Accountability
Accountability refers to governments being answerable to their constituents for their conduct, policies, and the resources they manage. Accountability is enhanced by political decentralisation, giving local people tangible ‘skin in the game’ of their local government, and increasing the familiarity of the governing to the governed.
Assignment
In South African constitutional law, assignment refers to the ability of an executive authority in any sphere of government to assign their powers or functions to an executive authority in another sphere of government, and of a legislative authority in any sphere of government to assign their powers or functions to a legislative authority in another sphere of government.
See also delegation and devolution.
Autonomy
Autonomy refers to the extent to which a person, institution, or government does (de facto) or may (de jure) act independently, without acquiring permission to act from another person, institution, or government.
Balkanisation
Balkanisation, referring to the breakup of the Yugoslavian polity in the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, means that one state breaks up into multiple states through a process of secession.
Business chamber
A business chamber, also called a chamber of commerce, is an association comprising multiple independent businesses, usually but not necessarily concentrated in a geographical area. Business chambers exist to promote and protect the interests of their members and the local commercial environment.
Cantons
The canton system is one form of federation, usually associated with Switzerland, whereby the various cantons that comprise the polity have very significant authority, arguably greater than that of the central government. To express a preference for cantons is therefore to express a preference for a highly decentralised form of federation.
See also confederation.
Central government
The central government refers to the most general government in a country’s constitution. In South Africa, it refers to the so-called ‘national government,’ officially called the ‘South African Government,’ presently controlled by the African National Congress.
Centralisation
Centralisation is a general term referring to the concentration of political power or responsibility from more locales of authority into fewer – or even a single – locale of authority. Usually, but not always, it refers to the central government beginning to exercise powers or responsibilities that had hitherto resided with subcentral governments.
Community federalism
Community federalism, associated with the Solidarity Movement and its civil rights group, AfriForum, refers to ordinary civic communities organising themselves and taking responsibility for their own self-government. This usually involves stepping into functions that formal governments have failed to fulfil, and building capacity to promote and protect the interests of the community.
Competencies
In South African constitutional law, the various spheres of government have various exclusive and overlapping competencies. The central government has a general competence to govern, meaning it may adopt any law and take any action in terms of that law provided the law is otherwise constitutional. The provinces have an enumerated list of competencies in the Constitution, most of which it shares with the central government and some of which are theoretically exclusive. The municipalities, like the central government, have a general competence to govern, provided that it is in line with the listed objectives of local government contained in the Constitution.
Confederation
Confederation refers to the most decentralised form of federation. In a confederation, the subcentral governments retain their sovereignty, but delegate some of their powers or responsibilities to a central government to govern for the common benefit. The key characteristic of a confederation is that the subcentral governments are governed only by consent, and may exit the confederation at will. The European Union is a contemporary example of a confederation.
See also cantons.
Constitution
Constitution refers primarily to the written Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, a special statute adopted in 1996 that is formally the supreme law of the country. When not written with an uppercase ‘C’, constitution refers to the overall political framework and functioning of a polity. The Constitution is the core of South African constitutional law.
Decentralisation
Decentralisation is a general term referring to the de-concentration of political power or responsibility from one locale of authority, to more than one locale of authority. Usually, but not always, it refers to subcentral governments beginning to exercise powers or responsibilities that had hitherto resided with the central government.
Delegation
In South African constitutional law, delegation refers to the ability of an executive authority in any sphere of government to delegate their powers or functions to an executive authority in another sphere of government. It also refers to the 10-person ‘delegation’ that provincial legislatures choose to represent their provinces in the National Council of Provinces.
See also assignment and devolution.
Devolution
Devolution refers to a discretionary act by the central government to assign one, some, or all of its powers or responsibilities to a subcentral government (provinces or municipalities), or an act by a province to assign one, some, or all of its powers or responsibility to a municipality.
See also assignment and delegation.
Federacy
Federacy, also called asymmetric federation, is a form of federation wherein some subcentral governments are endowed with greater authority than others. This could mean that one portion of a polity is a unitary state, and the other is a federation, or that the whole polity is a federation but the various governments of the federation have differing levels of authority.
Federation
Federation is a form of government wherein subcentral governments have entrenched constitutional authority to govern, participate in the governance of the whole polity, and cannot be abolished or altered unilaterally by the central government. The United States is the world’s prototypical example of a federation. Constitutionally, South Africa is a federation.
See also unitary state.
Federalism
Federalism refers to the ideological support for and political culture around federation as a desirable form of government.
Fiscal relations
In South African constitutional law, fiscal relations refers to the centralised collection and distribution of government tax revenue by the central government to the subcentral governments. The central government is responsible for the overwhelming majority of revenue collection and has a high degree of discretion over how that revenue is to be distributed.
Home Rule
Home Rule is a term that has long been associated with decentralisation. It alludes to the idea that governing authority must be exercised in large part by those who are most directly affected, that is, by those ‘at home.’ Movements for Home Rule have existed in Ireland and in Natal, and in modern times the notion of Home Rule is closely associated with local government in some American states. A Home Rule municipality in the United States would generally be a municipality that has significant powers of self-government compared to ordinary municipalities.
See also subsidiarity.
Municipalities
A municipality is one of the three spheres of government in South African constitutional law. Municipalities are divided into three types: district municipalities (of which there are 44), which further consist of multiple local municipalities (of which there are 205), and metropolitan municipalities (of which there are eight). Municipalities are the most local government in South Africa, and they possess the second-greatest general degree of constitutional authority after the central government.
Necessity
In South African law, necessity refers to a defence in litigation against accusations of unlawfulness. Successfully arguing necessity has the effective result that unlawful conduct is retroactively rendered lawful. To succeed in arguing necessity, a defendant must show that the damage they have caused was less severe than the harm that would have resulted had they not taken the necessary action; that they reasonably believed that the action was in fact necessary to prevent that harm from manifesting; that there was no practical alternative to avoid the harm, other than taking the necessary action; and that they are not themselves responsible for the harm coming about.
Provinces
A province is one of the three spheres of government in South African constitutional law. There are nine provinces in South Africa. Provinces are the intermediary government between the central government and municipalities, and possess the smallest degree of constitutional authority of the three.
Quasi-federation
Quasi-federation is a term used to describe the phenomenon in South African constitutional law whereby the polity is a federation, with subcentral governments vested with original constitutional authority, but the polity nonetheless has highly centralised fiscal relations, giving the central government disproportionate soft power over the provinces and municipalities.
Responsibility
Responsibility refers to the state of being responsible – an eagerness and willingness to live with the consequences of one’s decisions. It exists as the flipside of freedom. The freedom to make a decision or to self-determine includes concomitantly taking responsibility for the consequences of that determination. The costs and benefits of self-determination must be borne by those who make the determination. This means that true decentralisation includes both the allowance to succeed and the allowance to fail.
Secession
Secession refers to the process, and event, of a new polity gaining independence from an existing polity. This can happen within a state, where new provinces or municipalities are created from old ones, and can happen outside a state, where a new state is formed out of the old.
Sovereignty
Sovereignty refers to the ultimate governing institution that answers to no other. In modern constitutional theory, ‘the state’ is functionally sovereign, and ‘the people’ in a democratic state are collectively sovereign.
Spheres of government
In South African constitutional law, the three governments that are organised on the basis of territorial jurisdiction – the central government and the subcentral governments, provinces and municipalities – are referred to as ‘spheres of government.’ In other jurisdictions, these would be regarded as ‘tiers’ or ‘levels’ of government, which indicates a hierarchical relationship. In South Africa, it was decided that the centre, provinces, and municipalities, would not be subordinate or superordinate to one another, but ‘distinctive, interrelated and interdependent.’
Stateproofing
The notion of stateproofing is primarily associated with the business chamber Sakeliga. This refers to the process of securing one’s own assets, interests, and ability to act autonomously, from the harms and threats generated by a collapsing or malicious government.
Subcentral governments
In a polity, a subcentral government is a government that has a smaller territorial jurisdiction than the central government. In South Africa, there are two subcentral governments: provinces and municipalities.
Subsidiarity
Subsidiarity is a principle that, in general, requires that the specific must take precedence over the general. In litigation, it means that if legislation covers a specific topic, one must utilise the legislation rather than the Constitution. In governance, it means that if an issue can be dealt with more locally than more generally, it must be dealt with at the more local sphere of government.
See also Home Rule.
Unitary state
The unitary state is a form of government wherein only the central government has constitutional authority to govern, and the existence and powers of subcentral governments – if any – is entirely at the discretion of the central government. The United Kingdom is the world’s prototypical example of a unitary state that nonetheless enjoys a high degree of decentralisation.
See also federation.
