Balancing Bureaucratic Leadership and Democratic Engagement in Developing Countries: The Conundrum of Governing Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa

The main goal of the proposed paper is to investigate the conundrum of bureaucratic leadership and democratic policy discourse in governing complex cities in developing countries. The tensions between the concepts of... [ view full abstract ]

The main goal of the proposed paper is to investigate the conundrum of bureaucratic leadership and democratic policy discourse in governing complex cities in developing countries. The tensions between the concepts of bureaucracy and democracy have been a pervasive theme of public administration but remain largely under-explored in the context of developing countries. Even more overlooked in the literature is the need to contextualize such discussion with policy-specific illustrations about the tensions between the administrative and democratic logics of development governance. The paper will focus on emergent governance arrangements of cities in Africa. Cities are increasingly at the forefront of exploiting new opportunities for growth and development while also grappling with unprecedented economic, ecological and politico-cultural challenges. Focusing on a few cases in Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper will examine how recent trends in the continent are shaping not only the relationship between cities and their local citizenry, but also changing the power relations between central and local governments.

The extant literature (Scott and Storper 2014) suggests that cities that successfully navigate the complexities of these emerging trends tend to be those that exhibit associative forms of governance. Their institutional structures and processes manifest a shift from hierarchical forms of organization to more horizontal ones with greater emphasis on inclusiveness, deliberation and openness to learning. Cities are increasingly not just in the business of rudimentary service provision but also constitute democratic polities in which collective decision-making and strategic leadership intersect.

In exploring the nexus of administrative efficiency and democratic engagement in African cities, the proposed paper will integrate the distinct but parallel literature on strategic management, multilevel governance and the new public governance. Strategic management addresses the governance structures that facilitate the ongoing integration of proactive and horizontal planning and implementation across networks of agencies and jurisdictions (Joyce 2015; Mintzberg 2013; Andrews et al. 2011; Bryson 2011). Multilevel governance seeks to synthesize top-down and bottom-up approaches to policy making and implementation in multitiered jurisdictions such as Canada’s federal system (Conteh 2015; Young 2012b; Simeon 2006; Hill and Hupe 2003). The new public governance literature directs our focus to the emergent phenomenon of third-sector engagement in co-production whereby policy implementation can be understood as transitioning from simply delivering and directing to facilitating, coordinating, and empowering (Morgan and Cook 2014; Osborne 2010; Frederickson 2007; Kooiman 2006; Peters and Pierre 2005).

The paper draws from these conceptual frameworks to examine how cities are building strategic alliances among a wide range of public and non-governmental actors while at the same time seeking to maintain clearly defined and functioning administrative machineries with core managerial competencies and outlook in highly politicized environments. The discussion also analyzes emerging policy re-alignment across levels of government with the voluntary and involuntary expansion of cities’ policy responsibility over the past two decades.