Making Local Government Work

This book looks at the development of local government on a global scale: its history, practice, and future. Leon van den Dool explores local government from a practical standpoint, including human resource policy and financial management, offers a concise summary of modern public management theories, and links this theory with practice, providing case studies from countries at different stages of development. A valuable tool for students and scholars of management, Making Local Government Work is also an excellent overview for anyone interested in how such organizations really operate.

Based on years of practical experience in small towns, Carrel argues for municipal autonomy—for turning what are now ‘colonies’ of the federal and provincial orders of government into independent, mature, and fully democratic entities. For Carrel, the citizen is the sole legitimate source of political power, and the best tool for citizen empowerment is the controversial tool of the referendum. This is the story of how a small municipality broke the rules of local government. It also recounts the author’s irreverence for the status quo and his ideas on the rebuilding of citizenship at the community level.

This report states that the future of East Asian countries depends on the capacity and performance of local and provincial governments. Decentralization has unleashed local initiative and energy, with new ways to deliver services to people, with potential for continued improvement. The report, which focuses on six countries, notes the differences in the approach to decentralizing government in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam

New forms of local governance require new ways of working, and in this important new book, Sue Goss assesses the nature of the challenge and how individuals and organizations have responded. Drawing on a wide range of political and management theory and research and her own extensive experience, she provides the clearest picture yet of the emergence of new "relationship organizations" and of their engagement with the new roles of citizens, public managers, and local politicians.

Public management increasingly takes place in multilevel settings, since most countries are decentralized to one degree or another and most problems transcend and cut across administrative and geographical borders. A collaboration of scholars in the Transnational Initiative on Governance Research and Education (TIGRE Net), Making Multilevel Public

This report discusses the findings from a mail survey of local government economic development activities that was sent to all 540 municipalities and 100 counties in North Carolina. An important part of the analysis examines whether cities and counties differ significantly in their economic development efforts and whether smaller jurisdictions employ different types of development strategies and tools than larger ones. The survey findings also highlight the barriers that local governments face in promoting economic development and identify important technical assistance needs and gaps in local capacity.