Assessing the Quality of Local Governance: A Review of Normative Principles and Theoretical Approaches

The role of local governments has changed significantly in the past decades, focusing on goal setting and coordination of multiple agents involved in the design, adoption, implementation, and evaluation of public policies. The resolution of complex local problems requires horizontal coordination (between municipalities) and vertical coordination (between different levels of government), stressing the steering and capacity building roles of local governments. These transformations impacted on the role of local actors, institutions and processes, and reinforce the need of developing means of framing and assessing the quality of local governance. Due to the fact that very little empirical research has been conducted on this topic, it is difficult to anticipate which factors may (systematically) impact on governance quality. In addition, there may be conflicting effects, which further complicate any a priori conjectures. The main goal of this paper is to present a structured and systematic literature review that focuses on the conceptualization and measurement of the quality of local governance, in order to understand the prominence of the subject and to try to systematize the key comprehensive dimensions that may affect or determine local governance quality, as well as theoretical approaches and methodological premises to assess them.