This paper provides an overview of the efforts of successive Zambian governments to transform and institutionalise democratic local governance, and to come to grips with the socio-economic development challenges facing the country. It assesses the progress and challenges that governments are facing in their efforts to transform local government into democratic, developmental local governance.

Tanzania has embarked on several radical measures to restructure its economy and governance structures, including local governments. For more than four decades, Tanzania has been striving relentlessly for effective decentralisation measures, yet the progress has been slow. The country has passed through several phases of decentralisation, with each phase inheriting some criticised characteristics that have been difficult to dismantle in the successive phases. For example, previously recognised mistakes have continued to block any attempts to diverge from the direction set by the Ujamaa policies. It is argued here that various attempts at decentralisation by the central government since the 1960s in Tanzania have fallen short of the government’s intentions to establish effective local governance. This being the case, two important questions prevail: Why has Tanzania made little progress towards effective decentralisation, despite various attempts to devolve powers from the centre? Why has Tanzania not fully decentralised, as echoed in the policy paper on Decentralisation-by-Devolution (D-by-D)? There have been a number of explanations for this retardation along the path to decentralisation. This article reflects upon the tenability of path dependency theory which posits that the longer an institution has been in place, the more resilient it is to change.

This Framework outlines key considerations for developing a party’s gender policy, and addresses a variety of thematic areas essential for the advancement of women and promotion of gender equality within political parties, including leadership formation, internal decision making, internal oversight and institutional development, candidate recruitment, party programmes and platform development, outreach to voters, and campaigns.

A trend towards decentralized systems of government and the strengthening of subnational governance is underway globally. However, decentralization has many different meanings, and it is frequently left undefined, even while it is being implemented. This chapter argues that enhanced understanding of concepts and theories can contribute to improved practice during decentralization reforms, and consequently be of benefit both to governments and their citizens. Drawing on the theoretical, research and public administration literature, an approach is adopted that aims to inform decentralization praxis, that is, the interplay of policy, strategy, implementation and review. The material is used as a foundation for presenting a synthesis-framework for praxis that draws attention to: appreciating the theoretical scope of fiscal decentralization; focusing on the country and its goals; considering the design of the system of multi-level governance; focusing on central and local capacity; and adopting flexibility, supported by feedback mechanisms, in the process of decentralization.

The Imperative of Good Local Governance is a true state-of-the-art volume in the field of local governance, decentralization and local democracy summarizing a substantial part of the insights from original research in the last decade. It is also a future-looking volume with explicit policy relevance, paving the way for innovative thinking (and acting) on the next phase of development in the field. In a unique way it brings together authoritative contributions from authors that to a large extent have been defining the field for the last decade or more. From a theoretical perspective it is adjoining top–down and bottom–up rationalities, which is further illuminated through a wide variety of key case studies. The case studies are selected for their relevance for the theoretical perspectives offered, as well as for their paradigmatic power in the current global evolution of decentralized policies and politics. The volume concludes that overall, local development and local politics will not go away – it has a huge potential – but also that the field is full of unfulfilled promises, some of which could be remedied through the perspectives revealed in this volume.