114 Book Reviews

Mutahaba’s book. Nor is there any substantive discussion of any aspect of public adminis- tration - tax administration and reform, rural development, decentralization-in the context of ‘economic restructuring’. There is little discussion of ‘accountability’ either; and where there is, only a very summary treatment. The relationship between efficient and fair adminis- tration and democratic forms is ignored and yet, as the ECA recognizes, it is hard to see how any programme of adjustment or transformation can succeed in Africa without a support- ing political system. Recently, green shoots of ‘multipartyism’ and democratic forms have become perceptible in Africa and the donors’ addition of ‘good governance’ to the list of conditionalities may hurry this along. Balogun and Mutahaba’s book is the proceedings of the Ninth Roundtable of the African Association for Public Administration and Management held in Gabarone in 1987, when at any rate, the participants seemed unaware of the relevance of the political dimension of their tasks.

EDWARD HORESH University of Bath

CULTIVATING THE GRASS ROOTS: WHY LOCAL GOVERNMENT MATTERS Hubert J. B. Allen International Union of Local Authorities, The Hague, 1990, 156 pp.

This is a small book which puts the case for local government across the world and paints an image of what ‘good’ local government is. It is packed with detailed comparative information and full of good sense. To some extent, it is aimed at the developing country reader who may be involved in making choices about models to follow, but it would also be of interest to anyone schooled in the British and British colonial moulds of local government prepared to have assumptions challenged. It will be a textbook for postgraduate and in-service courses on local government. It covers the rationale for local government, its status and roles, issues of size and structure, electoral systems and accountability, financial and personnel resources, and planning and management.

The heart of the book lies in its presentation of good local government. Good local authori- ties have general competence (can undertake any actions provided that they believe them to be in the best interests of their citizens); share in revenues by right (perhaps enshrined constitutionally), whatever the source of revenue; are generally small (‘human-scale’) and based on local political identities; co-operate with neighbouring authorities; have independent control over their budgets; have a stable and non-partisan staff, possibly organized in a unified local government service; and have the freedom to decide their own management structures and systems. Above all else, it should be clear to the public what local authorities d-onfusion is often found and is most unhelpful. This is particularly so when citizens are confronted with a plethora of bodies-different tiers, and even ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ local authorities coexisting side by side.

Correspondingly, it is the role of a good central government to ‘set local authorities free’ (p. 1 Ol ) , and to offer support where needed. In particular, central ministries of local government should not inspect local authorities, though they have to be concerned with the legality of local authority actions and to ensure that local people know and can exercise their rights. The main role of central ministries of local government is to ‘be a trusting guide, philosopher and friend, promoting stimulating and protecting especially from other ministries’.

The book is rightly sceptical about the fashion in local government circles in recent decades for efficiency and economies of scale. This has often been encouraged by central governments through reorganizations creating bigger authorities and requiring or otherwise stimulating the use of particular management systems. The need for efficiency itself is not denied, though effectiveness and legitimacy are greater concerns, but the introduction of American private sector management techniques to achieve efficiency is particularly irrelevant to small urban or rural authorities (pp. 95-96).

Economies of scale should be questioned-local authorities are not businesses (and of course such economies of scale are not always present in business either). Bigger authorities have more specialized personnel and provide a more uniform and higher standard of service, which may be less flexible in terms of local needs with increased managerial overheads (pp. 46 and 103).

Book Reviews 175

In terms of actual practice, the British and French models and their colonial derivatives come in for a lot of criticism, while the Scandinavian, German, Swiss and American systems are much closer to the image of good local government. However, the book does not study what happens when advocates of good local government interact with practitioners of the models that they seek to replace. Change may not come easily, as Swedish aid has found in Zimbabwe where the political and administrative culture surrounding local government is centralist, hierarchical, and beset by conservatism and even lack of clear direction about basic issues of socioeconomic development (Lindgren, 1991). Rightly, Allen points to the critical prerequisites for his image: political will and central support.

This brings me to my major criticism of the book: while it recognizes the importance of the wider political economy, the geography of dominant interests is not adequately explored in seeking explanations for the variety of experience across the world. The main observation is that good local government occurs in states that grew historically with strong community bases, whereas local government systems characterized by central control, hierarchy, restricted competence and arbitrary decisions about revenues derive from autocratic political histories. This is undoubtedly too simplistic a formulation, incapable of explaining what amounts to often significant change within either tradition-for example, municipal decline in Britain (Loughlin et al., 1985).

A broader framework of understanding is badly needed, otherwise how can Zimbabweans (and others) understand the constraints and opportunities along the road to improving their local government system so that it can play a useful and creative role in development?

Finally, the book is based on the premise that the main role of local government is in fostering economic and social development. While this is undoubtedly true, local authorities, certainly in Europe, are beginning to expand their environmental protection, regulation and management roles. This trend will strengthen and become more widespread. It could be that bigger, more centrally controlled authorities turn out to be better at these roles: regulation and environmental issues are hardly explored.

These criticisms should not detract from the usefulness of this short book: it is a wide survey of practice over a wide range of issues, linked by a refreshing adherence to local government principles and a strong image of good local government. Comparative local government researchers need to elaborate and test this image, and work out the constraints and opportunities for its achievement.

REFERENCES

Lindgren, L. (1991). Local Government Goes South: A Study of Swedish Development Assist- ance in the Field of Public Administration. Department of Political Science, Gothenburg University.

Loughlin, M. et al. (eds) (1985). Harfa Century of Municipal Decline. Allen and Unwin, London.

ANDREW SHEPHERD Development Administration Group

University of Birmingham

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE THIRD WORLD-AN INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK Edited by V. Subramaniam Greenwood Press, New YorkNestport/London; 1990,447 pp.

The editor promises an ‘overview of the public administration of a representative group of Third World countries by different authors’ and ‘a fairly detailed, updated, and objective empirical account of the evolution, structure and processes of public administration in all these countries without theoretical presuppositions’ (p. 10). Well, whether the selection of countries covered is representative is very much in doubt (Latin America is represented with