At independence the three Melanesian states of the Pacific Islands region – Papua New Guinea (1975), Solomon Islands (1978) and Vanuatu (1980) – opted for decentralised systems of government. In all cases a three-tier system of national, provincial and local government was introduced, although the specific arrangements and allocation of powers differed substantially. Since that time there has been a good deal of analysis about the policy processes of decentralisation itself and about the effectiveness (or otherwise) of national-level governance in these countries; but until recently little has been written about the lower levels.This short article surveys some of the recent research and commentary on local-level governance relating particularly to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Solomon Islands. It focuses on both the poor condition of formal local-level government as well as on the rise of informal governance-type activity at the local level which might be described as ‘civil society in formation’.

Localism is about citizens, not town halls. It engages, encourages and empowers citizens and their formal, semi-formal and informal groupings, street level to citywide, including not-for-profits. To be effective and constructive, citizen-centric localism needs to be bottom-up, not just top-down, driven by iterative interaction to fashion thought-through decisions. Digital technology enables this in ways not possible a decade ago. Local councils are the right level of government to develop and refine that interaction and thereby revitalise local – and in time national – democracy.

This issue of the GSoD In Focus explores the contribution that the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices can make to the review of progress on the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The GSoD Indices can be used to complement the official indicators of the SDGs, to acquire in-depth knowledge on trends in achieving the specific targets of individual SDGs. In this regard, the GSoD Indices can be used to provide data on the SDGs for poverty (SDG 1), hunger (2), health and wellbeing (3), education (4), gender equality (5), inequalities (10), sustainable cities and communities (11), peace, justice and institutions (16), and partnerships for the goals (17), as well as across the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Imperative of Good Local Governance is a true state-of-the-art volume in the field of local governance, decentralization and local democracy summarizing a substantial part of the insights from original research in the last decade. It is also a future-looking volume with explicit policy relevance, paving the way for innovative thinking (and acting) on the next phase of development in the field. In a unique way it brings together authoritative contributions from authors that to a large extent have been defining the field for the last decade or more. From a theoretical perspective it is adjoining top–down and bottom–up rationalities, which is further illuminated through a wide variety of key case studies. The case studies are selected for their relevance for the theoretical perspectives offered, as well as for their paradigmatic power in the current global evolution of decentralized policies and politics. The volume concludes that overall, local development and local politics will not go away – it has a huge potential – but also that the field is full of unfulfilled promises, some of which could be remedied through the perspectives revealed in this volume.