An Assessment of Local Government Accountability: Mechanisms and Their Operation in Gram Panchayats in Two Indian States
Local government accountability is a desirable priority, because it allows local residents to have control over their representatives who make decisions that affect their lives. The Panchayat (rural local government) laws and rules in Indian states have provided various formal accountability mechanisms at the lowest level of Gram Panchayat (Village Council). The actual functioning, of these mechanisms does not always generate a high degree of accountability. In addition to legal or institutional features of accountability mechanisms, contextual features (i.e. socio-economic and political factors) play an important role in explaining the actual effectiveness of accountability mechanisms in establishing popular control. This paper investigates the effectiveness of available formal accountability mechanisms — the sanctioning mechanism of elections, the deliberative mechanism of Village Assemblies and the monitoring mechanism of Social Audit—in creating accountability in the chosen Gram Panchayats in the two Indian states of West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.
Accountability Local government Elections Village Assembly Social Audit
Ananya Samajdar
Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570
国际会议
2012 International Conference on Public Administration(8th)(2012年公共管理国际会议 ICPA)
印度海德拉巴
英文
381-392
2012-10-25（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）