POAD9119 Regionalism, Decentralisation and Governance

2012

4.5

1 x 2-hour seminar weekly

POAD9116 has been successfully completed

Available by flexible delivery.

This topic is concerned with trends towards regional governance in both developing and developed countries. The topic introduces students to key formal and informal elements of regional governance and a range of experiments and movements in decentralisation (fiscal, administrative and democratic) and regionalism and critically analyses these approaches. Cases from Australia, UK and Indonesia are discussed.

The topic aims to educate students in the issues surrounding regionalisation, regionalism, decentralisation, deinstitutionalisation and governance. It will introduce students to contemporary conditions of conflict, complexity and uncertainty in governance and decision-making. It will then describe the trends from government to governance, and from central control to localism to regionalism. It will discuss the specific policies and management techniques of proponents of Sustainable Regional Governance (SRG), using cases from Indonesia,Thailand, Australia and the United States of America. It will then critically analyse the implications for participation, for non-state actors, and for conceptions of place, space and hierarchies (with an emphasis on accountability, capacity and control). New theoretical trends (institutions, networks and collective action) will be introduced. Emerging issues for the practice of SRG will be floated drawing on students' own experiences.

Students who successfully complete this topic will be able to:

• Identify and understand some of the main theories and issues shaping contemporary trends in decentralisation and regionalism, including the debates about participation, public-private-voluntary interactions and loci of control

• Demonstrate their critical skills in conceptualising the challenges to the regional ideal based on their analysis of case examples

• Understand how regionalism and decentralisation fits in to a suite of policy approaches for addressing complex issues

• Relate all of these new understandings to their own experiences in practice

• Identify and analyse the multitude of factors involved in decentralisation programmes and especially those which are crucial for the success of decentralised and regional governance