Global and regional organizations play an important role in the development of legal and policy frameworks, as well as in the design of effective action plans to better support the advancement of the gender equality agenda at the global, regional and national levels. This report presents key instruments for promoting gender equality and political empowerment of women that are currently in place at the global and regional levels, highlighting the challenges, opportunities and successes that each organization has encounter in the implementation within their respective regions.

In various countries, the electoral behaviour of citizens who live outside their nation of origin—the diaspora—has played a key role in the success of political parties in their home countries. The research presented in this Discussion Paper looks at the idea of the party abroad and aims to explain how and to what extent national political parties engage with citizens who live outside their country. It considers the legal treatment of how political parties can operate beyond national borders and it presents various models that can be used by parties wishing to engage with their citizens abroad.

The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government conducts a rigorous, innovative and distinctive analysis of local government within a comparative, international context. Examining the subject matter with unrivalled breadth and depth, this handbook shows how different cultures and countries develop different institutions, structures and processes over time, yet that all have some features in common – the most obvious of which is the recognition that some decisions are better made, some services better delivered, and some engagement with the state better organised if there is structured organisational expression of the importance of the local dimension of all these factors. Thematically organised, it includes contributions from international experts with reference to the wider context in terms of geographies, local government modes, recent developments and possible further lines of research. It has a wide academic appeal internationally and will steer a course between the two dimensions of mono-jurisdictional studies and ‘cataloguing’ forms of comparison.
 

Table of Contents 1. Local Governments - A Global Presence [Richard Kerley, Joyce Liddle, Pam Dunning] Part I: Elected Roles and Governance 2. Local Electoral Systems [Michael Cole] 3. Local Political Leadership: The Voters or Councillors – Who Chooses Who Governs? [Colin Copus] 4. Traditional Leaders and Local Government in Pacific Island Countries [Graham Hassall and Paul Mae] 5. The Role of the Councillor [Neil McGarvey and Fraser Stewart] 6. The Relationship between Politics and Administration: From Dichotomy to Local Governance Arenas [Alessandro Sancino, Marco Meneguzzo, Alessandro Braga, and Paolo Esposito] 7. Institutionalized Differences in Economic Development Perspectives: A Comparison of City Managers, Mayors and Council Members in Texas [James Vanderleeuw and Melanie Smith] Part II: Local Governments in Different Jurisdictions 8. The Political Salience of Local Government in a Small State [Ann Marie Bissessar] 9. Local Government in the Pacific Islands [Graham Hassall, Matthew Kensen, Rikiaua Takeke, Karibaiti Taoba, and Feue Tipu] 10. Local Government in Latin America – The Struggle to Overcome Social Exclusion [Andrew Nickson] 11. A Turbulent Past, A Turbulent Future? Reform and Disruption in the Local Government of New Zealand [Michael Reid and Michael Macaulay] 12. Constitutional and Legislative Changes in Caribbean Local Government [Eris Schoburgh] Part III: Range of Local Government Services 13. Local Government Service Roles in the U.S.A: Consistency and Change [J. Edwin Benton] 14. Public Entrepreneurship: Is Local Government Necessary to Deliver Economic Development? [Lorraine Johnston and John Fenwick] 15. The Wide Range of Local Government Public Services [Elisabetta Mafrolla] 16. Public Service Delivery in Today’s Georgia [Giorgi Vashakidze] 17. The Provision of Public and Personal Social Services in European Countries: Between Marketization and The Return of the Public/Municipal and Third Sector [Hellmut Wollmann] Part IV: Citizen Engagement 18. Practices and Challenges of Citizen Participation in Local Government: Case Studies of Midsized Cities in Russia and the United States [Sofia Prysmakova-Rivera, Elena Gladun, Thomas Bryer, Andrey Larionov, Dmitry Teplyakov, Olga Teplyakova and Natalia Nosova] 19. The Urban Governance of Austerity in Europe [Adrian Bua, Jonathan Davies, Ismael Blanco, Ioannis Chorianopoulos, Mercè Cortina-Oriol, Andrés Feandeiro, Niamh Gaynor, Steven Griggs, S. David Howarth, and Yuni Salazar] 20. Redressing the Trust Deficit: Local Governments and Citizen Engagement [Jonathan Carr West] 21. Does Mode of Public Outreach Matter? [Sheldon Gen and Erika Luger] 22. Improving Social Development in Brazil through an Open Budget Perspective: Does Collaborative Stakeholder Engagement Matter? [Ricardo Gomes and Welles Abreu] 23. Civic Engagement in Local Politics in Central Europe [Oto Potluka, Judit Kalman, Ida Musialkowska, and Piotr Idczak] Part V: Multi-Level Governance 24. Australia: Challenging Institutional Constraints [Chris Aulich] 25. Local Government Outside Local Boundaries: Rescaling Municipalities, Redesigning Provinces and Local-Level Europeanization [Koenradd De Ceuninck, Tony Valcke and Tom Verhelst] 26. Local Government in the European Union’s Multilevel Polity [Marius Guderjan] 27. Second Thoughts on Second-Order? Towards a Second-Tier Model of Local Government Elections and Voting [Ulrik Kjær and Kristof Steyvers] 28. The Architecture of the Local Political Community: France; Italy; Portugal and Spain [Jaume Magre and Esther Pano] Part VI: Getting and Spending 29. Local Government Anti-Corruption Initiatives in Post-Soviet Georgia and Ukraine: Another Tale of Two Cities [Terry Anderson] 30. Enhancing VFM Audit in Local Government: The Best Value Initiative [Michela Arnaboldi and Irvine Lapsley] 31. Financing and Taxing for Local Government [Kenneth Gibb and Linda Christie] 32. Adapting to the Fiscal Environment: Local Governments, Revenue and Taxation Powers [Mark Sandford] 33. Financing Local Government in the Twenty-First Century: Local Government Revenues in European Member States, 2000 – 2014 [Gerard Turley and Stephen McNena]

This profile of the local government system in Trinidad and Tobago is structured to enable easy comparison across the countries of the Commonwealth. The profile includes an overview of the government system, the legal basis for and structure of local government, elections and women’s representation, intergovernmental relations, systems for community involvement, organised local government, intergovernmental relations, monitoring systems, finance, staffing and resources, and distribution of service delivery responsibility.