Discussions about decentralization and local governance often focus on institutional architecture: which level of government is responsible for which function, how intergovernmental transfers are designed, or whether local governments possess sufficient administrative autonomy. Yet, from the perspective of citizens—and especially children—these distinctions matter only insofar as they shape real-world outcomes.
Children do not experience governance through constitutional frameworks or administrative mandates. They experience governance through whether schools function, whether social services are accessible, and whether local institutions respond to their needs. In practice, many of the most important determinants of children’s wellbeing are mediated through local governance systems.
This is one of the key messages emerging from the recent UNICEF Compendium of Local Governance Approaches in Europe and Central Asia. The report presents four country experiences—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Georgia, and Türkiye—that collectively illustrate how local governance reforms can strengthen outcomes for children when municipalities are empowered not merely as administrative units, but as active governance actors.
From decentralization to functional local governance
Across Europe and Central Asia, local governments increasingly sit at the center of delivering services that directly affect children and families. Early childhood education, social protection, healthcare access, disability inclusion, youth engagement, and community-based support systems are all shaped—at least in part—by local institutional performance.
Yet decentralization alone does not guarantee improved outcomes. In many countries, responsibilities have been transferred to local governments without sufficient resources, administrative systems, coordination mechanisms, or professional capacity. The UNICEF cases are valuable because they move beyond simplistic assumptions that decentralization automatically produces better service delivery. Instead, they show that local governance reforms matter when they strengthen the underlying functionality of local systems.
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Governing across fragmentation
Bosnia and Herzegovina represents a striking example of how governance fragmentation can undermine coherent service delivery. The country’s highly complex institutional structure—spread across entities, cantons, municipalities, and special districts—creates overlapping responsibilities and coordination challenges that are especially problematic in social sectors affecting children.
The Social Protection and Inclusion (SPI) Model addressed this challenge not by recentralizing authority, but by strengthening municipalities as local coordinators and conveners. Municipal governments were supported to undertake child-focused planning, coordinate across sectors, integrate budgeting processes, and establish multisectoral commissions that aligned local actors around shared priorities.
The Bosnian experience demonstrates that, in complex multilevel governance systems, improving outcomes often depends less on direct delivery capacity alone and more on whether local institutions can coordinate fragmented actors, funding streams, and sectoral mandates.
Serbia: Building the human infrastructure of local governance
Serbia’s experience illustrates a different but equally important lesson: decentralization reforms are only as effective as the people responsible for implementing them.
Although municipalities gained clearer responsibilities in areas such as preschool education and social services, many local officials lacked the training and professional background necessary to operationalize child rights approaches within planning and budgeting systems. Rather than focusing primarily on institutional restructuring, the Serbian approach emphasized professionalization and long-term capacity development by embedding child rights training within the National Academy for Public Administration.
This reflects an often underappreciated dimension of decentralization reform: effective local governance depends not only on institutional authority and fiscal resources, but also on the quality of the local public sector workforce.
Georgia: Translating legal mandates into operational systems
Georgia’s reforms underscore another common decentralization challenge: assigning responsibilities to local governments without providing the operational tools necessary to implement them effectively.
Following adoption of the Code on the Rights of the Child, municipalities were expected to assume expanded roles in social policy and child protection. The response focused on creating a more complete local policy cycle grounded in evidence, participation, and financial analysis. Municipalities were supported to conduct structured local needs assessments involving children, families, and civil society organizations, helping shift local spending decisions away from reactive approaches toward more strategic planning.
The Georgian case highlights an important principle that extends well beyond child policy: legal decentralization must be accompanied by operational decentralization. Assigning functions on paper is insufficient unless local governments possess practical methodologies and institutional systems that allow responsibilities to be translated into effective governance processes.
Türkiye: Making children visible in local public finance
Türkiye’s experience focuses on the role of public financial management in shaping local governance outcomes. Although municipalities influence many services affecting children, child-related expenditures were historically difficult to identify within local budgets. The introduction of child-focused budgeting tools helped municipalities identify, track, and monitor child-related expenditures across sectors while integrating these priorities into broader strategic planning processes.
This experience reinforces an important lesson for decentralization practitioners: budgets are not merely accounting instruments. They are governance instruments that shape incentives, visibility, and political priorities. By making spending on children more visible, municipalities were better positioned to align planning, budgeting, and accountability processes around child-related outcomes.
Conclusion: Beyond service delivery
One of the most important contributions of the UNICEF report is that it reframes local governance for children as more than a service delivery issue. The four country experiences collectively demonstrate that improving outcomes for children depends on strengthening local governance systems themselves: coordination mechanisms, fiscal systems, professional capacity, planning processes, participatory structures, and multilevel institutional relationships.
For those working on decentralization and multilevel governance, the report offers a timely reminder that strengthening local governance is not a peripheral social-sector concern. It is central to building states and public sectors that are capable, inclusive, and responsive in practice.
Read the full report: Compendium of Local Governance Approaches in Europe and Central Asia. UNICEF Europe and Central Asia Regional Office Social Policy Series. September 2024.
