以给人民带来更贴近服务的名义?——对乌干达创建新地方政府辖区的解释

In the name of bringing services closer to the people?Explaining the creation of new local government districts in Uganda

许多非洲政府以及其他亚洲和拉丁美洲国家都建立了新的地方政府(LG)管辖区作为分权政策的一部分。但是,大多数有关分权的研究都集中在各政府层级的财务、政治和行政任务上。对地方政府管理区域的数量和规模的研究少之又少。通常,这些被看作是历史的偶然,但是现实并非如此。本文将探究围绕着地方政府管辖区域创建的理论依据而提出的五个假设,并在乌干达背景下检验它们的意义。本文的结论是,乌干达地方政府管辖区的建立并不符合给人民带来更贴近服务的政策目标,也未促进参与式民主治理。相反,这一实践不过是中央政府为了与小辖区建立选举联盟而改变选区划分的策略,以及为了保住权力赢得选票而扩张的新型世袭网络。

Many governments in Africa and elsewhere in Asia and Latin America have created new local government(LG)jurisdictions as part of their decentralization policies.However,most decentralization studies have focused on fiscal,political and administrative assignments between levels of government Much less attention has been given to the number and size of LG jurisdictions.Often,these are considered to be an accident of history,but the reality is not so.This article pursues five propositions concerning the rationale for creating LG jurisdictions and examines their relevance in the Uganda context The article concludes that creation of LG jurisdictions in Uganda neither conforms to the policy objective of bringing services closer to the people nor to promoting participatory democratic governance.Instead,the practice conforms to central government gerrymandering tactics of forging an electoral alliance with small jurisdictions and to extend neo-patrimonial networks to win votes in order to stay in power.