CLGF is pleased to announce that issue 26 of the Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance has now been published and is available for you to access.

Supported by CLGF, edited by Cardiff University (UK), and published by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Centre for Local Government, our peer-reviewed journal seeks to strengthen the research voice of local government in the Commonwealth by creating a forum for researchers and practitioners interested in local government ideas and practices.  

Editorial

It begins with an inciteful editorial from Graham Sansom, Associate Editor and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance, UTS, who introduces the excellent collection of research articles and policy and practice notes, which serve to highlight the diverse forms and roles of local government, how it functions in terms of both representative democracy and accountable public administration, and how it responds to the numerous challenges.

Contributions include:

• An analysis of the governance and community impacts of sporting mega-events (2018 Commonwealth Games held in Australia’s City of Gold Coast) by Michael Falla, Jason Prior and Brent Jacobs.

• A paper by Rebecca McNaught, Kalara McGregor, Matthew Kensen, Rob Hales and Johanna Nalau which looks at the practicalities of collaborative governance, and importance of local level collaboration in fostering climate resilience, using the knowledge and experiences of the Pacific Islands region.

• Emmanuel Debrah offers a perspective on the need for enhanced collaborative governance by reflecting on the deficient relationship between traditional chiefs and ‘modern’ local government in rural Ghana.

This is just a taste of the rich content in this issue of the Journal and we hope you find it interesting and useful, whatever your relationship to local government.