Browsing by Subject "Decentralization"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Decentralized school governance and social cohesion in a post-conflict society: school leaders’ participatory democratic accountability in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
    (2012-04) Komatsu, Taro
    Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is a post-conflict and divided nation in need of social cohesion. In order to increase trust among different ethnic groups and between civilians and public institutions, a decentralized school governance system has been introduced. This study sought to understand whether and how the internationally driven school-based management (SBM) reform in BiH functions in enhancing schools' roles of promoting social cohesion. In light of the research purpose, the study focused on school professionals' participatory democratic accountability (Kogan, 1986), and examined secondary school directors' perceptions regarding school board influence in social cohesion areas, their interactions with school boards, and their accountability to the school-based governing body. At a broader level, the study sought to contribute to the debate concerning international reform isomorphism. The study employed a mixed methods approach. A census survey with 294 secondary school directors was conducted to find general patterns in school directors' perceptions. Concurrently, interviews were conducted with 16 school directors to complement the survey findings as well as answer additional research questions. The study results show that the SBM reform was not functioning as intended. School boards, supposedly representing the interests of local stakeholders including parents, and school directors did not appear to be actively engaged in the deliberative process to promote social cohesion policies and practices. School boards influence school directors to promote social cohesion, but only in subtle and limited ways. Furthermore, school directors tended to view themselves as independent from the school boards, though, instead, their keen sense of professionalism can be utilized to facilitate local stakeholder participation. These findings indicate that a gap exists between a global reform policy and its implementation even in a post-conflict nation where the international donor community is closely involved. The study calls for donor agencies to attend to the historical, political and economic factors that might affect school-level policy implementers when they recommend educational reforms.
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    Effects of toll road construction on local road projects in Indonesia
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2019) Ayu Andani, I. G.; La Paix Puello, Lissy; Geurs, Karst
    This study investigates the extent to which the construction of national toll roads in the Jakarta–Bandung region in Indonesia induces the development of local road projects nearby. In doing so, we disentangle the direct and indirect supply effects by considering the year of construction and urban development, respectively. We formulate four binary logit models to examine the direct and indirect relationships between toll road construction and local road projects. The dataset comprises 94 road projects planned or carried out between 2004 and 2016. We conduct interviews with local officials in the Jakarta–Bandung area to obtain data on the projects’ decision-making processes. Our modelling results show that existing and planned toll roads induce the development of local road projects both directly and indirectly. Local road projects tend to be developed in anticipation of the opening of a toll road. The changes in residential area and population around the toll roads also induce local road construction.
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    The Political Origins of Education Decentralization in Latin America
    (2020-08) Vargas Castro, Thomas
    For much of the 1990s Latin American countries experimented with transferring the responsibility of managing public schools from the central government to subnational units such as states, municipalities, and schools. Why? Conventional wisdom stresses that these countries decentralized education because central governments were too inefficient to resolve longstanding problems related to access and quality (for example, see Grindle 2004; Kaufman and Nelson 2004). But a careful review of the evidence reveals that the education systems of Latin America generally were not in crisis. The data show that these countries achieved notable gains in enrollment and completion rates between 1950 and 1990—gains that were not lost during the severe debt crisis that spanned the 1980s (World Bank 2018). Rather than a technical explanation, then, we need a political explanation to account for the reasons why Latin American countries decentralized such an important public service. My central claim is that countries decentralize education governance for two political, rather than technical, reasons. First, international pressures shape both the demand and supply for education reform ideas. The 1980s debt crisis made budget cuts necessary, but the importance of education for development meant finding better ways of improving its provision. In this context, decentralization emerged as one, but not the only, choice of reform. Second, the partisan affiliation of teachers determines whether or not incumbents push for decentralization. The reason is that decentralization strengthens the electoral position of incumbent political parties whenever their opponents are affiliated with teachers’ unions because decentralization tends to weaken teachers’ organizational advantages, which are often used to help their partisan allies drum up votes. In a decentralized system, teachers are less able to act as political brokers for the opposition. These political factors, not the underlying strengths and weaknesses of the education systems, drove education decentralization. To support this argument, this dissertation provides case study evidence from four countries (Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Paraguay). It also deploys statistical tools on an original dataset on education decentralization and teachers' union partisan affiliations to show the argument's generalizability.