Decentralisation, Institutional Characteristics and Public Sector Governance in Tanzania

Abstract

Public sector governance has been the primary focus of the developing countries to ensure that they realise their developmental goals. In ensuring the public sector governance, decentralisation has been considered as the primary initiative. However, most of the previous empirical studies concentrate on political decentralisation meanwhile excluding administrative decentralisation and mediation effect of contingent factors i.e. technological capacity and institutional culture as institutional characteristics. In view of the aforementioned missing knowledge, the article investigated the influence of administrative decentralisation on public sector governance considering the mediation effect of institutional characteristics adopting Stewardship theory and Contingency theory. The article collected data from Dar es Salaam, Dodoma and Kigoma through self-administered questionnaire and analysed by using Mean scores and Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results revealed that administrative decentralisation had significant positive influence on public sector accountability and transparency. Moreover, technological capacity and institutional culture partially mediated the relationship between administrative decentralisation and, public sector accountability and transparency. In view of such results, among others, the article recommends that there is a need of developing the National Decentralisation Strategy (NADIS) to guide the decentralisation process and ensure its effective implementation for the sake of achieving public sector governance goals.