Donald I. Ray and P. S. Reddy, eds.

ISBN 1552380807

$49.95 hardcover

December 2002
348 pages

About the Book

Grassroots Governance? comprises a collection of articles from the fields of law, post-colonial studies, anthropology, cultural studies, and policy and administrative studies. Edited by Donald I. Ray and P.S. Reddy, these interdisciplinary and intercontinental studies establish a baseline for best practice in rural local government and traditional leadership in Africa and the Afro-Caribbean. Since traditional leadership is a factor that has been overlooked in evaluations of rural local government in much of contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, this book addresses a significant gap in African scholarship.

Case studies are drawn from Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, and Commonwealth countries in West, East, and Southern Africa, as well as Jamaica. The articles look at how to integrate, or reconcile, traditional leadership into democratic systems of local government while taking into account the importance of traditional leadership to the culture of local governance.

About the Editors

Donald I. Ray is a professor in the department of political science at the University of Calgary. He is also the International Co-ordinator of the Traditional Authority Applied Research Network (TAARN).

P.S. Reddy is a professor in the School of Governance, University of Durban-Westville, Durban, South Africa. He is currently the project director of the Working Group on Local Governance and Development of the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration, headquartered in Brussels.

Contents

Summary
Preface by P.S. Reddy

1
Rural Local Governance and Traditional Leadership in Africa and the Afro-Caribbean: Policy and Research Implications from Africa to the Americas and Australasia
Donald I. Ray

2
Setting the Ghanaian Context of Rural Local Government: Traditional Authority Values
Christiane Owusu-Sarpong

3
Social Characteristics of Traditional Leaders and Public Views on their Political Role
Charles Crothers

4
Ghana: Traditional Leadership and Rural Local Governance
Donald I. Ray

5
Chiefs: Power in a Political Wilderness
Robert Thornton

6
Local Governance in Lesotho: The Central Role of Chiefs
Tim Quinlan and Malcolm Wallis

7
Traditional Authorities, Local Government and Land Rights
Lungisile Ntsebeza

8
“We Rule the Mountains and They Rule the Plains”: The West African Basis of Traditional Authority in Jamaica
Werner Zips

9
Traditional Leadership and Rural Local Government in Botswana
Keshav C. Sharma

10
Rural Local Government and Development: A Case Study of Kwazulu-Natal: Quo Vadis?
P. S. Reddy and B. B. Biyela

11
What Role for Traditional Leadership in the “Pluralistic State” in Africa?
Carl Wright

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