Measuring Local Autonomy in 57 Countries.

Measuring Local Autonomy in 57 Countries. The Local Autonomy Index (LAI)

Talk by Carmen Navarro

DATE: Thursday, November 10,2022
TIME: 3:00pm - 4:30pm
LOCATION: SSC 6210 (in-person only)

In the last few decades, local autonomy has become one of the key issues
of reforms of local government systems and has been advocated by many international institutions as a cornerstone of "good governance" (UN-Habitat, Council of Europe, UGLC, OECD). There have been several attempts to measure local autonomy empirically and from a comparative perspective, the most recent of which is the Local Autonomy Index (LAI). Drawing on different theoretical paradigms (institutional theories, comparative local and multilevel governance, theories of decentralization) the LAI proposes a rooted measure of local autonomy based on 7 dimensions and 11 variables, and applies it to 57 countries (primarily European and OECD countries) assessing their local autonomy levels from 1990 to 2020.

Carmen Navarro is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University Autonoma of Madrid. She is a member of European research networks that analyze and survey local governments in their different dimensions (leaders, institutional reforms, public services, local autonomy, etc.). She is one of the authors of the Local Autonomy Index.

Presented by The Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance