This paper was prepared to support a presentation to a session on ‘Decentralisation, the local level and the national level’ as part of a workshop being hosted by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, with the support of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, in Stockholm, November 2014.
The focus of this paper is on the emergence of non-traditional participants seeking to engage with communities through local governance processes. Its contention is that we are on the cusp of an emerging and potentially transformational approach to the theory and practice of local governance, and to an understanding of how best to facilitate central/local intergovernmental relations.
The paper draws almost exclusively on experience from within developed economies primarily within the Commonwealth, but also US experience. The author’s hope is that this experience will provide examples which can be drawn on in less-developed economies, especially where there is the potential for non-traditional entities of governance to provide both capacity and capability which may still be lacking with in formal institutions of government.