The State of Participatory Local Democracy

From 2012-2014, the United Nations Democracy Fund supported The Hunger Project to build a community of practice on Participatory Local Democracy. This community was mobilized to comprise dozens of local pro-democracy civil society groups in more than 70 countries.

Following a series of regional meetings in Africa, Asia and Latin America in 2012, a small secretariat team in Washington DC developed a multidimensional Participatory Local Democracy Index and solicited input from all participating countries to issue State of Participatory Local Democracy Reports during the 2013 and 2014 UN General Assembly.

UNDEF does not “renew” grants – it intends to make a catalytic investment, and with this project they succeeded. It led directly to the launch of the Movement for Community-led Development alongside the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015.

Posts on this site

  • Introducing the RDLG Bibliographic Database

    Introducing the RDLG Bibliographic Database

    We are pleased to announce that the Rural Decentralization and Local Government (RDLG) Database, with its 1600 bibliographic entries – is now part of this website. The Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands has, for many years, supported its development and operation within its KIT Information and Library Services. When the services closed in August 2013 due…

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  • Quick Poll Results

    Here are the results from past polls (Dec 2013 – Feb 2014) #1 Holiday Poll (Dec 2013) All these key elements are important – and the members of our Global Community of Practice feel that greater citizen engagement is far and away the most important. #2                                                                #3   We were surprised to see what a…

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  • Grant Opportunity: experiences on inclusive urban development

    Grant Opportunity: experiences on inclusive urban development

    The “Innovative practices of inclusive urban development” project is a collaboration between the University of Winnipeg, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Manitoba, through the Manitoba Research Alliance, UN Habitat, the Huairou Commission and the KIP International School, with the support of the International Development Research Centre of Canada. The project is seeking to…

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  • An Analytical Framework for Assessing Decentralized Local Governance and the Local Sector

    An Analytical Framework for Assessing Decentralized Local Governance and the Local Sector

    How do we assess the public sector with regard to decentralization, intergovernmental relations, and the role of the local public sector? To answer the question, the paper from the Urban Institute Centre on International Development and Governance (IDG)  (2010) proposes a comparative decentralization assessment for rapidly assessing a country’s local public sector, including its political-administrative…

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