The provincial government reform process in South Africa: policy discretion and developmental relevance

The aim of this paper is to examine the veracity of the assertion that provincial governments in South Africa possess a relatively unclear developmental role, contributing to questions about their relevance and continued existence. This paper argues that such a claim is at best uninformed and at worst potentially disingenuous in view of how the distribution of policy-making authority in South Africa's intergovernmental system has functioned in practice, and the discretion afforded to provincial governments in the implementation of development policies in particular. Empirical data from an intergovernmentally implemented development programme examined as part of the author's doctoral research has been employed to illustrate this argument.