Farmers' Weekly to Journal of Agronomic Sciences. Changing conceptions of local governance inPublic Administration and Development and its predecessors

From its very first issue, problems of decentralized government and local administration dominated the pages of the Journal of African Administration. The first major supplements were devoted to local government; and when the journal's remit was extended beyond Africa, its first new title was the Journal of Local Administration Overseas. However, it was later shown that all this careful study and wise experiment in the techniques of administration by the men on the spot was in fact cover for planning long-term for a transfer of power in Africa. As in Lord Ripon's India 65 years earlier, local government was being introduced primarily as a measure of popular and political education to prepare indigenous leadership for self-rule. This article emphasizes how in every case it was the English model of local government which was introduced, even though one or two discerning savants protested that other models might be much better suited to the circumstances of tropical Africa and other dependent territories. Disillusionment in most newly independent countries with the models bequeathed by the colonial rulers, together with a wary suspicion of any encouragement for local autonomy, meant that in later years the term ‘local government’ fell into disrepute. Nevertheless, in one form or another, decentralization remained a key topic in almost every number of the journal; and it continues to do so, if only under today's buzz-phrase ‘local governance’. Meanwhile, the journal itself has changed from a tool for practitioners into a vehicle for academic research. This inevitably subjective review concludes by suggesting some reason for optimism for supporters of local government, as local communities everywhere become more articulate, more discriminating and more demanding, so that the central authorities in all countries are under greater pressure to allow each of those communities to seek its own salvation in its own way. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

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