Decentralization and the potential for effective municipal governance in Senegal

Roughly half of Senegal"s population lives in the country"s 48 officially recognized cities and towns (and the quasi-urban agglomeration of Touba), an urbanization rate among the highest on the continent. These municipalities operate within a relatively progressive legislative framework defining an autonomous communal domain: representation by directly elected officials, broadly defined public service responsibilities (conditioned by central oversight), and an independent tax base. Moreover, Senegalese communes enjoy an historical tradition of limited self-government and urban political activity unique in francophone Africa. Despite these institutional advantages, urban government in Senegal is unaccountable and ineffectual. Financially dependent on the state but unable or unwilling to fulfill its service provision responsibilities and operating in disdainful isolation from most of its constituents, Senegalese municipalities fail to accomplish their mandate of ensuring the best standard of living for the entirety of the population. Administrative decentralization in itself has neither improved municipal management dramatically nor facilitated the democratization of local political life. Uninterrupted political incumbency by the hegemonic Parti Socialiste has homogenized national and local political objectives. This political reality undermines a nominally differentiated urban government system -- conditioning internal municipal operations, relations between city government and community associations, and interactions between municipal officials and central bureaucrats with oversight authority. Political affinities have withered the potential for disinterested oversight by central ministries, and compromised any incentives for fiscally sound local management. City administration remains captive to national regime maintenance objectives unrelated to local needs and aspirations, decoupling political rewards from municipal performance. (Author abstract, modified)