Community leadership in a new democracy

Abstract

The concept of community leadership as a field of study has attracted the attention of researchers for many years across the globe. The role of municipality councils is of great importance as an aspect of democratic governance. Councils have a significant role to play as partners to the central government in providing community services. This research attempts to explore community leadership in a new democracy focusing on the relationship between community members, community leadership and government organisations compared to the same of established democracies. The specific focus of the research investigation is community leaders and community members in the Kingdom of Bahrain as a new democracy. This thesis is an investigation of the success factors and barriers that influence the performance of municipal councils' members as community leaders. It also investigates how community leaders have practiced their roles and duties and assesses their performance and characteristics in new democracy compared to those of established democracies as exemplified in the UK, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines. The research objectives are: (1) to identify success factors that influence community leadership performance in a new democracy as perceived by community leaders; (2) to identify barriers that hinder community leadership performance in a new democracy as perceived by community leaders; (3) to identify the roles and duties practiced by community leadership in new democracies as perceived by community leaders and community members; (4) to assess community leadership performance in new democracy as perceived by community members; and (5) to identify characteristics practiced by community leadership in a new democracy as perceived by community members. Three sequential pilot studies were undertaken to gain better feedback from respondents and to build a strong foundation for the main survey. Two sets of questionnaires were developed for this study; the first set of questionnaires dealt with community leaders in new democracies, where they evaluated the success factors, barriers and roles and duties practiced by community leadership in established democracies. The second set of questionnaires dealt with community members in a new democracy, where they evaluated their community leaders through roles and duties, performances and characteristics practiced by community leadership in established democracies. The findings showed that municipal councils‘ members agreed on the importance of success factors and barriers that influence communities in established democracies and they were very positive about their own perceptions of their roles and duties in municipality work. On the other hand community members were negative about their own perception of their municipal leaders‘ roles and duties, performance and characteristics. The results also revealed an absence of clear demarcations of roles between government agencies and councils, and disproportionate demarcation of the constituents. The respondents agreed that awareness programs could be an important undertaking to improve and enhance the effectiveness of council leaders. This study may contribute to the literature by filling the gap related to success factors and barriers that influence community leadership performance in new democracies, focusing on problems facing community leadership and the solutions to overcome these problems. Furthermore, the governments of new democracies can use the empirical evidence to create and adopt new laws, policies and regulations that will redound to community improvement services, leadership enhancement and goal achievement.