Democratic decentralisation through ‘conventional’ institutions of local government is facing increasing challenges, whether from financial pressures, questions of representativeness, difficult central-local relations and from a perhaps growing belief that local government has failed to realise its potential and there may be better ways of achieving societal goals. It is clear there is need to contemplate quite radical change to ensure local government becomes or remains ‘fit for purpose’. This collection of papers illustrates the way in which the role of local government is evolving in different parts of the Commonwealth and provides practical examples of new local government at work. It showcases emerging practice, and highlights success stories from new ways of working and challenges confronting local government in both developed and developing countries. New Century Local Government makes a very valuable contribution to helping understand the changing role of local government, and will ensure that practitioners are up-to-date with the most innovative initiatives in local government planning and administration.

Workforce planning in Tasmania as a whole, and in the local government sector in particular, is essential to meet the needs of communities and deliver a growing, prosperous Tasmania. As the level of government best placed to meet community needs, councils are in a unique position to identify the skills, knowledge and expertise needed to effectively tailor services, generate economic and employment opportunities and support the overall prosperity of their local and regional communities. Planning a future workforce to deliver vital services needs to be clearly linked to local, regional and state-wide priorities. Councils have a key role to plan for their own workforces as part of strategic planning but also play an important role in partnering with a range of local, regional and state level organisations to identify and support conditions for economic growth. Workforce planning brings important benefits to councils and their communities and these guidelines are intended to help local government plan at a local, sub-regional and regional level to support the future growth of a vibrant Tasmanian economy.

Integrating Amartya Sen's approach with the literature on place-based territorial development processes, this book recognises the interplay between the evolution of local development systems and the expansion of individual and collective capabilities.

This chapter traces the evolution and analytical underpinnings of local governance as background to a better understanding of the case studies of developing countries in this book. The next section outlines analytical approaches to local governance that can be helpful in understanding the role of governments and comparing and contrasting institutional arrangements. It further develops a model of local governance that integrates various strands of this literature. This model has important implications for evaluating and reforming local governance in both industrial and developing countries. The third section presents stylized models and institutions of local governance as practiced in different parts of the world during past centuries. It compares and contrasts the ancient Indian and Chinese systems of local governance with Nordic, Southern European, North American, and Australian models. The last section provides a comparative overview of local government organization and finance in selected developing countries as an introduction to the in-depth treatment of these countries in the rest of the book.

This resource guide provides practical guidance for designing, implementing and evaluating decentralisation reforms and local government practices to ensure they are as effective as possible. It also synthesises and presents current debates on the impact of decentralisation and local government on poverty reduction, service delivery and conflict as well as providing links to cutting-edge research and recent case studies.