Browsing by Author "Hoppe, Robert"

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    Tales of accountability: a Q-method study of discourses amongst Tanzanian members of parliament
    (Cambridge University Press, 2017) Katomero, Jesper; Hoppe, Robert; Wesselink, Anna
    The hallmark of accountability in a democracy centres on the way the elected parliament holds the executive to account. If the parliament does not perform its oversight role effectively, lower authorities would have fewer incentives to do the same vis-à-vis local executives. In this article we therefore ask whether or not different meanings of accountability can be discerned amongst Tanzanian Members of Parliament (MPs). In our Q-method research we found four clearly identifiable discourses on accountability amongst Tanzanian MPs: Partycrats; My Electorate's Advocates; Frustrated Account Holders; and Pragmatic Account Holders. We understand MPs discourses within the broader context of political clientelism and we argue that this combination of discourses, or accountability culture, enables the executive to rule in semi-autocratic ways. Even if opposition parties would obtain a parliamentary majority, this accountability culture stands in the way of achieving greater democratic responsiveness.
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    Tensions in rural water governance: The elusive functioning of rural water points in Tanzania
    (MDPI, 2017) Katomero, Jesper; Georgiadou, Yola; Lungo, Juma; Hoppe, Robert
    Public water services are still failing rural Tanzanians. Emboldened by advances in information communication technologies, the Ministry of Water has been developing computing, financial and administrative technologies to update and visualize the status of rural water points. This amalgam of technologies marks the emergence of an information infrastructure for rural water governance. The information infrastructure will enable the ministry to “see” the functionality status of all rural water points and to plan and budget for their repair and maintenance. In this paper, we examine three administrative technologies, which aim to standardize the functionality status of water points, and to prescribe how the information flows within the government hierarchy, and who is a legitimate recipient of this information. We analyze qualitative data, collected over a period of four years, in the framework of an interdisciplinary research program, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research—Science for Global Development (NWO-Wotro). In contrast to other researchers who study how information infrastructure evolves over time, we study what infrastructure evolution reveals about water governance. Our analysis of the practices of participants in rural water governance reveals tensions between formal and informal processes, which affect rural water services negatively.