Donald Curtis

Performance management for participatory democracy: thoughts on the transformation process in South African local government

The White Paper on Local Government in South Africa signals the intention to establish a performance management system for the sector. This paper suggests that current approaches to performance management, as used, for instance, in the UK public sector, would need substantial revision to be supportive of effective municipal development in South Africa. There is a need for low cost systems that fit the capabilities of the administrations that exist in many municipalities. A focus upon how municipalities manage their governance role would in the end be the best way of ensuring that liveable communities as well as improved services are created in the towns and rural areas of South Africa. The paper provides some ideas on the design of such a performance management or enhancement system. Its principal features would be that it is: based on mutual organisational learning and problem solving; using simple, indirect, low cost information gathering and dissemination techniques that are within the capabilities of existing leaders and officials; focused on processes in priority to outcomes.

Mind sets and methods: poverty strategies and the awkward potential of the enabling state

Purpose – This purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide a framework for understanding anti‐poverty strategies in public policy when effective, enabling, governance is recognised to be the outcome of multiple agencies (public, civil society and private).Design/methodology/approach – Cultural theory – providing the methodological approach – suggests that individualist, hierarchical and group biases underlie market thinking, bureaucratic thinking and the thinking of civil society institutions and are, in essence, incompatible. Each kind of thinking can be linked to ideologies of development (or “modernisation”) yet enabling strategies (and New Labours “Third Way”) require state, market and civil society to work collaboratively, across boundaries.Findings – The main finding is that the interface between types of organisation will always be awkward; the point at which transaction costs mount up and “partnerships” falter.Practical implications – For central agencies the practical implication is that an e...