Global Trends in Local Governance
The chapter provides an overview of the impacts on local government due to the demographic, urban, environmental and digital transitions taking place in different regions of the world in the last decades. It addresses two research questions: What is the i
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Global Trends in Local Governance Carlos Nunes Silva
Abstract The chapter provides an overview of the impacts on local government due to the demographic, urban, environmental and digital transitions taking place in different regions of the world in the last decades. It addresses two research questions: What is the impact of current and expected urban, environmental and digital transitions on local governance? and How is decentralization and local autonomy related to sustainable development? The chapter is based on a review of the literature, on the main findings from research and policy reports, namely from multilateral organizations devoted to sustainable development, as the United Nations and its agencies, among others. The central hypothesis is that the degree of decentralization and the level of local autonomy correlates positively with the level of development. The more decentralized the easier it is to ‘localize’ the global sustainable development goals and targets and therefore the more likely they will be achieved. This overview concludes by asserting that with demographic growth and urbanization rate higher in developing countries, which tend to be more centralized than its developed counterparts, there is a real need to concentrate efforts in the reform of local government systems in developing countries, as a condition to achieve the sustainable development targets and the goals of the global urban agendas. Keywords Decentralization · Local government · Local autonomy · Urbanization · Digital revolution · Localization · Sustainable development
1.1 Introduction Looking to local government in the past 50 years, continuity, incremental change, and rupture emerge as defining characteristics of what happened to local government systems around the world. In all continents, local government has been
C. Nunes Silva (*) Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. Nunes Silva (ed.), Contemporary Trends in Local Governance, Local and Urban Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52516-3_1
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confronted with demographic and economic shifts, political transitions, and more recently also with important environmental issues, and with the challenges introduced by the digital transition. Population growth, urbanization, migration, and ageing of the population; economic globalization; political transition to democracy and to forms of decentralized administration; environmental shifts, including climate change; and the extensive use of information and communication technologies in all spheres of life and in local government, are some of the forces responsible for the new challenges and opportunities with which sub-national tiers of government and local public administration are confronted across the world, even if in different ways in each country. Not only did these forces impact on local government organization, on its powers, competences and resources, on central-local relations, on
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