This publication identifies hurdles preventing marginalized people from taking active part in customary and democratic decision-making. It highlights strategies for managing transition from political exclusion to inclusion and identifies lessons that could be adopted by marginalized groups. Drawing on experience from 38 case studies, the publication describes how different marginalized groups have worked to overcome barriers to their participation in political decision-making.

Too often, government leaders fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. Political constraints can prevent leaders from following sound technical advice, even when leaders have the best of intentions. Making Politics Work for Development: Harnessing Transparency and Citizen Engagement focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function.

Public participation as a democratic right has gained wide acceptance in local governance, both to improve accountability in service delivery and to enhance civic consciousness. Uganda now has two decades’ experience of various forms of decentralisation. However, the extent of public participation both in local planning and in holding local politicians to account has been inconsistent. Taking Buikwe District local government as a case study, the authors argued that three key factors influence public participation in local governance – access to information, ability to use information effectively, and awareness of citizens’ rights, roles and responsibilities. They found that these factors positively influenced overall respondents’ participation in local government projects by 10.2%, 19% and 22% respectively based on Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The study further found that information is not readily accessible or effectively disseminated to the majority of citizens and therefore is not fully harnessed for planning, monitoring and evaluating government projects. Reasons for this inadequate access included: limited and costly infrastructure for handling information: lack of skills in relation to how and when to use information; and lack of analytical and simplification skills among those disseminating information. In light of these findings, the paper recommends that information dissemination must be planned and carried out in a targeted and systematic way, if citizens’ awareness of their rights, roles and responsibilities in service delivery is to be achieved.

The Government of Uganda established external agencies as part of the control mechanisms aimed at promoting accountability in the public sector in general and local governments (LGs) in particular. The two cardinal control agencies include the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) and the Inspectorate of Government (IG), who are mandated to enhance public service through efficient and effective resource management, ensuring adherence to standards and regulations, and promoting responsiveness to community needs. In spite of these institutional controls, a surge of unbearable events involving abuse of authority and misuse of public resources still exists, suggesting significant managerial and capacity handicaps, not only in the internal mechanisms of LGs, but also in the external control agencies. This paper presents findings of a study conducted to evaluate the institutional capacity of the OAG and the IG in the enhancement of accountability in local governments (LGs) in Uganda. The findings demonstrate deficiencies in institutional capacity across the spectrum of financial, human and material resources, as well as the enabling legislation and lack stakeholder support. The scenario is a recipe for encouraging public malfeasance. The paper makes a strong case for strengthening institutional capacity, through improvements in planning, resource facilitation and collaborative relations among the key stakeholders. It is argued that the establishment of a special anti-corruption court could help reduce the delays and provide appropriate corrective measures in support of accountability.

Review of the book: "Municipal Infrastructure Financing Innovative Practices from Developing Countries" edited by Munawwar Alam