Reforming Urban Governance in Bangladesh

This book provides an analysis of the urban government system in Bangladesh, focusing on its upper tier, the City Corporation (CC), and the institutional and legal frameworks within which it operates. Along with a discussion of the scale and magnitude of urbanization, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of the reform agendas of CCs including their functional assignments, local political leadership, local control over administration and service delivery, local fiscal autonomy and local financial management, and local participation and accountability mechanisms. Very few efforts have been taken to analyze the comprehensive reform agenda required to make the CCs effectively discharge their duties and responsibilities in the context of Bangladesh. This book therefore not only fills this gap in the literature, but also provides recommendations on each reform agenda. Pranab Kumar Panday is 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 policy, public administration, governance and gender studies. His major book publications include Women’s Political Participation in Bangladesh: Institutional Reforms, Actors and Outcomes (2013), and Women Empowerment in South Asia: NGO Interventions and Agency Building in Bangladesh (2016). This book provides an analysis of the urban government system in Bangladesh, focusing on its upper tier, the City Corporation (CC), and the institutional and legal frameworks within which it operates. Along with a discussion of the scale and magnitude of urbanization, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of the reform agendas of CCs including their functional assignments, local political leadership, local control over administration and service delivery, local fiscal autonomy and local financial management, and local participation and accountability mechanisms. Very few efforts have been taken to analyze the comprehensive reform agenda required to make the CCs effectively discharge their duties and responsibilities in the context of Bangladesh. This book therefore not only fills this gap in the literature, but also provides recommendations on each reform agenda.