“Discovering institutions that work for poor people”

Research stream on Local Governance and Leadership

Led by Dr Diana Cammack out of Cape Town, this stream of APPP research is undertaking intensive fieldwork and related documentary and archival enquiries in Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. Through close observation and analysis of actual examples of local governance and leadership in a range of countries, past and present, it aims to shed light on which local governance and leadership patterns work relatively better and relatively worse from the perspective of the provision of the public goods that are crucial for poverty reduction and human development.

The research promises to have significant implications for country and development-agency policies. The emerging findings suggest conclusions about:

current policy approaches that should be abandoned because, on account of typical social mechanisms whose workings are illustrated by the research, they have predictably negative or counter-productive outcomes;
alternative approaches – either innovative or well-tested but prematurely abandoned – which offer demonstrably better prospects because they are consistently associated with social mechanisms of a relatively constructive sort.

An information sheet providing additional description and contact details for the stream is downloadable from here ( English 200KB). Downloadable publications particularly relevant to the stream include the Research Progress Report, Discussion Papers 1, 5 and 7, and Working Papers 3 and 4.

National incentive for Civic Education, Karonga, Malawi

Latest Downloads

	APPP Working Paper 13, Towards a theory of local governance and public goods' provision in sub-Saharan Africa, David Booth, Aug 2010 Eng More Info
	APPP Working Paper 10, Local governance and public goods in Niger, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, July 2010 Eng More Info
	APPP Working paper 10, Gouvernance locale et biens publics au Niger, par Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, Juillet 2010 Fr More Info
	APPP Working Paper 11, Local Governance and public goods in Malawi by Diana Cammack and Edge Kanyongolo, July 2010 Eng More Info