Section 139 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa authorises provincial governments to intervene in municipalities that fail to fulfil their constitutional or statutory obligations. Since 2000, the application of this provision has grown substantially, yet the evidence of its effectiveness remains contested. By January 2023, at least 33 municipalities were under some form of section 139 intervention, with over 40 active interventions recorded across the country at various points. This article presents a narrative literature review of academic literature, government reports, Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) findings, and parliamentary records of 2000 to 2024. A thematic analysis framework was applied to 23 sources drawn from academic databases and grey literature. The review identifies five thematic clusters: the constitutional and legal architecture of interventions; fiscal mismanagement as the dominant trigger; administrative and institutional capacity failure; political instrumentalisation; and service delivery and accountability outcomes. The findings indicate that interventions have rarely produced durable improvements. Municipalities including Madibeng, Emfuleni, Mangaung and Maluti-a-Phofung demonstrate that structural governance failure cannot be resolved through episodic crisis management. Data from AGSA for 2023/24 confirm that approved financial recovery plans at the City of Tshwane, City of Johannesburg, and Emfuleni have not yet yielded desired results owing to inadequate monitoring. The review also finds that coalition instability in metropolitan councils since 2016 has produced a distinct form of municipal dysfunction. The article concludes with policy recommendations for pre-intervention support frameworks, administrator quality controls, strengthened oversight by the National Council of Provinces, and post-intervention capacity development.
As a militarily neutral state, Serbia has to rely on internal balancing in order to attain an effective deterrence strategy. Therefore, all the strategic documents of the Republic of Serbia - the National Security Strategy and the Defence Strategy - have defined the concept of total defence as a goal to achieve. Although significant steps have been realized in that complex undertaking - and notably the effort of the theoretical and normative elaboration of the concept - Serbia still faces many challenges of various kind in order to transform the concept of total defence into a set of practical and concrete measures that will constitute the foundation of the Serbian deterrence and help the country in the preservation and defence of its national interests. One of the problems resides in the fact that the understanding of the concept of total defence seems to be excessively narrow. By limiting the scope of total defence to its two classical components - the military defence on one hand and the civil defence on the other - a wide palette of measures and actions has been put aside and possible threats ignored. The question of possible cultural or ideological threats remained untackled and the idea of overall or comprehensive defence that would, for example, include spiritual defence, stayed completely out of range of the policy makers. But even with regard to the narrow understanding of the concept of total defence, some key elements are still missing, such as the mandatory military service or a full normative elaboration of the civil defence, let alone its practical implementation. Besides these problems, there is a more fundamental issue concerning the existence of necessary requirements for a successful total defence policy since internal balancing cannot be solely seen as the need for increasing military capacities. Moreover, it is a widely accepted theoretical concept today that internal balancing implies elements such as the strength and efficiency of state institutions, political stability, and social cohesion. Having this in mind, the particular context of Serbia - with a deficient democratic regime, political instability, institutional ineffectiveness, and a weakened social cohesion - is not a fertile ground for developing the concept of total defence. Finally, the most important challenge that Serbia is facing and that will determine the faith of both the military neutrality and the total defence that derives from it is the need of making a choice and of having a coherent foreign policy, which is, for the moment, still marked by contradictory goals of preserving the territorial integrity of the country and joining the European Union. If the final choice is made in favour of the EU accession - which necessarily means the acceptance of the secession of Kosovo and Metohija, it is more than likely that the strategic decision of the military neutrality will cease to exist since it will lose its main sense of purpose.
Civil service ethics today represents a legally and sub-legally regulated category. This implies that conscience, ethics, honesty, and other moral categories are increasingly less identified as implied social values, necessitating their prescription and sanctioning through legal norms. Factors most influencing unethical behavior of civil servants in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be grouped into several categories: politicization of the civil service (selection process not based on meritocracy principles), the broad scope of the civil service (excessive number of civil servants at all levels of administrative organization who exhibit low civil service culture and lack training), high corruption index in society (where civil servants act as both subjects and objects of corrupt activities), weak prevention and penalization of ethical rule violations, difficulty in proving mobbing and discrimination in the civil service with inadequate response from responsible authorities to prevent and punish these phenomena, and weak prevention and management of conflicts of interest in general and in the civil service. Additionally, political instability and limited resources of civil service agencies hinder meritocracy, thus requiring interventions such as mandatory annual ethics training and testing; a digital platform for reporting conflicts of interest; and strengthening sanctions for executives who generate unethical behavior.
Bosnia and Herzegovina presents a central paradox of Europeanisation: while the country has formally advanced on the EU path, it remains subject to an external executive authority whose powers are difficult to reconcile with democratic accountability and the rule of law. Bosnia and Herzegovina was granted EU candidate status in December 2022, and in March 2024 the European Council decided to open accession negotiations, while inviting the Commission to prepare the negotiating framework. Yet the OHR continues to impose legislation, amend constitutional arrangements, and dismiss elected officials without democratic mandate, practices the European Commission itself condemned in 2019 as "in principle incompatible with the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina and therefore with EU membership." This article argues that the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina functions as a NEO-colonial institution whose exercise of executive authority through the extra-legal "Bonn Powers" systematically undermines the conditions for meaningful EU integration. Drawing on NEO-colonial theory, the article examines the legal basis of the Bonn Powers, their use by successive High Representatives, and the EU's response to their continued application under Christian Schmidt. It shows that the EU is pursuing Bosnia and Herzegovina's accession while tolerating a form of external governance that contradicts the democratic and rule-of-law standards of that process. This structural double standard has produced what the article terms a Potemkin democracy: a system in which the formal institutions of democratic governance operate as a façade while actual authority remains vested in an externally appointed and unaccountable official.
As South Africa’s democracy matures, the public sector faces ongoing tensions between political dynamics and professional administration. The decline in support for the ruling party has resulted in numerous municipalities being governed by coalition arrangements, raising questions about administrative stability and professional functioning. This paper investigates how coalition governments influence the professionalism, competence, and efficiency of the South African public service. A systematic literature review was conducted, examining scholarly perspectives on the effects of coalition governance on merit-based recruitment, cadre deployment, and service delivery. The findings reveal a dual effect: coalition politics can both challenge and reinforce public sector professionalism. In many cases, coalition arrangements exacerbate political interference, leading to patronage appointments and instability that undermine merit-based practices, administrative continuity, and service delivery. Conversely, in municipalities where coalition partners prioritise collaboration and adherence to governance norms, there is potential for reforms that strengthen administrative accountability, professional ethics, and institutional capacity. Cadre deployment practices remain a critical constraint, as political appointments continue to compete with merit-based recruitment, highlighting the need for stronger mechanisms to protect professional standards. Drawing on these insights, the paper proposes the Public Sector Professionalisation Model (PSPM), which provides a framework for enhancing skills, ethics, and efficiency within the public service despite the challenges posed by coalition politics. The study thus concludes that while coalition governments reflect democratic diversity, they present significant risks to the professionalisation and effective functioning of South Africa’s public sector, necessitating deliberate strategies to safeguard administrative competence and service delivery.
