Models of Governance in Divided Communities:
The case of Georgian Devolution

Research paper

Abstract

Devolution is regarded as the strongest form of decentralization. Under this model, authority is transferred to sub-national elected governments, which are accountable to the population of their territories. Devolved local government has a short history in Georgia. The system of local government has always been integrated into larger and often centralized system of bigger units such as the Russian Empire and USSR.

The process of decentralization started a decade ago, but there is insufficient progress in the development of local institutions. The main reason of the poor institutional performance of local governments and low level of participation is attributed to the low capacity of the local institutions, such as lack of technical experience, inadequate budget, poor revenue sources, and inappropriate organizational structure.

I argue that, exclusive concern with technical matters distracted attention from political factors, political culture, and policy networks existing at the localities. The main objective of this paper is to identify focal points of institutional innovations that will lead to participatory governance in non-homogenous communities. Thus, to achieve the main objective the paper analyses the role of local policy networks in the policy outcomes of local governments.

The paper consists of five parts. The first part addresses the question of theoretical background and outlines research design. The second part describes formal structures of Georgian local government before and after the institutional reform of 2002. The third part develops indicators for the institutional performance and descries how local governments perform. The fourth part analyses policy networks and offers network explanation to institutional performance. The last, fifth part reviews the models of participation and concludes with recommendations for participatory governance.

.

Download the paper