Participatory Government and the Challenge of Inclusion: the Case of Local Government Structures in Post Apartheid South Africa
Local government structures are believed to be the essence of participatory democracy. It is through local government that citizens come into direct contact with their elected government, as power flows from national to local government. It is against this backdrop that the new local government stru...
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| Formato: | Artículo científico |
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Universidad de Los Andes
2006
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| Acceso en línea: | http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=81206305 http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.cgi?a=d&c=co/co-003&d=81206305oai |
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| Sumario: | Local government structures are believed to be the essence of participatory democracy. It is through local government that citizens come into direct contact with their elected government, as power flows from national to local government. It is against this backdrop that the new local government structures were adopted in South Africa: as a measure to extend democracy to the larger citizenry. However, local government structures have not been able to live up to expectations, as they are generally characterized by sluggishness in terms of service delivery; failure to attract community participation; and, latelytowards the run-up of March 1 2006 local electionsmass protests and uprisings against these problems.The problem has been explained in terms of lack of capacity and technical know-how. This paper aims to go beyond such explanations, and argues that the local government mayhem has to do with structural limitations when it comes to drawing citizens participation.Thus, in addition to lack of capacity, there is a problem of exclusion which undermines local government. |
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