The impact of decentralization on participation in formal organizations in Albania: Lessons for community-based interventions

Dauti, Marsela

doi:10.1177/0020872817695392

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The central nature of these governments created distrust among weaker groups of poor citizens in these developing countries. If a central authority's administrative system is full of structural flaws in terms of laws designed simply to benefit the country's elites and officials, then pretended devolution to local governments creates elite political clientelism which ultimately leads to segregation between the common citizens and the state (Rafique and Khoo 2018;Mohmand and Cheema 2007;Dauti 2017).…”

Section: The Inhibiting Role Of the Central Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Pakistan, whenever dictatorial regimes have introduced decentralisation reforms, the local elites have acted as a conduit between these military dictators and the ordinary people and as a result the local political clients have contributed to reinforcing the segregation between the ordinary citizens and the state (Aslam 2019;Plessing 2017;Mohmand and Cheema 2007). Because these elites benefit from the distribution of the dictatorial power, they tend to keep hold of their power by exploiting government institutions (Dauti 2017;Wahid et al 2017;Lima 2019). As a result, citizen participation is either entirely prevented or severely discouraged (Neshkova and Kalesnikaite 2019).…”

Section: Elite Control Over Local Government Power and Unequal Power Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fragile states, decentralisation and the nature of barriers to citizen participation in local government: a view from Pakistan

Ali

2022

SN Soc Sci

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The purpose of decentralisation reforms is to narrow the gap between the public and government and increase public participation in decision-making. However, empirical evidence from developing countries suggests otherwise. A case in point is Pakistan, even though it has a well-structured local government system consisting of three levels of government, district, tehsil and union councils. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s nascent but fragile democracy and the non-democratic nature of decision-making at the state level prevent public participation and as a result do not remove but rather create obstacles to citizens’ involvement in service delivery. This paper therefore argues that citizen participation in Pakistan’s local government system faces more barriers which are imposed by the centralised state rather than removing hurdles to community participation. I demonstrate that having well-structured local governments is not enough for community engagement instead of a nation-state’s strong commitment to pro-community participation. The aim of this study is to identify and examine the barriers to public participation and how they prevent participation in the local government service delivery process, especially when non-democratic countries such as Pakistan introduce local government reforms. A qualitative study was carried out with a questionnaire containing seven open-ended qualitative questions. The thematically analysed results show that the military establishment introduced local government systems which have used local governments to suppress community autonomy and prevent community participation. As there is a patron/client relationship between the central government of Pakistan and the feudal lords and local elites, local elites have indulged in corruption and favouritism which hinder public participation at the grassroots level in the local governments in the province of Sindh, in Pakistan.

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Section: The Inhibiting Role Of the Central Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Elite Control Over Local Government Power and Unequal Power Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fragile states, decentralisation and the nature of barriers to citizen participation in local government: a view from Pakistan

Ali

2022

SN Soc Sci

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“…In this context, we expect Albania to be represented by a high value of the parameter α in our model (near 1). Moreover, different studies (Dauti 2013(Dauti , 2017 reveal the distrust of Albanian citizens towards local leaders and also to local organizations' participatory processes, which makes us imply that Albania is characterized by low local appropriability (µ is low). For countries with a high value of α and a low value of µ, our guidelines suggest that the model that explains the tactics used by the central government is determined by the electoral rule (parameter ).…”

Section: From Theoretics To Empiricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comprehensive approach to intergovernmental grants’ tactical allocation. Theory and estimation guidelines

Fiorillo

Merkaj

2020

Int Tax Public Finance

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Political economy literature highlights the tactical use of intergovernmental grants for electoral purposes; however, it provides different mechanisms and explanations behind these patterns. In this paper, we propose a model that includes 3 branches of the literature in order to provide a comprehensive explanation behind the tactical allocation by central governments. We identify 3 key parameters that shape the tactical allocation of grants: the electoral rule, the relative importance of the objective of the central government with respect to the local government, and the extent to which citizens attribute local expenditure to the direct action of the local government vs the central government (local political appropriability). In addition, our model also provides a guideline for designing and interpreting empirical results on the tactical allocation of grants distribution.

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“…Within the democratization phase, the process of construction of civil society is still struggling. As Dauti (2017) claims, the decentralization that took place after the fall of the Soviet Union, has not enhanced participation in decision-making by the community. Due to lack of trust, awareness and willingness to participate in the political life, citizens are still conditioned by the perception of forced participation and control of the socialist regime (Krasniqui, 2018), reacting to this by reducing the engagement in their own ethnic community.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tirana Design Week 2019 - Conference Proceedings: Foreseeing Uncertainty Design and non-Normativity

2019

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Dear participant of Tirana Design Week, Tirana Design Week (TDW) this year, in 2019, approaches Tirana’s 100th anniversary as the capital of Albania. Comparing photos of a bucolic Tirana in 1920 with what one sees from Polis University’s fourth floor today, inevitably raises doubts about the endurance of design, while conspicuously evincing the fluctuating tendency of what constitutes a norm in a world continuously oscillating between what is desired or imagined as an endogenous equilibrium and exogenous menaces. The objective of Tirana Design Week is to draw current research and design practices, as well as theoretical speculations on the topic of uncertainty and non-normativity in multiple scales and contexts, in and from the city of Tirana, with the latter understood as a dis-position, a tendency to change position. The signifcance of addressing such topic from Tirana is that this city is a harsh and unmediated example of what is already a global symptom: a strong contrast between an ideology of normativity on the one hand, and its actual impossibility on the other; between the aim for responsible design practices and ethical boundaries impossible to overcome; between education and merciless economic reason, between standardized production and mass-customized desires, between daily ideologies of inclusivity and an increasingly predominant exclusivity, between plain design narratives and irresponsible political decision making; between expensive normativity afordable only by few, and not-so-cheap sub-normativity for the many; between frenzied building development and destruction of urban artifacts; between ’glittery’ shapes in the center and chaotic sprawl in the periphery; between style and non-style. What happens in-between is dimmed as ‘uncertain’. TDW this year aims precisely to enhance such uncertainty from the perspective of diferent practices such as design, architecture, sociology, urban and environmental studies, theory and history, innovation, writing, research and pedagogy, among others. Not so much to propose another new agenda - we already have plenty of those, but rather to juxtapose these practices with what is already happening ‘out there’, and speculate how they can potentially infect, positively or negatively, this ‘out there’: the un-reason of non-normativity and the commodifcation of normativity.

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The impact of decentralization on participation in formal organizations in Albania: Lessons for community-based interventions

Cited by 9 publications

References 23 publications

Fragile states, decentralisation and the nature of barriers to citizen participation in local government: a view from Pakistan

Fragile states, decentralisation and the nature of barriers to citizen participation in local government: a view from Pakistan

A comprehensive approach to intergovernmental grants’ tactical allocation. Theory and estimation guidelines

Tirana Design Week 2019 - Conference Proceedings: Foreseeing Uncertainty Design and non-Normativity

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