It is generally accepted that the role of local government is changing. Over the last decade most European countries have reformed local governments: the competences and powers of local authorities, and relations between centre and region, have been considerably modified in Britain, France,...

It is proposed in this paper to examine the relationship between decentralised governance and people’s participation from empirical evidence. The present paper considers people’s participation as an important condition internal to decentralised governance. The study reveals that block...

Decentralisation is a dominant debate in development. The enormous and growing discussions on Decentralisation are well underway all over the world by prominent scholars and policy makers. Further, Decentralisation is not a new concept, but a well-formulated and structured view of an old idea....

The "Panchayat Jamabandhi" is an innovative administrative mechanism to bring in transparency and accountability in administration at the Grama Panchayat level. Under this new mechanism, citizens are given an opportunity to access documents and files of the grama Panchayats thereby making the...

The paper examines the relationship between corruption and gender in institutions of local government in India, using a Logit model. Recent debates about women’s participation in electoral politics suggest that the presence of more women in government will engender public policy, and also...

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis on a panel of 18 French small businesses (from a specific region, the Aquitaine), the representation they have of the sustainable development, the territories and their relations with local administration. Through a textual analysis, we show...

Various measures have been taken to enhance the accountability of elected representatives in the panchayats, and to make the institutions of decentralisation more responsive to the people. This was also expected to achieve more in terms of development and benefits to the people who needed them....

The focus of this paper is to review the financial position of panchayats in India. The analysis is based on the secondary sources of information. It reveals that the panchayats have very little fiscal autonomy. The locally raised revenues are very negligible. The funds flow from higher level...

People of the Scheduled Castes have a long history of being discriminated against, exploited, and placed at the bottom of caste society. The panchayati raj, after the enactment of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, brought in measures to overcome these past indignities, and provided a quota...

This paper analyses the dynamics of participatory institutions in Kodayathur Gram Panchayat in Kerala. It also explores how the different fields of society in panchayat internalised and reproduced these institutions through their actual practices. The study has adopted a relational methodology,...