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Hardly a day goes by without South Africans going on a rampage over the provision of basic municipal services such as water, electricity, sanitation and other municipal obligations. This book connects the critical issue of community protests to the equally precarious issue of political trust in local governance in South Africa by using comparative analysis of grassroots activism in predominantly black communities and predominantly white communities.

community protests --- grassroots movements --- local governance --- South Africa

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This paper investigates the local effects of mining on the quality of public services and on people's optimism about their future living conditions. It also assesses the mediating role of local institutions and local governments 'taxing rights in shaping the proximity-to-mine effects. The empirical framework connects more than 130,000 respondents from the Afrobarometer survey data (2005-2015) to their closest mines based on the geolocation coordinates of the enumeration areas (EA) and data on the mines and their respective status from the SNL Metals and Mining. The geo-referenced data are matched with new indicators on local governments' taxing rights across the African continent. The results suggest that citizens living near an active mine are less likely to approve government performance in key public goods and services - including health, job creation and improving living standards of the poor. On the mediating role of local governance and local taxing rights, the findings point to a negative effect of local corruption, yet a positive effect of local authorities' discretion over tax and revenues. However, the positive marginal effect of local taxing powers tends to reduce in environments with poor quality of local governance, high incidence of bribe payment and low level of trust in local government officials. Residents of mining communities with low corruption and comparatively high-level of raising revenue ability have the highest rate of positive appraisal compared to the other scenarios.

Decentralization --- Expectations --- Industry --- Living Standards --- Local Governance --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Mining --- Poverty Reduction --- Public Services --- Taxation and Subsidies

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This book investigates political, economic and social links between top-down decentralisation strategies and neopatrimonial elite networks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Over ten years since 2011, several MENA regimes have initiated decentralisation processes, but empirical observations suggest a gap between the formal layout and the outcome of decentralisation. The authors identify neopatrimonial networks as an explanatory factor in this respect. A comparative study of Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt (1) looks at decentralisation from the perspective of the periphery, (2) examines decentralisation within neopatrimonial contexts, (3) includes fiscal policy and informal financial flows, and (4) analyses the international donor perspective. With contributions by Sylvia I. Bergh, Miriam Bohn, Thomas Demmelhuber, Roland Sturm and Erik Vollmann.

1H, GTB, JPB, JPP, JPS, JPWD, JPWH --- Area Studies Autokratisierung civil society Dezentralisierung Egypt elite networks Elitenetzwerke fiscal policy Jordan local govenance MENA Morocco Neopatrimonialism Nordafrika Tunisia Decentralization neopatrimonialism Middle East and North Africa authoritarianism transformation local governance

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During the past decade, Indonesia has transformed itself from centralized governance to decentralized local governance. Local governments were given extensive expenditure responsibilities while keeping the tax system centralized. To finance decentralized provincial-local expenditures, Indonesia implemented a new system of intergovernmental finance. This paper provides a review of the equity and efficiency implications of the current system of central-provincial-local transfers. It finds that the system of intergovernmental finance represents one of the most complex systems ever implemented by any government in the world. The system is primarily focused on a gap-filling approach to provincial-local finance to ensure revenue adequacy and local autonomy but without accountability to local residents for service delivery performance. This is done through a great degree of academic rigor using highly complex procedures. The complexity leads to a lack of transparency, inequity and uncertainty in allocation as well as creating incentives for jurisdictional fragmentation and reducing own-tax effort. Simpler alternatives are available that have the potential to address equity objectives while also enhancing efficiency and citizen-based accountability. Such alternatives would represent a move away from complex gap filling and special allocation approaches to simple, output based transfers to finance operating expenditures. These would be complemented by capital grants to deal with infrastructure deficiencies, and fiscal capacity equalization as a residual program with an explicit standard to ensure that all local jurisdictions have adequate means to deliver reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of tax burdens across the country. The paper argues that such an alternative system of intergoveernmental finance would preserve autonomy, while enhancing equity, simplicity, objectivity, transparency and accountability.

Accountability --- Debt Markets --- Decentralization --- Efficiency --- Equity --- Fiscal federalism --- Intergovernmental fiscal transfers --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Municipal Financial Management --- National Governance --- Poverty Reduction --- Provincial and local governance --- Public Sector Economics --- Subnational Economic Development

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Global trajectories for reducing carbon emissions depend on the local adoption of alternatives to conventional energy sources, technologies, and urban development. Yet, decisions on which type of capital investments to make, made by local governments as part of the normal budget cycle, typically do not incorporate climate considerations. Furthermore, current academic and professional literature specific to climate change draws attention to decision-making tools that would require access to technical expertise, data, and financial support that may not be practical for cities in low- and middle-income countries. Arguably, the methodologies most able to effect this transformation will be those that are convenient and affordable to administer, and that offer straight-forward low carbon alternatives to traditional forms of infrastructure investment. Current methodologies for capital investment planning that do not take climate change into consideration can result in prioritization of investments that diverge from a low carbon path and a potential missed opportunity to reap financial benefits from efficiency gains. This paper concludes that relatively minor alterations to common procedures can reveal the trade-offs and local benefits of low carbon alternatives in the capital investment planning process. This paper was written as an input to the preparation of the Climate-Informed Capital Investment Planning Guidebook, a how-to guide for local government staff, which will be published in 2015.

Banks and banking reform --- City financial management and creditworthiness --- Climate change --- Climate change economics --- Climate change mitigation and green house gases --- Energy --- Energy production and transportation --- Environment --- Finance and financial sector development --- Local governance --- Low carbon city development --- Macroeconomics and economic growth --- Municipal asset management --- Transport --- Transport economics policy and planning