To adequately manage local government, or anything else for that matter, one should have some general philosophical understanding of what local government should be and is and, given existing resources, what can be done to help it towards its goal. In an interview with Mark Benschop my first question was intended to acquire this kind of information.
Benschop claimed that all his life he has been passionate about human rights and sees local democracy as a means whereby each citizen can take more control of those aspects of their lives that are closest to them. Added to this, Benschop claims to believe in “participatory democracy” and indeed, at almost every stage of our discourse, once he outlined what he thinks should be done there is the rider that there will be stakeholder consultations before a final decision is made.
Mark outlined a litany of problems facing the city, only a few of which we can deal with here. He believes that mismanagement and corruption are major problems and that the administration cannot properly account for the