USAID's Experience in Decentralization and Democratic Local Governance, September 2000
This report gives an overview of USAID's experience in decentralization and democratic local governance. It describes what the Agency has done and is not doing to promote responsive, participatory, and effective governments at the local level.

City Indicators: Now to Nanjing. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, January 2007
This paper provides the key elements to develop an integrated approach for measuring and monitoring city performance globally. The paper reviews the role of cities and why indicators are important. Then it discusses past approaches to city indicators and the systems developed to date, including the World Bank's initiatives. After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of past experiences, it discusses the characteristics of optimal indicators. The paper concludes with a proposed plan to develop standardized indicators that emphasize the importance of indicators that are measurable, replicable, potentially predictive, and most important, consistent and comparable over time and across cities. As an innovative characteristic, the paper includes subjective measures in city indicators, such as well-being, happy citizens, and trust.

Governance and the City: An Empirical Exploration into Global Determinants of Urban Performance. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, September 2005
The authors contribute to the field of urban governance and globalization through an empirically-based exploration of determinants of the performance of cities. The findings suggest that good governance and globalization (at both the country and city level) do matter for city-level performance in terms of access and quality of delivery of infrastructure services. The framework also suggests a way of bridging two seemingly competing strands of the literature, namely viewing the city as a place or as an outcome. The authors conclude by pointing to the need for expanding the database and the econometric framework, and suggest research directions and policy implications emerging from this initial investigation on governance and the city.

Lessons Learned Review: Decentralization and Democratic Local Governance Project Special Evaluation. ARD, Inc., July 2006
This paper provides lessons learned from USAID's Democracy, Decentralization, Development (3D) project in Ecuador. The program aimed to (1) strengthen local governments in policy formulation, organization and management, service delivery and transparency processes; (2) institutionalize community participation in decision-making, local strategic development planning, and provision of local government services; and (3) support reforms and moreeffective implementation of decentralization policies in collaboration with key institutions. The fundamental hypothesis of the project was that positive results in these three interrelated components would enhance the legitimacy of local government in Ecuador and enhance participatory democratic processes, which in turn would increase citizen support for democracy.

Fighting Poverty Through Fiscal Decentralization. DAI, January 2006
This study brings together the current state of knowledge on how fiscal decentralization--including the assignment of expenditure responsibilities, the assignment of revenue sources to subnational governments, intergovernmental fiscal transfers, and local government borrowing--can affect poverty levels. Based on a better understanding on how these two thematic areas intersect, the study provides specific recommendations on how development agencies and international financial institutions can support fiscal decentralization reforms in a more pro-poor manner.

Decentralization and Community Empowerment: Does Community Empowerment Deepen Democracy and Improve Service Delivery? RTI, October 2006
Decentralization is frequently recommended as a means to enact and deepen democratic governance and to improve administrative and service delivery effectiveness. Local governments and jurisdictions constitute the institutional loci where these top-down and bottom-up drives meet, thus an important question for the successful achievement of decentralization's democratic and service delivery aims is whether and how community empowerment interacts with local governments to further these objectives. This paper focuses on community empowerment and explores its relationship to democratic decentralized local government.

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