The aim of this paper is to understand how Local Agenda 21 (LA21) is contributing to update local policy and decision making towards sustainable development in Portugal. Departing from a theoretical view of governance for sustainable development - its core values and challenges - and the role of...

"In 1993, India introduced quota-based political reservations for women in rural areas with the objective to promote gender equality in human development by making rural service provision and local governance inclusive and responsive to the needs of women. Recent evidence shows that reservation...

The Performance Challenge Fund (PCF), established by the DILG in 2010, is a performance-based incentive program that gives financial subsidies to local government units (LGUs) that are awarded with the Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) (DILG MC No. 2017-160). It may be used for projects that...

Quite apart from the diversity of situations in small and medium-sized towns, stabilising their town centres is a major challenge. In both countries, town centres have been weakened by commercial changes, a decline in the supply of services and transformations in lifestyles. They are...

Au-delà de la diversité des situations des villes petites et moyennes, la stabilisation de leurs centres-villes constitue un défi majeur. Dans les deux pays, les centres-villes ont été fragilisés par les mutations commerciales, la baisse de l'offre de services et les transformations des...

Abgesehen von den unterschiedlichen Gegebenheiten in den kleinen und mittleren Städten stellt die Stabilisierung der Stadtzentren eine große Herausforderung dar. In beiden Ländern sind die Stadtzentren durch kommerzielle Veränderungen, einen Rückgang des Dienstleistungsangebots und einen...

Since its adoption in 2015, the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development has shaped not only international development cooperation but also the design of national trajectories for social and economic development. In tandem with other global agendas adopted that year (such as the Paris Agreement on...

Two key recent events pushed forward the country's decentralization agenda. In 2019, the Mandanas-Garcia Supreme Court ("Mandanas") ruling increased the tax base for intergovernmental fiscal transfers in support of local governments' autonomy and revenue-raising capacity. In 2021, Executive...

The paper analyses the issues of how regional and local budgets can interplay to generate a financial base for local authorities. The author evaluates the structures of local budgets and the indices calculated for local budgets dissimilarity before and after transfers from regional budgets;...

By sampling two contrasting villages of the Upland Settlement Project (USP), a PF project of Bangladesh, this research examines: the present conditions of the USP in terms of progress towards achieving targeted objectives; issues of local-level governance that affect attaining those objectives....