Date of Award

Summer 8-1-2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Geography, Geology, and Anthropology

First Advisor

William A. Dando

Abstract

This thesis examines decentralized local communities in Benin during the period of a single-party socialist government with a central plan economic system and during the period of a multiple-party capitalist democratic system. Since the country's independence from France in 1960, political leaders claimed to support and implement socioeconomic programs based upon a decentralized public administration system and a decentralized territorial system. For three decades, none of the various territorial administrations' reforms of the single party system achieved the planned goals. However, the change in party structure, government attitudes, and territorial administration reforms since 1990 has achieved the goals set at the national conference of 1990 and has blended diverse groups within Benin into a solid front working for sustainable national economic and social development.

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