A Users' Guide to Measuring Local Governance

Case Study 3:
Balancing comparability with local relevance:
The role of a representative from a local government association
In the last couple of years there had been many different local assessments, evaluations and audits but Lia realized that
something had to be done to make them more relevant for development purposes as well as the need to address their
increasing conceptual and methodological confusion. She was working as a local government advisor for the local
government association that covered the whole country. From her point of view, there was an urgent need for
standardization and national coordination of various local governance assessments.
Establishing a methodology common to all sub-national units would produce many benefits. First, it would enable
inter-municipal comparison and help identify systemic needs for the sub-national governmental system as a whole.
Such an approach would also provide a sound factual basis for the design of new national and sub-national
development projects, the promotion of comprehensive policies, and an enhancement of the legal framework.
Second, the opportunity to publicly present the results of the assessment of all sub-national units would enable the
sharing of experiences and also enable benchmarking amongst sub-national units. Furthermore, it would mobilise
public pressure for governance reforms and facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experience on standards of good
governance.
Finally, the new initiative would help address the increasing confusion produced by the use of the different
methodologies that various international and bilateral organizations applied. For instance, in several municipalities a
team of international experts had conducted “assessment of accountable and responsive local government” based on
public perception surveys.When the reports were finalised, the experts left and it became obvious that there was weak
local ownership of the findings and even weaker capacity to deal with the recommendations.
Elsewhere, in selected municipalities, a regional institute funded by a bilateral donor had introduced an index on
democratization. The methodology included some consultative workshops, but there were problems of localization of
the global indicators. Many local stakeholders argued that the findings were either irrelevant for their local context or
that they could not use them for development purposes. In addition, there were also several assessments focusing
on local service delivery – but many of these were conducted without a clear normative framework for good local
governance.
Lia received the endorsement of the leadership of the association to establish a new standing committee on local good
governance. The standing committee was chaired by herself and comprised a representative group of sub-national
units (from urban to rural, from small to medium to large population size, and from small to medium to large
territorial size). Moreover, officials from central government ministries and agencies were included on a permanent
basis. In addition, there were researchers and analysts from national non-governmental organizations dealing with
decentralization and local development.
The committee prepared a work plan that included:
• Development of a national concept on principles and norms of good local governance – based on comparative
research and localization of the existing universal “models” and frameworks used in other countries – as well as the
previous indigenous practice regarding good local governance
• Mapping of all local governance assessments conducted in the previous three years (methodologies, reports,
identification of weakness and strengths)
• Design of a standardized methodology for local good governance assessment
A Users’ Guide to Measuring Local Governance 39