Strengthening Local Governance in Bangladesh ― Reforms, Participation and Accountability

This book explores the impact of Bangladesh's Local Government Act of 2009 on the functioning of the local governments or Union Parishads (UP), with a particular emphasis on people’s participation and accountability. Throughout the chapters, the authors review the existing legal framework of UP and its relation to social accountability, examine how much of the social participation is spontaneous and how much is politically induced, question the success of the Citizen's Charter and Right to Information acts as mechanisms for social accountability, and present suggestions to remedy some of the problems facing people's participation and accountability in the UP. This book fills existing gaps in the discourse by adding new information to the literature on development research and legal reforms in Bangladesh, specifically in how those legal reforms have led to strengthening or weakening people's participation in local government. The target audience for this book are students and researchers in Asian studies , international development studies, and public administration, as well as practitioners working in the local governments discussed.

Shuvra Chowdhury, PhD is an associate Professor at the Department of Public Administration, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Before joining the Department of Public Administration at the University of Rajshahi, she had worked in the banking sector. Her main areas of academic interest include public sector performance, change management and gender studies. She has published extensively in noted international journals. Currently, she has been carrying out a number of research projects with the financial assistance from the University of Rajshahi and the University Grants Commission of Bangladesh.

Pranab Kumar Panday, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Public Administration, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. He was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, USA in 2012. Panday's main areas of research include public administration, public policy, public sector reforms, governance and gender studies. His major book publication includes Women’s Political Participation in Bangladesh: Institutional Reforms, Actors and Outcomes (Springer, 2013), Women Empowerment in South Asia: NGO Interventions and Agency Building in Bangladesh (Routledge, 2016) and Reforming Urban Governance in Bangladesh: The City Corporation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His academic articles have appeared in journals like Asian Survey, the International Journal of Public Administration, International Political Science Review, Development in Practice, Local Government Studies, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Administration, Public Organization Review, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development, the Asian Journal of Political Science, the Asian and Pacific Migration Journal and so on. He has provided consultancy services to various international organizations, including UNDP, USAID, SDC, Oxfam-Bangladesh, World Vision, DanChurchAid and so on.