A striking feature of local government reform in many Commonwealth countries has been a heavy reliance on structural reform, often in the form of forced local council amalgamation. This paper argues that the long-run success of structural change in local government hinges on several key factors, not least that voluntary rather than compulsory council mergers have a far greater chance of success. A second key ingredient resides in a high degree of local autonomy in both the composition and operation of decentralized governmental functions. A third vital factor lies in ensuring that revenue and tax assignment is sufficient to provide local government with financial autonomy. Finally, adequate powers of taxation need to be accorded to local government and this requires careful consideration of the types of taxes most suited to local government.

In 2005 CLGF members adopted the Aberdeen Agenda: Commonwealth Principles on Good Practice for Local Democracy and Good Governance. The twelve Principles were developed at the CLGF’s biennial conference in March 2005 and were subsequently forwarded to Commonwealth Heads of Government, who also adopted them as part of their commitment to fundamental political values when they met the following November. Since then members of CLGF have used them in a variety of different ways – to support their own policy making, to enhance their lobbying and advocacy work, and in some cases, notably in Pakistan and Uganda (see CJLG Issue 2), to undertake a selfassessment of the health of their systems of local democracy and governance.

This paper summarises key findings from a comprehensive analysis commissioned by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) of the nature of decentralisation in the three East African countries: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.The specific objectives of the study were: Provide a basic comparative analysis of the forms and processes of decentralisation reforms in the three countries. Analyse the specific modalities in the three countries for local service delivery planning and provision within the three sectors of basic education, primary health care and agricultural extension, with a particular emphasis on rural areas. TIDEMAND: Local level service delivery, decentralisation and governance: A comparative study of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania CJLG May 2009 145. Explore the impact of the specific forms of decentralisation and local level service delivery arrangements in terms of efficiency, accountability (transparency) and democratic process (participation).

Uganda embarked in 1993 on radical decentralization, among other reasons, to enhance local governance and local democracy. The major focus of the decentralization policy was on empowering citizens to participate in decisions that affect their localities. This issue will be examined based on two major themes of the twelve principles of the Commonwealth’s ‘Aberdeen Agenda’ for local democracy – the enabling environment and participation. However, the paper argues that Uganda’s devolutionary decentralization can only foster local governance and local democracy if it is properly conceptualised, the facilitating conditions are given careful attention, and the institutional framework is sufficiently elaborate and effective to enable it to achieve its intended objectives. Short of these measures, the gap between intent and reality might be so great as to disable the decentralization policy from achieving real local governance and local democracy.

Andrew Sancton combines his own broad knowledge of global changes with an outline and comparison of the viewpoints of prominent social scientists to argue that city regions in western liberal democracies will not and cannot be self-governing. Self-government requires a territory delineated by official boundaries, but the multiple boundaries of city-regions, unlike the clear and undisputed boundaries of provinces and states, continue to move outward due to the constant growth and expansion of urban populations and services.