IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/padxxx/v35y2015i1p46-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decentralization as a Post‐Conflict Strategy: Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Sierra Leone

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Edwards
  • Serdar Yilmaz
  • Jamie Boex

Abstract

Sierra Leone has made progress in recovering from a decade‐long civil war, in part due to decentralization. As a post‐conflict stabilization strategy, decentralization has been effective in satisfying the desire for more equitable political representation, and three rounds of peaceful elections have strengthened democratic norms. However, more needs to be performed to strengthen local governments in order to address regional horizontal inequity. Solely political decentralization is not sufficient in addressing regional differences in pro‐poor service delivery, which was a key driver of conflict. It requires broader commitment to establish a functioning local government system, including central government subscription to the tenets of administrative and fiscal decentralization. Though Sierra Leone has remained stable in terms of political violence, recent data show that the nation has not made great strides in addressing weak and inequitable social service delivery. This paper argues that this stagnation is a product of the incomplete nature of the post‐conflict stabilization strategy of decentralization and that correcting this failure will require strong commitment from the central government to implementing the full measure of the existing legal framework for decentralization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Edwards & Serdar Yilmaz & Jamie Boex, 2015. "Decentralization as a Post‐Conflict Strategy: Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Sierra Leone," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(1), pages 46-60, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:padxxx:v:35:y:2015:i:1:p:46-60
    as

    Download full text from publisher

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

    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:35:y:2015:i:1:p:46-60. 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.