“Hum faltu hai [in English, “We are useless”] …I don’t even know what the budget of the council is. Nobody tells me about the procurement process [or] the number of tenders that have gone public…I don’t have enough knowledge about government programs and my rights as a councilor.”  This lament, expressed by an Indian municipal councilor (in Hindi, a parshad) from a small town in the state of Rajasthan, reflects a key dilemma of decentralization: How do we balance representation with efficacy in local governance?

Over the last several decades, countries across the Global South have shifted varying degrees of political, fiscal and administrative powers to urban municipalities. The potential benefits of decentralization are promising; local officials, embedded in cities and towns, should be intimately familiar with their constituents’ grievances and are therefore expected to be more responsive and accountable to them. In India, this potential is deepened by constitutionally-mandated electoral quotas for women and disadvantaged castes, which broadens the representativeness of urban government.

Who Knows How to Govern?

Yet, effective representation depends on local officials knowing how to use their powers under decentralization. Urban governance is a technical undertaking, requiring officials to know the rules and procedures for getting things done. Unfortunately, as our informant suggests, many elected officials empowered by decentralization reforms simply do not know how to govern.

The councilor’s sentiment is supported by our new study published in the American Political Science Review, “Who Knows How to Govern? Procedural Knowledge in India’s Small-Town Councils,” which combines four months of fieldwork and a survey of 2,065 municipal politicians across 60 small towns in Rajasthan. It reveals an important and understudied reason why municipal governments often fail to improve the wellbeing of residents: Officials broadly lack “procedural knowledge,” information about their formal responsibilities under decentralization and how to carry them out—undercutting their effectiveness in representing constituents and delivering development.

Small towns, defined in the study as those with populations under 500,000 people, are important sites to examine procedural knowledge and municipal governance. Despite an overwhelming scholarly and policy focus on large cities, nearly half of all urban residents in India, and across the globe, live in small towns.

Within India, municipal politicians play a crucial role in urban governance. Under decentralization reforms, elections are held in cities every five years. Cities are divided into wards and voters in each ward elect a councilor. Councilors are expected to represent their constituents, secure infrastructure and services, participate in council meetings (including the annual budget meeting), encourage local tax collection and ensure that town development follows statutory master plans. Given most small towns house only a small handful of unelected bureaucrats, much of the weight of urban governance falls on the shoulders of councilors.

Our study measured the procedural knowledge of municipal politicians through a 10-point assessment covering three core domains: municipal spending, local revenue raising, and institutional rules and protocols. The results of the fieldwork and survey were sobering: Municipal politicians broadly lack knowledge across all three domains. A typical local politician only answered 40% of our rudimentary questions correctly. On average, only 16% of questions relating to municipal spending were answered correctly, and only 7% of respondents knew of their town’s master plan and its valid year range.

Does procedural knowledge impact the ability of councilors to get work done for citizens? Yes. Specifically, we found that levels of procedural knowledge correlate with markers of effectiveness: involvement in the annual budget meeting, helping residents access public services, having connections to higher-level bureaucrats and politicians, and the frequency with which constituents meet the politician to help solve the former’s problems. As one councilor put it, “If you don’t have knowledge about development-related matters, then you cannot get anything done for your ward. What is the rule? What are the regulations?”

Despite Expanding Representation Across Social Groups, Lack of Procedural Knowledge Thwarts Local Leaders’ Impact

Unevenness in who possesses procedural knowledge further undercuts the representative potential of municipal governments. Women, on average, possess lower levels of procedural knowledge than their male counterparts. Politicians from disadvantaged caste groups also tend to have lower levels of procedural knowledge than those from advantaged caste groups. Instead, procedural knowledge tends to cluster among men of high ethnic status, suggesting a concerning source of political inequality. If female and disadvantaged caste councilors especially lack knowledge of their powers and the protocols to solve constituent problems, their ability to effectively represent constituents is largely thwarted. Disparities in procedural knowledge enable local governance to remain the purview of male social elites.

However, it is worth noting that procedural knowledge is broadly low for all groups we surveyed, including men and advantaged castes. One reason is that officials do not appear to acquire procedural knowledge simply by holding office. A comparison of elected officials and unsuccessful candidates found little difference in their knowledge levels 18 months into a five-year term. Relying on holding office as a pathway to knowledge acquisition is further curtailed by the high rates of turnover in local elections; in our study setting, 80% of sampled councilors were first time representatives. On one hand, such turnover is heartening, suggesting that citizens hold officials accountable at the ballot box. On the other hand, rapid turnover compels the need for equally rapid knowledge acquisition for local officials, given many are unlikely to hold office beyond a single term.

—

These grim realities should not be interpreted as an argument against decentralization of governing power. In India, decentralization has ushered in local governments that are more inclusive and accessible to their constituents. However, to ensure the representative gains of who governs is extended into how they govern, they must be coupled with efforts to enable officials to acquire procedural knowledge.

Only 5% of sampled councilors said they received any kind of training following the most recent town elections. Encouragingly, 95% of surveyed politicians stated they want training following elections, including on themes of public spending and procurement, budget-making and the rules that structure council meetings. Intensive training programs, especially those designed to empower women and disadvantaged castes, can offer a promising way to improve the delicate balance between representation and efficacy that decentralization seeks to achieve.

Adam Michael Auerbach is Associate Professor, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Shikhar Singh is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University.

Tariq Thachil is Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for Advanced Study of India and Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India at the University of Pennsylvania.