From Localism Towards Localism: a personal journey of policy discovery. Localism has become a buzzword in New Zealand politics. Though well-established overseas, it is, however, still a relatively new concept here. In this essay, Oliver Hartwich explains how his experience of German localism shaped his policy work in Britain, Australia and now New Zealand.

This paper identifies a range of governance mechanisms to support the efficient and equitable provision of public services and improve policy coordination in metropolitan areas. It provides examples from cities in the Global North and Global South, and takes a closer look at metropolitan governance in Brazil, where the constitution makes it challenging to create formal metropolitan structures. The paper suggests that the choice of metropolitan governance structure depends upon how one weighs conflicting considerations—prioritizing efficiency, access, and accountability points to smaller local government units whereas economies of scale, externalities, and equity suggest larger governments. The review of metropolitan governance models does not point to one model that could work everywhere because national and local context matter. Nevertheless, the paper suggests that countries should develop more effective systems of governance for metropolitan areas if they want to improve service delivery, cost sharing, and decision-making. A regional structure that encompasses the entire economic region would ensure that services are delivered in a coordinated fashion across municipal boundaries and improve the process as a whole by reaping the benefits of economies of scale and internalizing externalities.

This paper analyses poor service delivery at local government level, which is attributed to the politicisation of administrative components in municipalities, resulting in poor local governance. The public service delivery system has been perceived as one of the most important ways of reducing poverty through poverty alleviation programmes. As part of the South African government's cooperative system, key stakeholders in municipalities ought to adopt an integrated approach to public service delivery. An integrated approach to public service delivery demands that local municipalities, together with relevant stakeholders, integrate processes and services to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. This ultimately will result in an improved standard of living and sustainable livelihood for communities. With regard to public service delivery, local municipalities have the obligation of creating income opportunities people, especially the poor, with the sole aim of contributing towards poverty reduction and the realisation of the expectations of people, as stated in the South African government's White Paper of transforming public service delivery. The political interface in local municipalities greatly affects effective and efficient administration, as well as growth opportunities. Administrators, therefore, have the important function of ensuring that explicit assignments of objectives and administrative functions are wholly separated from the policymaking activities of government. This paper, therefore, suggests that municipalities adopt the merit system and abandon the spoils system that is highly characterised by political favours and political interferences. Political favours and interferences are dominant in local South African government, and they hinder the process of providing services equally.

This article discusses gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) at the local level in Kerala by studying a village panchayat, the lowest tier of rural local government. GRB of a rudimentary form, known as Women Component Plan (WCP), had been in existence at the local level for the last 20 years as a key feature of participatory planning. The study adopts a fourfold classification of all projects implemented in the panchayat on the basis of their gender friendliness and calculates allocation and expenditure under each of these categories. The data on which the article relies relate to the expenditure incurred under the annual plans rather than budgets, which are based on inflated and unreliable data. The article ends by making some observations based on the data and the overall experience of Kerala in gender budgeting.

NOTE: Downloadable document is in Italian.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evidence of a relationship between the level of accountability that a P.A. can demonstrate and consolidate, and the presence or absence of corruption or even perverse situations of State Capture. Through an empirical analysis is verified if placing a filter (accountability) to the current system of local government, we could overcome persistent situations of arbitrage and abuse of public power, rather than in the new needs for reporting and monitoring required by national and international legislation relating to transparency and sustainable P.A.'s development.