Paper
Local Government in Ethiopia: Practices and Challenges
- Authors:
- Tilahun Meshesha Fenta
- Abstract
- Local government is crucial to develop democratic structure in federal systems by addressing the grass root society. Accordingly, the importance of local government is increasing in service provision, poverty alleviation and facilitating development. However, developing countries give much emphasis to institutional arrangement of local governments than the operational aspects of them. As a result, local governments are not mandated effectively as expected in delivering services. This study, therefore aims to assess the extent that local governments in Ethiopia realized their mandates. The research is confined to literature survey, including federal constitution, regional constitutions and other laws. Moreover, various books, articles, journals, government policies, reports and websites are used. The study finds that almost in all regions, local governments provide public services to the residents in a better way though their authority on revenue and spending are very limited, which results in an inconsistency of constitutional mandate and an actual performance. This in return, affects the quality and quantity of the public services provision. Furthermore, the block grants are not enough for the responsibilities assigned by regional governments. Overriding of powers in civil service administration by the regional states and zone administrations is take place as well. Therefore, the researcher recommends that local governments need to be granted actual power to administer their jurisdiction.
- Keywords
- Decentralization; City administration; Local Government; Woreda
- StartPage
- 71
- EndPage
- 79
- Doi