Abstract
Economic growth with industrialization accelerated by the globalization and national economic policies since 1990s brought dramatic change in Bangladeshi society both in rural and urban. Local government as a provider of public services, on the other hand, have failed to meet growing needs of citizen especially in urban area. Meanwhile, governance issue had been mainstreamed in international development since 1980s, and the major donors in Bangladesh have conducted studies on governance situations in Bangladesh in 1990s. Based on the studies, one of the major donors, Asian Development Bank, initiated a project for improvement of governance and urban infrastructure for local government in 2002. The model of governance improvement invented by ADB has now been applied in other project supported by other donors such as World Bank and JICA. This article is to demonstrate present situation of governance especially in urban local government by reviewing the project for urban local governance and infrastructure development focusing on people’s participation in public services which is one of main activities in the project. People’s involvement in governance is also globally promoted institutional change not only in developing countries, but also developed countries. By reviewing the people’s participation in local governance, we analyze the project activity in the context of participatory democracy which is also recently globalized phenomenon, and finally articulate scope of further research.
