What the People Want from the Democratic Decentralized Governance: The Quest for Accountability in Local Governments’ Service Provision in Ethiopia

Abstract

Decentralization is a critical issue to revisit after more than a quarter of a century of governmental attempts [1]. The experimentation with decentralization never seems to come to an end as it still shows major gaps especially at the local level of governance-service delivery. The implementation of decentralized local governance in Ethiopia, which strives to change the government from above nature of the service delivery, proved a complex and difficult task for the African country with  hundreds years of unitary governance and deep entrenched upward accountability structure which intern has made the public to develop strong public suspicion and mistrust towards the governance apparatus and hard to rectify these with two decades of attempts at decentralizing governance structures and service delivery. Providing incentives for the local government offices to adopt new instructions and changing their traditional service delivery practices are quite difficult. Literatures in the area have overlooked one variant of government accountability i.e. social accountability in the local governance, in that, most of the writings has been made on fiscal and political accountability of service provision. The main objective of this study is to investigate the social accountability of local government land administration service delivery in Ethiopia with a particular focus on Saharti- Samre rural woreda, Tigray regional state, as a case study area justified by the fact that the grass-root poor are found in the rural part and land administration, can serve as a showcase for both rural and urban deep service problems seems to be institutionalized. This paper has analyzed whether the study Woreda land administration office is providing for social accountability of its services in its provision. The methodology used was survey design, applied in three purposively selected areas of the Woreda and analyzed using descriptive, and trend analysis methods. Accordingly the study was cross-sectional. Findings have revealed: the FDRE constitution is the overall frame work for social accountability in the local governments and the problems emanate largely from awareness problems on both the service providers and the service users. Among the major policy implications recommended in the paper are the establishments of citizens’ review, public reporting mechanisms, and social forums; as an enabling policy environment for social accountability.

Keywords: Administrative service delivery, Public services Local Governance, Social-accountable, land administration.