Background

From Australia to Zambia, we witness striking inequalities in governance and development outcomes. Two villages or neighbourhoods, sitting side-by-side, may differ dramatically in the extent to which people participate in decision-making, contribute to public goods, and enjoy adequate education, health care, or other services. Similarly, men and women, young or old, or people of different ethnic groups may experience better or worse governance and development outcomes. Such inequalities in governance and service provision raise important questions. What explains these differences, and what kinds of conditions facilitate effective local governance and service provision? How will decentralization processes impact governance, and where might they allow communities to flourish? When and where will other administrative and political reforms foster the greatest improvement in core government functions and service delivery? In which communities can investments, public or private, realize the most gain?

LGPI - A New Approach to Local Governance 

The Local Governance Process Indicators (previously Local Governance Performance Index), provide a new approach to measuring, analyzing, and improving local governance. The LGPI employs household surveys to gather micro-level data from communities, including data on experience, perception, and satisfaction regarding cross-cutting governance issues: specifically, batteries for health, education, security, voice and participation, and governance metrics. Thus, the LGPI collects, assesses, and benchmarks detailed information on local governance and service delivery issues.  

To measure these dimensions, the LGPI emphasizes citizens' experiences. Individuals are asked, for instance, if they had previous problems regarding education, health, and other sectors. We then ask whether they took action to address these issues, what actions they took to do so (e.g., using informal payments, personal connections), and whether their needs were met. 

The survey allows us to pinpoint individuals with unmet needs and further probe the experiences of those who accessed these services. It also allows us to ask about the quality of service delivery, any problems with whom they asked for help, and the outcomes of that process. These surveys provide a detailed map of institutional strengths and weaknesses, as experienced by citizens. This information can be combined with data gathered from civil servants, local elites, and service providers to yield a full picture of governance. 

Moving beyond standard governance measures in five important ways

First, it overcomes problems of user-based surveys, which tend to only assess experiences of those who have accessed services successfully, whilst also going beyond surveys based on perception and satisfaction which, while important, do not always accurately reflect citizens’ experience.

Second, the LGPI measures governance at the subnational level, making it ideal for designing and assessing decentralization efforts. Unlike most extant measures (e.g., World Governance Indicators, Quality of Government, community scorecards), it employs a methodology of heavily clustering surveys at the local level. This allows for explicit measures of local variation in governance and outcomes, usually only representative in surveys at the national level.

Third, the LGPI allows us to consider governance experiences that go beyond geographically delineated communities. Analyses based on age, ethnicity, class, or gender, for instance, allow us to examine how different demographic groups may experience state and non-state institutions differently, as well as the extent to which local inequalities exist across these communities.

Fourth, the LGPI focuses on governance by both state and non-state actors, recognizing that non-state actors and institutions (e.g., the rules and norms governing engagement) play important roles in governance practices and outcomes, thereby providing the basis for assessing how obstacles to effective decentralization may vary.

Fifth, the LGPI permits us to examine and compare relationships between governance and outcomes across sectors. The core instrument includes batteries on health, education, security, voice, and participation, and other metrics of governance and service delivery. This helps to detect unevenness in the strength of state and non-state actors, the nature of governance (e.g., transparency, participation, accountability), and the quality of outcomes

By assessing governance and service delivery at the local level, the LGPI provides critical feedback to help government officials, political parties, civil society actors, the public, and the international development community in the process of decentralization.

For more information, please see our Concept Note.