Democratic Decentralisation in Rural Context

The process of globalisation accelerated in the 1980s; its trends and patterns witnessed a major change, which in turn revolutionised every aspect of the world, including rural governments and governance. The globalisation process, accompanied by good governance reforms, strongly called for structural reforms across countries to make democracies more inclusive, participatory, responsive, transparent, accountable, efficient, equitable, responsive and development-oriented ( Woods, 1999 ). All the major international donor agencies, like the World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union (EU), Asian Bank, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and so on, made good governance a necessary condition for the recipient countries ( Treisman, 2007 ). These institutions also called for decentralisation reforms as a part of good governance initiatives across the world, with the aim of devolving power back to the people and their representatives at the local level. Borrowing from the private sector, the New Public Management (NPM) approach was also adopted in the public sector. The NPM approach advocates significant organisational changes like the reduction of hierarchical structures, the application of private sector practices such as contracting out, performance-based targets, pressures to innovate and increased independence from senior management ( Arundel and Huber, 2013 ).