IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/padxxx/v30y2010i3p215-231.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decentralization in Tanzania: An assessment of local government discretion and accountability

Author

Listed:
  • Varsha Venugopal
  • Serdar Yilmaz

Abstract

A large part of the decentralization literature is fragmented along political, fiscal, or administrative lines. In this article we employ a diagnostic framework to draw these dimensions together in a coherent manner to focus on analyzing local government discretion and accountability in Tanzania. Tanzania seems to have a deconcentrated local government system with central appointees having large powers at the local level. Centrally‐funded mandates—such as constructing secondary schools—dominate local government plans and budgets. Central control over administrative functions has ensured that administrative decentralization is yet to occur. In the fiscal sphere, progress has been made in transparency and harmonization of transfers in the last 5 years but local governments still have some way to go in raising own revenues, being less reliant on transfers, and ensuring downward accountability. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Varsha Venugopal & Serdar Yilmaz, 2010. "Decentralization in Tanzania: An assessment of local government discretion and accountability," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 30(3), pages 215-231, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:padxxx:v:30:y:2010:i:3:p:215-231
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mrutu Lukio Lawrence & Stella Kinemo, 2019. "The Myth of Administrative Decentralization in the Context of Centralized Human Resources Recruitment in Tanzania," Journal of Public Administration and Governance, Macrothink Institute, vol. 9(1), pages 209-218, March.
    2. Evans, David K. & Holtemeyer, Brian & Kosec, Katrina, 2019. "Cash transfers increase trust in local government," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 138-155.
    3. Takaaki Masaki, 2016. "The impact of intergovernmental transfers on local revenue generation in Africa: Evidence from Tanzania," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-113, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Carlitz, Ruth D., 2017. "Money Flows, Water Trickles: Understanding Patterns of Decentralized Water Provision in Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 16-30.
    5. Biao Huang & Jiebing Wu & Li Ye, 2023. "Fiscal decentralization, intergovernmental mobility, and the innovativeness of local governments' policy response in COVID‐19: Evidence from China," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2), pages 196-206, May.
    6. Masaki, Takaaki, 2018. "The impact of intergovernmental transfers on local revenue generation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 173-186.
    7. Takaaki Masaki, 2016. "The impact of intergovernmental transfers on local revenue generation in Africa: Evidence from Tanzania," WIDER Working Paper Series 113, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:padxxx:v:30:y:2010:i:3:p:215-231. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0271-2075 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.