A Users' Guide to Measuring Local Governance

1.3 Measuring local governance
There has been a significant growth in the types
of methods and tools that can improve
understanding of governance deficits and
weaknesses and their relationship to development
outcomes. 9 Local governance is not immune from
this development and the Source Guide provides
an overview of 22 globally applied tools focused
on the field of local governance alone. These
include assessment tools with complex sets of
indicators, as well as less structured assessments of
a more descriptive nature.
Assessments in general can be an important tool
for systemising information and data on a local
governance issue in particular or on the quality
of local governance in general. Furthermore,
assessments provide a foundation for evidence
based policy making and can empower reformers
within local government and civil society to
mobilise public opinion for reform.
It is important to understand that assessing
local governance is not simply a subset or a
disaggregated form of national governance
assessments. Assessments of local governance
provide important information on issues specific
to the local level, such as policies vis-à-vis
decentralisation, participation and local
accountability. One of the main differences
between a national and local governance
assessment is the greater proximity to the
real-world issues. In contrast to national
governance which often deals with systemic
policies, the local level is in a daily and intensive
interaction with the citizens. Therefore, local
assessments need to be much more sensitive to
the particular needs of groups of stakeholders and
certain segments in the local community.
1.4 Why assessing local governance?
The purpose for undertaking an assessment of local
governance is of utmost importance as it is the
purpose that decides the scope of the assessment,
the methodology and the indicators to be applied,
and not vice versa. Conducting an assessment
with vague objectives fails to provide proper
development outcomes and can be a waste of
time and resources.
Assessments of local governance are undertaken
for multiple purposes and reasons:
• To identify potential gaps and constraints in
local policy implementation;
• To identify specific capacity development
needs and to monitor the results of capacity
development efforts;
• To formulate change plans and solicit donor or
peer assistance for improving specific aspects
of local governance;
• To engage civil society and private sector in
local governance; and
• To provide an objective account of achieve
ments of local elected leaders (especially at
times of re-elections), and thus building
accountability.
There are four main objectives to undertaking an
assessment of governance at the local level:
1 Diagnostic: an assessment will be done to
identify a problem and its scope;
2 Monitoring: an assessment will be done at
regular intervals to keep a check on the success
or failure of an initiative, policy or programme;
3 Evaluation: an assessment will be done to
assess whether an initiative, policy or
programme has achieved its pre-defined
results and outcomes;
4 Dialogue: an assessment will also serve to
engage citizens and communities in informed
discussions about shared goals and priorities.
Related to this, there are also different approaches
in the use of an assessment. Some assessments are
based on an index in which dimensions or aspects
of local governance are measured, aggregated,
weighted and recorded in an index. Multiple
municipalities might be included in an index and
can then be compared with each other. A useful
example of this can be found in Indonesia’s
Governance Index calculated for each province
(see page 81 of the Source Guide).
There are trade-offs with the different approaches.
A significant trade off is between comparability
9
Christiane Arndt and Charles Oman,“Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators”, Development Centre Studies, OECD, 2006
A Users’ Guide to Measuring Local Governance 7