A Users' Guide to Measuring Local Governance

optionally, the peer review comments. The
figure 6 shows the Scorecard Summary for the
Lofa county in Liberia; while the following table
presents the Integrity Indicator scorecards for
the Lofa county in Liberia.
Gender focus
Within the sub-category “Sub National rule of law”,
in the set of indicators developed for the Liberian
pilot project, there are two indicators assessing
whether women have full access to the formal
sub-national as well as customary justice system.
• Transparency, both in terms of our methodology
and findings, characterises the Global Integrity
approach while enhancing the robustness and
credibility of the findings.
• The methodology is continuously revised on
the basis of fieldwork experiences.
• To minimise the interferences of personality,
language and culture, and maximise
inter-coder reliability, a codebook defining
indicator scoring criteria is provided.
Poverty focus
Not explicit. However, in the set of indicators
developed for the Liberian pilot project, within the
sub-category “Sub National rule of law”, there some
indicators poverty-related: is an indicator assessing
that judicial decisions in the formal sub-national as
well as customary justice system are not affected
by racial, ethnic, and religious bias, an indicator
assessing whether the sub-national government
provides adequate legal counsel for defendants in
criminal cases who cannot afford it, an indicator
assessing whether citizens earning the median
yearly income can afford to bring a legal suit.
Furthermore, within the sub-category “Sub
National Law Enforcement”, there is an indicator
assessing whether all citizens regardless of their
race, ethnicity, and religion have equal access to
the law enforcement agency acting on the
sub-national level.
Strengths
• The Sub-National Integrity Indicators and
scorecards for each county, like their national
Integrity Indicators counterparts, are
characterized by an innovative, award-winning
research methodology; a robust peer review
process; and start-to-finish transparency.
• Some sub-national Integrity Indicators are
replicated from Global Integrity’s master
national level Integrity Indicators. However, not
all of those indicators are applicable at the
sub-national level in a given; hence new
indicators are developed for each new
application to take into account countryspecific
concerns in each country covered
under our Local Integrity Initiative.
• The richness of the data set enables a
discussion of how best to allocate limited
political and financial capital when the
challenges are many and the resources few.
Weaknesses
• Given that the set of indicators is countryspecific,
it is important to foresee the necessary
time and capacities to allow adaptations.
• Although the tool is applicable at the county,
state, provincial, or regional administrative levels,
a country-level approach is recommendable (e.g.
having a set of “core indicators” common to all,
complemented by some “satellite indicators”)
• This Sub-national Integrity Indicators are not a
tool to assess reduced corruption and
increased government accountability. Positive
results for indicators should simply be
understood to reflect circumstances where key
anti-corruption safeguards exist and have
been enforced, which while one would hope
reduces corruption may not eliminate it entirely.
In simple terms, corruption can still occur even
where local communities have implemented
what are understood to be ideal reforms.
• The sub-national Integrity Indicators focus
heavily on formal institutions, although it is
possible to recognise functional equivalences
with the more informal practices and
relationships even in the absence of a specific,
sought-after institution or mechanism.
Coverage
The first Local Governance Toolkit (pilot project)
was applied in 15 counties in Liberia. Three other
toolkits are foreseen for Argentina, Peru and
Ecuador.
Timeline
2007. On-going.
144 UNDP Oslo Governance Centre