Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Items to be moved to 3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).
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Item The role of monitoring and evaluation in promoting good governance in South Africa: a case study of the Department of Social Development(2012-01-18) Naidoo, Indrakumaran ArumugamThis thesis set out to examine the role played by monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in promoting good governance in South Africa. It examined how M&E, in promoting democratic and good governance deliverables, such as transparency, accountability and learning, influences public administration practice. The reciprocity between democracy and M&E was demonstrated by assessing how the country managed democratic transition, the influence of globalisation on country practice, and specifically how the developmental State advances good governance. The thesis reviewed the evolution of M&E at the continental and country level, and also examined how the discipline has evolved over time, and its particular application in South Africa. A comprehensive overview of the oversight infrastructure was conducted, and tested against the performance of the Department of Social Development (DSD), the case study. Through an assessment of three distinct, but interrelated M&E perspectives, termed mandatory, persuasive and civic M&E, a differentiated picture of policy and actual performance was seen. It was found that mandatory M&E was strong, and the DSD generally performed well against this benchmark. Mandatory M&E also provided the legal basis and support for other forms of M&E. However, it was not always clear that compliance on its own leads to good governance. In examining persuasive M&E, the decision-making environment within the DSD was assessed, and the role of the DSD M&E function examined in terms of, amongst others, improving learning. Civic M&E revealed that the DSD has considered and acted upon the results of the non-government sector in revising its policies. However, there was no effective civic M&E at community level, largely due to uncoordinated or weak NGOs, many of whom were now contracted to the DSD. The research suggests that whilst information has been generated through different forms of M&E, without effective follow-through by decision-makers, it generated transparency, and not necessarily accountability. Furthermore, administrative compliance cannot on its own tantamount to good governance. The thesis argues for methodological pluralism, stronger civic M&E, and confirms the assertion that M&E promotes good governance.Item Legislative Committees and Deliberative Democracy: the Committee System of the South African Parliament with Specific Reference to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA).(2007-03-02T11:26:11Z) Obiyo, Robert EgwimThis thesis examines the status and role of parliamentary committees in democratic theory with a view to critically assessing the performance of one such committee, the South African version of the PAC, SCOPA. It advances a pluralist theory of popular sovereignty according to which there is no single institutional complex or site, which exclusively expresses the will of the people. The latter is the case in monist theories, which reduce democracy to its practice in a single site. Rousseau and Weber are critically examined in this connection. In the pluralist notion advanced in this thesis the popular will is expressed and realized in a plurality of institutional sites and modalities of exercise. On this perspective parliamentary committees perform a function vital to the constitution of popular sovereignty itself. They are indispensable to the formation by the people of an accurate perception by it of what the Executive is doing in its name. Their investigative work is thus constitutive of the formation of a democratic subject and will. Parliamentary committees are thus central to the satisfaction of the conditions of the deliberative dimension of democracy. On this definition, parliamentary committees must in addition themselves conform to the principles of deliberation in their own practice. This specifically deliberative conception of democracy is then further delineated by distinguishing it from the aggregation – majoritarian perspective and defending it against a variety of criticisms, including that of Chantal Mouffe. With this conceptual and normative framework in place, the British and American committee systems are examined in order to establish some reference points in terms of the institutional practice of parliamentary committees. The focus then shifts to the parliamentary committees of the South African Parliament. The constitutional and legal foundation for parliamentary committees (in the South African system) is examined with particular reference to SCOPA itself and the first five years of the new parliamentary committee system identified as a period during which several South African parliamentary committees, including SCOPA, effectively exercised their “oversight” function. Once the Government’s SDP entered the scene all things changed. This thesis examines the formation of the JIT, paying particular attention to the exclusion of the HSIU and the interventions of the Speaker, Hon Frene Ginwala. It identifies in close detail all the flaws in the SDP procurement process as well as the contradictions and lacunae in the final JIT Report itself. These are of such a magnitude as to render unreasonable any claim to the contrary and in endorsing the Report SCOPA thus clearly failed in its essential function. The notion of a threshold concept of reasonable adequacy is introduced as limiting the conditions under which committee decisions can legitimately be taken via majority voting. The argument is advanced that these were clearly not met in the case of the SCOPA decision under discussion. The implications of this “collapse” of SCOPA for South African democracy more broadly are then identified and discussed in terms of deliberative democratic theory.