Paradiplomacy as a capacity building strategy for good governance at the local level in South Africa

Abstract

Governance in South Africa is plagued with a lot of challenges. This study names inept capacity as a primary challenge of governance as it is linked to a panoply of malaise from corruption to underdevelopment. The aim of the study is to explore how building good governance capacity can become part of the multipronged long-term solution to local governments' distress. The argument is that capacity development for good governance at the local level should underpin reformation policies and efforts. Extensive evidence show that international organisations and donors provide support to developing countries in a manner that seeks to build institutional capacity and improve the quality of governance. As a manner of optimising such supports, this study makes a case that donors can collaborate with subnational entities to coproduce capacity and governance solutions tailored to the concerns of local communities through paradiplomacy. Paradiplomacy is global cooperation at a local level, with correlating positive impacts at a local level. Because of globalisation, supranational (e.g., The African Union, SADC, The European Union) authorities have emerged as crucial players in international relations; more so, territorial sovereignty gives way for more informal types of horizontal cooperation and structured interdependence between nation-states. Global problems have local impacts as such, but policies promulgated at supranational levels are often ineffective at the local level.This study adopts a qualitative approach as it interviewed key respondents from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (KZN-CoGTA) to explore workable solutions by making case for how best to address the issue of reduced or deficit capacity among government actors. Such a problem has given rise to a plethora of challenges when it come to the implementation and efficient execution of policies in South Africa. The study found that as the state ceases to be the only actor in public action, paradiplomacy presents itself as a tool for enhancing local intuitional capacity and concomitantly improve the quality of governance in South Africa.