It is our great pleasure to announce that the live session of MPA 505 – Local Self Governance – Classification of Local Governments and Roles of Local Governance has been successfully conducted by Dr. Buddhiman Shrestha. The recorded video of that session is available in the classroom page. All the slides are available for download.
Students are informed to log in with their cdpa account and download these study materials. Please click the link below to access the recorded video.
Dr. Buddhiman Shrestha presented following ideas during the lecture
Classification of Local Governance System
Classification of Local Governance System
- The classification of local governance can be defined as the division of governing system of a country.
- A country divided into subnational governments to take advantage of economies of scale in service delivery and local economic development.
- The division of subnational government is a critical issue.
- It may be affected by various factors, however it should have physiognomy (specific character).
- The factors may be determined based on decentralized power.
Classification of Local Government
- LG is classified based on the area division in which a government structure is formed.
- Its objective is to promote
- efficient and effective functioning of central/federal government role within local government jurisdiction.
- The local governance dimensions such as political, economic, social, administrative, cultural affects on its division.
- the local governance to be function in these dimensions, the area and power has more symbiotic relation than any other pair (Mutalib and Khan 1982).
Basis of Classification
- Territorial base: history, population, transportation, administration, finance, ethnic and culture, sense of oneness, settlement pattern, topographical features, natural resources.
- Organizational structure: forms (horizontal and vertical), council,
- political executive (Mono executive: single person say mayor, president.
- Plural executive: group of individual, one of them is chosen as its chairman. It may be political and elected directly), committee system, electoral process.
- Functional jurisdictions: delegated functions model, general competence model, specific functions allocation model, concurrent (mixed) functions model.
- Financial resource base: tax, non tax, borrowing and grants.
- Physical infrastructure development
- People participation
- The growth of human settlements has varied implication horizontally and vertically. Horizontal growths have two fold implications:
- Real physical extension of an urban area, jurisdiction of political and administrative personnel, and
- Extension of the catchment area. the larger the area of land, higher will be the possibilities of population settlement and vice versa.
- capacity and identity is important one to classify the size of local government.
- The chief aim of classification of the local governments is to accelerate socioeconomic development process in local area.
- The classification should maintained equilibrium conditions between the demand for and supply of public service as well as development goal.
- The division of geographical territory into subdivision is critical. In the subdivision process, the visible and observable feature of local government is physiognomy
- the country has to be divided based on the geographical location that enable to mobilize all the political power, economic resources and administrative services.
Changing Roles and Responsibilities of LG
- Determination of roles and responsibilities depends on political system of a country.
- Moreover, most important functions performed by central government.
- Political: service provision
- Economic: local economic development
- Administrative: personnel management
Functional role and responsibility
- Basically, roles and responsibilities are decentralized to LG to perform the functions such as:
- Essential (internal revenue): basic services and local economic development.
- Assigned (intergovernmental fiscal transfer): education, health
- Agency (reimbursement): vital registrations, land tax
Critical Time
- It has changed with the change in time period.
- 1960, 1970, 1980, 90, 2000, 2010, 2020
Local Governments Role
- Acquisition of resources
- Formulation of plan, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
- Individual and institutional capacity building
- Collection of local demand.
- Human resource management.
- Vital registration etc.
Changing Roles and Responsibilities of LG in Nepal
| LSGA 2055 | LGOA 2074 |
| Article 28 | Article 11 |
| Agriculture, drinking water, transport, education, irrigation, physical development, health, forest, language, tourism etc. | City police, cooperatives, communication, tax, local service management, local statistics, local development, education, health, local market, local road, local mediation, record keeping, land certificate, agriculture, unemployed statistics, drinking water, agriculture, drinking water, disaster management, mine, language, social security, vital registration and the like. |