Raja Aishah binti Raja Adnan, Mahazan Abdul Mutalib, Muhammad Ridhwan Ab Aziz
Purpose This research paper aims to determine the factors needed to propose a platform where waqf (Islamic endowment) organizations can collaborate with government public hospitals to develop corporate waqf hospitals. Consequently, the elements of governance and sustainability are included in the management of corporate waqf hospitals thereby leading to the corporatization of public hospitals. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts the qualitative research methodology and undertakes content analysis of data collected from journal articles, magazines and official websites. Data analysis involves open coding with NVivo 12. Findings General findings from the literature review have shown that architectural and engineering fundamentals were essential factors in the success of past waqf hospitals of the era between 8th and 14th centuries. In that era, the decentralized waqf-based hospitals employed the mutawalli (the trustee/manager of the waqf assets) to govern the administration of the hospitals. Present corporate waqf hospitals can exploit the elements identified from past waqf-based hospitals and additionally adopt the private-public partnership model in the form of a muḍārabah (profit-sharing contract) agreement to design a sustainable waqf governance model for Malaysian public healthcare services. Research limitations/implications The proposed platform is designed for a corporate waqf model developed in collaboration between Malaysian waqf institutions and public healthcare services. It abides by both the Malaysian fatwa (Islamic rulings) on waqf and the laws of the Malaysian Government. Practical implications There is potential for developing the Malaysian corporate waqf-governance healthcare model which will enable the hospital to provide better quality healthcare to more patients through upgrading the quality of equipment used in hospitals and/or better facilities at equal or lower costs. Consequently, this will not only improve waqf management and distribution but also result in reduction of government expenditure. Social implications This research promotes the concept of a corporate waqf hospital which will provide innumerable beneficial healthcare services in terms of improved healthcare quality at affordable costs to the general public and at no cost to the poor and the underprivileged. Originality/value Although waqf has played an important role as a vehicle for Islamic financing in the society for centuries, a model of collaboration or partnership of waqf with public healthcare services has yet to be explored and developed. With proper corporate governance and well-managed sustainability in a corporate waqf model, this newly developed partnership between waqf institutions and public healthcare providers can be a first step in many more interesting collaborative arrangements that can be established between waqf institutions and public services in the future.
Background: Nigeria piloted decentralized facility financing (DFF) and performance-based financing (PBF) programs under the Nigeria State Health Investment Project (NSHIP), funded by the World Bank. It aimed to increase the utilization and quality of maternal and child health (MCH) services. Although many low- and middle-income countries have launched or piloted DFF and/or PBF like programs and conducted impact evaluation, very few studies related DFF or PBF’s impact to its cost. This study evaluates the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of facilities with DFF or PBF compared to comparably funded health facilities without it. Methods: This study used a quasi-experimental research design. Local government areas (LGAs) in the three states under NSHIP were randomly assigned to the PBF group, where health facilities received payments based on their performance, and to the DFF group, where payments were not tied to performance. An additional three states served as the control group without additional funding. Reflecting the health system perspective, incremental financial costs were assessed for program implementation and verification, consumables, and donor supervision. Net effectiveness on coverage and quality were assessed through difference-in-differences calculations between baseline and endline facility and household surveys. The Lives Saved Tool and literature were used to convert statistically significant coverage changes to lives saved and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained. Results: Compared to the control group the incremental costs of DFF and PBF were $45.2 million and $87.3 million in 2015 US dollars, respectively. In comparison to the control group, DFF had a major impact on Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) and diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT)], increasing their coverage by 13.4% (P<0.001) and 9.7% (P<0.05), respectively while PBF increased the rate of skilled birth attendance (SBA) by 9.1% (P<0.05), and use of modern contraceptives by 5.7% (P<0.05). Overall, the quality of care was also improved under the DFF and PBF when compared to the control group. Compared to the control group, DFF and PBF were estimated to save 756 and 1,679 lives per year respectively, with 17,878 and 39,605 QALYs gained. The corresponding ICERs of the DFF and PBF program were $904 and $787 per QALY gained based on the coverage impacts alone. Combined with the improvement of quality of care, the ICERs of the DFF and PBF program were reduced to $224 and $296 per QALY gained when compared to the control group, respectively. Conclusions: Compared to the control group, Nigeria’s DFF [ICER of $224 per QALY gained or 8.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita] and PBF (ICER of $296 per QALY gained or 11.1% of GDP per capita) program proved cost-effective by the standard of 1.5 times GDP per capita in Nigeria. Whereas PBF is nearly twice as expensive as DFF, it saves many more years of life as compared to DFF during the same period—PBF is more effective than DFF and DFF more efficient than PBF. These results hold both with and without incorporating quality improvements and suggest that DFF and PBF are among the cost-effective interventions for strengthening MCH services in Nigeria.
In recent years, states across the African continent have increased their investments in the water, sanitation and energy sectors. However, the extent of the infrastructure remains well below the global average, and population growth in Africa will intensify demand for basic services. The question of financing these services – capital-intensive at first and only generating a return in the long term – is strategically important. With the emergence of decentralized systems, primarily in the energy sector, private actors such as businesses, foundations, impact investment funds, etc., have increasingly financed infrastructures that are alternatives and/or complementary to centralized services. Although a driver for progress and innovation, private financing can never fully meet the vast need for financing. It cannot replace public financing, particularly in low-profitability regions where households lack the means to pay for services and equipment. New mindsets and new forms of (de)regulation are needed to bring together all actors, public and private, international and domestic, to find ways to finance these services.
Local governments have been created as agents of local development in which the people in the local areas are given greater opportunities to influence policies and programs that directly affect their well-being and thereby reducing their poverty levels. But the implementation of the policies and programmes is bedeviled with many problems. Key among them is the issue of financing the local development projects in order to reduce rural poverty. The government of Ghana attempted to reduce this problem when it introduced a development fund in1994 known as the – District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) to encourage local governance and deepen Government’s commitment to decentralization in general and fiscal devolution in particular. The study therefore, seeks to assess the impact of District Assembly Common Fund on Local Government Development in the Adaklu District Assembly in the Volta Region of Ghana. The study mainly adopted qualitative methods of research to obtain information on the experiences of the poor people in the Adaklu communities selected as study areas. Interview guides were used to obtain information from the people in the communities, staff of the Assembly and some heads of the decentralized departments. A major finding of the study is that the assembly did not involve the rural people in the poverty reduction programmes in the district.
The current global development agendas provide relatively little guidance on how the incredible challenge of sustainable urban development in Africa can and should be financed. This paper makes the case for understanding this development challenge at the nexus of urban governance and city infrastructure. Tracing African urban development trends over the post-colonial period, the paper makes three arguments. First, African cities experience fractured fiscal authority. Decentralization reforms have resulted in contested and complex city governance arrangements. Second, large scale infrastructure investments have been the focus of donors and investors. This has resulted in fragmented networks and systems. Finally, these two processes together have created fertile ground for the emergence of hybrid systems of service delivery in cities. This has implications for both how urban services are governed and their material arrangements. This reality, and the underlying processes which contributed to its production, are under-accounted for within global development discourses. In conclusion, it is crucial that new models of infrastructure finance are developed to respond to the fractured fiscal authority, fragmented infrastructure networks, and hybrid service delivery patterns which characterise African cities.
In the last few decades, most Latin American countries have made good progress in improving the living conditions of urban populations, but still face enormous challenges. This paper describes the roles of city and other local governments in designing housing policies and integrating them into governance, planning and finance. This includes many innovations in local governments’ housing policies, especially those implemented in the first decade of this century by progressive city governments. It also includes decentralization that supported municipal governments to develop their housing and urban development plans. Relevant as well are policies to address the quantitative deficit (insufficient supply of housing) and the qualitative deficit (inadequate quality of housing), such as informal settlement upgrading. The paper includes examples of where housing policy decentralization created spaces for democratic, participatory and inclusive city governance. It also highlights the importance for social housing of finance and the measures that may be taken to address this, including land management instruments and capture of real estate surplus value. But much of this innovation has been lost over the last decade, after the economic crisis and the rise of a new wave of conservative regimes in the region.
Purpose Over the past 20 years, China's infrastructure has developed at an extraordinary speed. The current literature mainly focuses on the effects of political incentives on the infrastructure. However, this paper indicates that the structural change of China's land regime is an important clue and that the supernormal development of China's infrastructure is an explicable result for that. Design/methodology/approach This paper theoretically proves that in a politically centralized and economically decentralized economic entity with a public land-ownership regime, the self-financing mechanism formed by local officials through regulation of the land-grant price is the primary factor that influences the optimal supply volume of infrastructure in a region, in addition to political and economic incentives, and whether the self-financing mechanism can be formed or not depends on the structure of a country's land regime, which can help to explain the difference between the development of infrastructure in China and that in other developing countries from a theoretical angle. Findings The paper suggests that the mode is facing an important transformation toward land reform and new-type urbanization construction, and the replication and promotion of China's experience in infrastructure construction are of further significance under the Belt and Road Initiative as it provides a method for helping developing countries to eliminate infrastructure bottlenecks. Originality/value Through the test of multinational panel data, the paper indicates that the structural change of China's land regime around 1990 had an overall effect on the supernormal development of infrastructure in China. The paper indicates that the “land-based development mode” of China's infrastructure indeed contributed to the supernormal development of infrastructure in China, but there are still some shortcomings in this mode.
Purpose The land sector in Ghana, particularly skin lands acquisition and title registration are fraught with several issues including unreliable record-keeping systems and land encroachments. The paper explores the potential of blockchain application in skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana with the aim of developing a blockchain-enabled framework for land acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to use the framework as a tool towards solving some of the loopholes in the process that leads to numerous issues bedeviling the current system. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a systematic literature review approach fused with informal discussions with key informants and leverages on the researchers’ own experiences to conceptualize blockchain application in skin lands acquisition in Ghana. Findings Problems bedeviling skin lands acquisition and title registration emanated from the issuance of allocation notes, payment of kola money and use of a physical ledger to document land transactions. As a result, the developed framework was designed to respond to these issues and deal with the problems. As the proposed blockchain framework would be a public register, it was argued that information on all transactions on a specific parcel of land could be available to the public in real-time. This enhances transparency and possibly resolves the issue of encroachments and indeterminate land boundaries because stakeholders can determine rightful owners of land parcels before initiating transactions. Practical implications Practically, blockchain technology has the potential to deal with the numerous issues affecting the smooth operation of skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana. Once the enumerated issues are resolved, there will be certainty of title to and ownership of land and property to drive investments because lenders could more easily ascertain owners of land parcels that could be used as collateral for securing loans. Similarly, property developers and land purchasers could easily identify rightful owners for land transactions. The government would be able to identify owners for land and property taxation. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature on blockchain and application to land acquisition and title registration with a focus on a specific customary land ownership system.
Urban public finance is a hidden force shaping cities and their development. This thesis draws attention to the powerful insights which can be gained from studying cities through a fiscal lens. It argues for an interdisciplinary and relational approach which infuses the fiscal study of cities with political and social interpretations of urban dynamics. Accounting for the city through two very different registers, this thesis draws from urban public finance and from critical scholarship on urban infrastructure. The conventional urban public finance literature is largely technical, produced by urban policy and fiscal experts. In contrast, social and political theorization on urban infrastructure provides a critical reading of the technicist approach and contributes to the refinement of key theoretical concepts within urban studies. There are many incommensurabilities between these two scholarly registers. They have different framings of politics, technical knowledge, and the priorities for change. However, there are several shared interests. They are both concerned with urban institutions, urban places, and the necessity for change. These shared interests provide the foundation for a revised approach to the fiscal study of cities. This synthetic approach is spelled out in a series of conceptual and methodological propositions. The first proposition is the device of the C/city, which distinguishes between an urban settlement (the small ccity) and its governing authorities (the big-C City). The C/city device foregrounds the importance of the city, the City, and the fiscal relationships which operate at the intersections between them. The second proposition frames urban public finance not just as a means of financing urban infrastructure but as an infrastructure itself. Drawing from the infrastructure scholarship, the concept of 'configurations’ is deployed creatively to trace fiscal histories, instruments, and relationships. The third proposition is the importance of grounding inquiry in particular places. To address this, the case study method is used. The case method allows for the use of a variety of types of data and analytical tools, grounded in contextualized experiences. The fourth proposition presents Kisumu, a secondary city in Kenya, as an exemplary case for exploring fiscal C/city configurations. Kisumu provides a useful case for wider generalization precisely because it is an ordinary (African) city. Not only is Kisumu on the margins of Western theorization, its unsensational nature also excludes it from dominant discourses on African cities. However, historically, administratively, and politically, Kisumu has many parallels with smaller urban centers in British East Africa and beyond. It provides a fascinating and widely relevant case of the differentiated nature of fiscal decentralization processes and dynamics. There is much which can be learned from Kisumu and its fiscal story. The bulk of this thesis is dedicated to unpacking the Kisumu case. First, there is a focus on the City. This includes tracing the historical development of Kisumu’s urban institutions and unpacking the ways in which the contemporary City shapes and is shaped by public finance. This is followed by a deeper exploration of particular city infrastructures and their fiscal configurations. The fiscal configurations related to property rates, the corporatized water utility company, and transport finance are traced and exposed. The Kisumu case provides a series of valuable insights. First, it demonstrates the potential and limitations of conventional fiscal analysis. The limitations posed by accounting are particularly important in the context of Kisumu, where the C/city has many misalignments. Second, it makes the case for reading public finance as an urban infrastructure. The process of tracing fiscal configurations illuminates the social, political, material and technical dimensions of public finance. Third, it draws attention to the de facto challenges and complexities related to decentralization (and in fact, the unique recentralization which Kenya has undergone). This includes how the sub-national urban state is constructed and deconstructed, over time and in complex ways. Fourth, it foregrounds the fiscal functionaries whose practices shape the everyday operations of the public finance system. These actors shape fiscal configurations. However, they are often hidden in conventional fiscal analyses. Fifth, it reads the practices of fiscal functionaries as a micro-politics of the state. The heterogeneity of the state and multidimensional nature of power are foregrounded. Finally, the case highlights the challenge of urban infrastructure finance in the context of a post-networked city. It shows the necessity of moving beyond common academic and policy tropes related to infrastructure and services. Collectively, these insights provide a compelling case for urban studies to more deeply engage with the fiscal C/city, in Africa and beyond.
René Véron, Anna Zimmer, Natasha Cornea, Jérémie Sanchez
This report provides a quantitative data set on decentralization, municipal capacity and autonomy related to environmental governance in small cities in Gujarat and West Bengal. It presents data on centrally-sponsored and state-government development schemes related to the urban environment, transfers of untied funds to urban local bodies (ULBs), revenue and expenditures of municipalities, and local staffing levels.
Cities across sub-Saharan Africa are faced with challenges in urban planning and service delivery due to insufficient capital for long-term investment projects. Despite the success of municipal bonds as a tool to assist in closing this financing gap in much of the rest of the world, there have been limited examples of success in this region. This study looks at the universal obstacles limiting sub-national governments from using municipal bonds as a financial instrument before examining four case studies - Johannesburg, Douala, Dakar and Kampala - to better understand their approaches to municipal bond issuance. Based on the findings from research, the thesis concludes that the chief obstacle blocking the uptake of municipal bond issuance as a means for raising funds stems from a variety of elements in the constitutional and regulatory systems in each country. This represents a significant departure from the commonly-held understandings that cities in the region are not eligible for long-term debt and are ill-managed, lack capacity, or are not viewed as creditworthy by institutional investors and other purchasers of municipal bonds. The success of municipal bond issuance appears to be contingent on strong interlinkages between central and subnational governments. This dissertation offers a critical review of the explicit and implicit powers granted to local governments under the constitutions of each of the countries, specifically the legislation that enables or prohibits municipalities from issuing bonds. Reform to the existing regulatory and legal environments across the African continent, ones that govern a financially-sustainable level of indebtedness for sub-sovereign governments, is an essential step in ensuring the future growth of Africa’s cities.
Abstract Reinvestment in declining or poor areas is necessary to attract new middle-class residents, reduce concentrated poverty, and improve housing conditions for the poor. Private-sector housing and commercial real estate developers consistently argue that, without assistance from the public sector, projects are not economically feasible. However, fiscal and political constraints make local governments hesitant to provide direct subsidies to developers. Tax increment financing (TIF) is often offered as a politically attractive solution to this complicated development scenario. The expedited nature of TIF allows communities to fund projects and generate development investment through a highly decentralized process, potentially avoiding public involvement. This fiscalization of the development process raises key questions. Are the communities most in need of redevelopment benefiting from TIF, or do they compete for development? How does TIF’s “creative” financing strategy influence political fragmentation? This chapter illustrates these challenges and explores ways the tool can be used to promote inclusionary development practices and support creative affordable-housing strategies.
Decentralization reforms and rapid urbanization place increasing pressure on African urban authorities. In response, land-based finance has been gaining popularity within development discourses as a method of increasing local autonomy and financing local government infrastructure provision. This paper discusses the conceptual basis for land-based finance, the instruments that form part of this approach, and the actual application in several African cities. Drawing on three case studies (Addis Ababa, Harare and Nairobi) and a high-level scan of 29 developments in various African cities, we show how land-based finance is being implemented in practice and discuss the potential for wider uptake. We conclude that African city governments are using land-based financing, albeit in inconsistent ways. We argue that urban authorities should consider the more extensive and progressive use of land-based financing instruments, despite the constraints imposed by both technical and political conditions. A progressive agenda for local government finance in African cities should take land-based finance seriously, as well as the local practices and institutional arrangements through which it operates.
This chapter examines the nexus between the housing market and the urban poor. Affordability, tenure security, and good governance were examined. The study has employed questionnaires, focus group discussion, key informant interview, and field observation to collect data. Mixed approaches were used for data analysis. The study has revealed that the poorer segment of the population in the study area has less likely benefited from formal housing schemes. Informal settlement areas seem affordable only to some households who have the economic potential in the early years of land transaction (2003/04-2005/06). Tenure insecurity has reached its climax first with the demolition of about 500 houses in the study kebeles in 2011 and then with the promulgation of the new land lease proclamation No721/2011. Decentralized administration has failed to ensure good governance. Therefore, more attention should be given to revisiting housing development programs and projects, taking preventive measures rather than reactive ones, promoting housing finance, and monitoring the decentralization process.
Smriti Ranjan Bhattacharyya -, A. Dey, Gautam Bandyopadhyay
INTRODUCTION:Governments at all levels have to play a major role in developing urban infrastructure which strengthens the base of an economy. Indian Constitutionhas provided for a three tiers federal structure (Union, State and Local) specifying the powers and responsibilities for all the tires of the governments. Therefore, it is the desired intention of the Constitution that all the tiers of the Governments work in a co -ordinated manner well within limits of the Constitution for urban infrastructure development. Third tier of Governments are generally termed as local self-governments and it has two wings, one which operates in the rural areas and the other in the urban areas. Constitutional status has been provided to these local governments through the 73th and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts, 1992. Local self-governmentoperating in urban areas are commonly known as Urban Local Self Governments.Prior to the Amendment Act, the plan for local infrastructure development were used to be drawn by the upper tier governmentswhere local requirement would not be considered. Therefore, the amendment is a direction to the state governments for transfer of power and responsibilities to the local governments with respect to preparation of plans for economic development and social justice, and also for the implementation of development schemes as may be required to enable the local governments to function as institutions of self-government. Unfortunately the issue of empowerment of the local selfgovernments has been left at the discretion of the state governments and as a result legislation primarily aims to make urban local bodies accountable to their stategovernment rather than to the citizens (The World Bank, 2007).Urban Local Self Governments (hereinafter referred to as ULSG) are of three types: (i) Nagar Panchayats for areas in transition from a rural area tourban area; (ii) Municipal Councils for smaller urban areas; (iii) Municipal Corporations for larger urban areas.India is also in the stage of rapid urbanization like other countries in the World and the constitution has provided different and concurrent list of works for different levels of governments. The role of ULGs, after becoming statutorily responsible for providing basic infrastructural facilities and maintenance of the same in the urban areas, has become more and more important.ULSGs find it difficult to balance between the limited financial resources and the unlimited needs for public services. (Tesu, 2011).FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF ULSGs:ULSGs are statutorily responsible to carry out decentralized functions effectively and this requires presence of two important elements: adequate level of revenue either raised locally or transferred from the central government and the authority to make decisions about expenditures (Meddzi and Gondo, 2010). Finance of ULSGs consists of two major sources: own source and external source. Own source of receipts basically includes tax and non-tax receipts within the assigned power whereas external source constitutes a major portion of grant and assignments from upper tiers including contribution from others, loan from bank or financial institution and fund raised through issue of bonds.Psycharis and Iliopoulou(2016) have commented that local municipalities in Greece have a limited extent of tax or other forms of fiscal autonomy and therefore still rely heavily on fiscally centralized revenue sources. This situation also prevails in the ULSGs in India. Several literaturesshow that the dependency is due to the constitutional imbalance between the enormous functions and legitimate source of finances. ULSGs in India have lowest tax base (property tax, advertisement tax etc.)and upper tiers enjoy higher tax bases. Therefore,funds collected by the upper tiers are devolved to the lower levels of governments but not at the desired level. In order to resolve the imbalance, the amendment act has stated for constitution of state finance commission in every state which in addition to finance commission constituted by the central government. …
The primary concern in this dissertation is the question of how racially marginalized societies practicing autonomous governance negotiate conflicts with sovereign states over resource extraction and its consequences. Specifically, this research provides a description, interpretation, and analysis of contemporary social organization and governance of the Maroon polity of Accompong as it brings to bear a distinct history of resistance onto the terrain of political conflict and negotiations with the Jamaican state. The Ndyuka Maroon polities of the Moengo region of Suriname are used as a comparative example where, like Jamaica, the activities of the aluminum industry are the fulcrum of an environmental and political crisis threatening Maroon territorial and cultural integrity. Standing as the first comparison of these two Maroon societies in the contemporary period, this research reveals that Accompong has developed political strategies of separatism and sovereignty while seeking stability with the Jamaican state, whereas the Ndyuka have eschewed separatism in favor of state entryism. These divergent strategies are responses to the differential tolerances of each national state toward Maroon autonomy given political economic calculations based on the valuation of Maroon land for its resource wealth. Yet, in both Maroon communities, a practice of environmental preservationism grounded in distinct collective memories of resistance to enslavement has guided their responses to the crisis. Ultimately, 21st century Maroon political action suggests the need for plurinational and decentralized approaches to national state formation. This research uses systematic empirical data, articulated through an engagement with key theories in both African Diaspora Studies and Environmental Studies, to create a generative conversation between the two fields. This research contributes to a greater understanding of environmental politics, ethnic multiplicity in the African diaspora, the politics of autonomy, diaspora theory, Caribbean colonial history, socio-economic development in developing countries, and the lateral possibilities of freedom and social transformation.
Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of China’s housing finance system, the paper focuses on analyzing its challenges and recent changes. The paper argues that China’s highly-centralized financial system prefers financial stability but neglects financial liberalization, and then resulted in severe financial repression, which hurts the efficiency and equality of the housing finance service. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis via high-cost financial intervention, China took some policy innovations to promote a decentralized finance mechanism, expand finance resources, and support affordable housing financing, through which China hopes to provide a more stable, affordable, and equal housing finance service to help more households own homes.
Participatory Budgeting (PB) has emerged as one of the major innovations in participatory governance for local management and local democracy worldwide. With more than 3,000 experiences recorded in over forty countries, PB is gradually changing the living conditions of increasing numbers of citizens across the world. Highly heterogeneous in processes and underlying ambitions, PB in its diversity provides a challenging alternative to the New Public Management-informed route to public sector reform. In most cases, PB has positively contributed to administrative modernization and other 'good governance' imperatives, including bringing substance to decentralization policies. In its most radical incarnations, PB has moreover contributed to inversing established spatial, social and political priorities in cities, in favour of the more deprived. This working paper briefly introduces the world-wide expansion of PB and the heterogeneity of current experiences before proposing two analytical frameworks to help differentiate between them. The heterogeneity of cases reflects substantially differing logics which can be described as political (for radical democratic change), managerial and technocratic (to improve municipal finance transparency and optimize the use of public resources for citizens' benefit) or good governance driven (to improve links between the public and citizens spheres). These logics are illustrated through the examples of Rosario (Argentina), Seville (Spain), Chengdu (China), Soligen (Germany), Dondo (Mozambique) and Porto Alegre (the iconic case in Brazil). Finally, the paper closes with an assessment of PB's major contributions to democratic governance, as well as its on-going challenges and limitations to date. Specifically, we bring attention to PB's potential in reverting (political and territorial) priorities, deepening decentralisation and administrative modernisation; but also ongoing challenges in deepening the deliberative quality of PBs, citizen's education and the institutionalisation of participants' power.