are the units to which the central government has transferred certain administrative powers. The district departments are responsible for government policies in the district. Several development committees were created under the District Focus for Rural Development strategy, which was introduced in 1983. These include the District Development Committees (DDCs), Division Development Committees and Location Development Committees. Their membership comprises the Provincial Administration officials, clerks of local authorities, heads of government departments, local leaders and representatives of the different parastatals and development agencies in a given area. These committees often have similar roles to those of the councils. In addition to the DDCs, there is District Executive Committee, which provides technical and administrative support to the DDCs. The District Focus for Rural Development remains the key approach to planning and implementing development activities by most government institutions.
The main objectives of the strategy are:
But the Local Government Act puts the local authorities under the control of the Minister in charge of local authorities in the central government. The local authorities are not able to act on their own; they lack the independence and autonomy that is characteristic of devolution. For example, the minister has to authorise all the financing and expenditure of local authorities, and also controls employment and deployment of the chief officers of local authorities. Moreover, though the DDCs were meant to harmonise plans and proposals from committees at subordinate administrative levels, these subordinate committees were, in fact, not established in many places. Divisional officers, chiefs and sub-chiefs hold development meetings infrequently, if at all. Many community projects are sponsored directly by senior politicians; some even carry their names. It is said that some projects are abandoned or left incomplete when the sponsoring Member of Parliament loses the seat – the winners preferring instead to develop their own projects.
So Kenya since Independence has had at least the basic structure to build a genuinely decentralized administration, while its leadership, in the words of one analyst, “has long maintained a rhetorical commitment to decentralization.” However, there has been a historical tendency for the central government to promote local participation in development while discouraging local political decision-making. Deconcentration of service delivery – as against devolution – was a main means of promoting participation, with systems for public service delivery staffed by central and provincial government servants accountable to line ministries in the capital. Still, some communities have made many positive development achievements, despite the weak local government system. Devolution remains a debated issue, particularly with regard to the specific responsibilities and revenue collecting powers of the devolved units – under the draft constitution that was rejected in November 2005, Kenya was expected to begin developing a new legal framework for decentralization.
From the 1990s, donor support to Kenya’s development programmes began to be increasingly linked to greater democratisation and observance of human rights, greater local autonomy, and decentralised service delivery. The promotion of decentralisation in the country also became a focus of external support, culminating in the Kenya Local Government Reform Programme.
The Kenya Local Government Reform Programme
The Kenya Local Government Reform Programme, which seeks to enhance the ‘capacity, power, and responsibility of locally elected councils’ so as to improve ‘service delivery, enhance economic governance and alleviate poverty’ took off in 1996 with the support of the World Bank and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DfID). The programme has seen the reform of the business licensing process, easing the administrative burden on local authorities, and development of an integrated financial management system. The programme has also seen the establishment of the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF). The LATF was established to strengthen the financial base of many local authorities by providing them with a ‘discretionary’ (to use as they see fit) block grant to use for service delivery and other improvements. To get the grant, a local authority must submit a service delivery action plan prepared through a participatory process; time-bound budgets, with at least half of the grant amount allocated to capital projects; a statement from debtors and creditors and a debt reduction plan; and a revenue enhancement plan.
The Fund is allocated 5% of all income tax collected in the country. This amount is anticipated to gradually rise to 20%. Local authorities were estimated to have spent Ksh1.1 billion ($14.8 million) on 1,366 capital projects in the financial year 2001-02. Some 31% of this expenditure was on vehicles and council premises; 20% was allocated for roads and 14% for water and sanitation.
To help ensure that expenditures are properly targeted, the local authorities have to prepare revenue enhancement plans and identify local priorities to be included in the annual budget by consulting with their citizens through a participatory process known as the Local Authority Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP). During the first year, more than 27,900 individuals participated in more than 900 LASDAP meetings. The local authorities are responsible for monitoring the LATF as well as for monitoring their own revenues. The Ministry for Local Government approves the local budget and has the power to conduct ‘extraordinary inspections’ to address any issues that may arise related to local authority budgets and performance. The Local Government Act enables the central government to take disciplinary action in cases of violation and non-compliance. It is anticipated that various LATF-linked reforms will be gradually institutionalised as Kenya's decentralisation policy is finalised.
Finally, the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government has created the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), focusing on the constituency as the unit of development at the grassroots level. To finance the CDF, 2.5% of the national budget (equivalent to Ksh5.2 billion or $70 million) is allocated annually to the Fund. Each of the 210 constituencies is expected to receive about Ksh25 million ($337,000) per year. Funds under this programme go directly to local levels, to provide people at the grassroots the opportunity to make expenditure decisions that maximize their welfare. However, as the disbursement of funds is not linked to performance or financial discipline like the LATF, concerns about supervision of the utilisation of funds have emerged – especially the danger that it will become another tool of political patronage.
Notes for Facilitators
Objectives
Sequence
1. Scenario: A Matter of Trust
The little case study highlights the lack of trust that many Kenyans have with regard to local politicians. The questions in the handout ask whether the kind of mistrust demonstrated in the handout is both typical and valid:
2. Decentralisation and Devolution of Power
The core of the first section of the Background Information is that decentralisation is a strategy for creating and strengthening local level institutions through which people can more easily participate in public affairs. Perhaps it would be useful to make a brief presentation based on the material in the text.
You could run brainstorming sessions on, first the importance of public participation and, second, the benefits of decentralisation. Then you can compare the responses with the points made in the text:
Participation:
Decentralisation:
3. Types of Decentralisation
Note that the handout gives definitions for deconcentration, delegation, privatisation and devolution. Pause to make sure that these definitions are clarified.
4. Decentralisation in Kenya
Review the District Focus for Rural Development strategy, as outlined in the text, highlighting the main objectives:
Also review the constraints that are highlighted in the text:
The text has it that there has been a historical tendency for the central government to promote local participation in development while discouraging local political decision-making.
Key question:
5. The Kenya Local Government Reform Programme
The handout summarises the information about KLGRP that is in the main Information Section. Go through this with the participants, and we suggest that you might put the following questions to the participants: