Participatory Local Democracy

UNDP’s Oslo Governance Center produced this useful guide to measuring local governance, published in 2009. The purpose of the Guide is “to compile existing knowledge and decentralization and local governance measurement and provide a platform for understanding and navigating the array of assessment tools that exist…”

This report is a treasure chest of references to frameworks, tools and approaches, and would be a great starting place for anyone considering doing an assessment. It includes a wealth of helpful hints for being aware of the diverse stakeholders that are involved.

The 160-page report is based in part on interviews with sixteen of the key thought-leaders in the field. It presents four fictional case studies and reviews the relevant focus and utility of 22 different measurement tools.

UNDP takes a holistic approach to decentralized governance analysis, described in a 2004 paper. They identify eight “universal priorities” including:

• Capacity-building and institutional reform;
• Participation through inclusiveness and empowerment of citizens
• Recognition and involvement of diverse constituencies
• Non-discrimination
• Reinforcing Representation with direct citizen participation
• Adoption of new forms of participation: neighborhood ocuncils, e-democracy etc.
• Publicly-available records
• Matching devolution of functions with capacity building.

(Note – these appear to be reflected in our own framework here, which is a relief!)

The authors identify four main objectives to undertaking a local governance assessment:

1. Diagnosing problems and their scope,
2. Monitoring activities
3. Evaluation of the results and outcomes of activities
4. Dialogue with citizens and communities

The report notes that all assessment frameworks are based on normative, value-oriented, prescriptive principles, and they cite four different ones, although they all appear to be very similar in their inclusion of effectiveness, transparency/openness, participation etc.

It underscores the importance of including indicators that focus on poverty and gender, although they note that “very few assessments… use measures that are explicitly focused on the poor.”

The report groups the tools into three categories, and conducts a comparative analysis of the tools. We will not attempt to summarize their findings, but we will present their list here along with links — most of which have changed since the 2009 publication of this report.

Category 1: Comprehensive local governance assessment approaches based on multiple stakeholder perspectives

Category 2: Local governance assessments based on citizen (or single stakeholder) perspectives

Category 3: Local governance and performance self-assessments by local government institutions