In many countries, decentralization is not only pursued in order to democratically empower people, but also to enhance their access to quality localized public services and to improve local development.
After all, in countries around the world, local governments and other local public sector bodies are responsible for delivering the public services that people rely on day-to-day: schools for their children, public health services, access to clean water, clean streets, sanitation for the urban poor, and so on.
Although these public services align with national priorities and global development objectives, the global dialogue on the implementation of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals explicitly recognizes that the delivery of most pro-poor public services is fundamentally local in nature. As such, the concept of localization can best be understood as the process of transforming global and national development goals into tangible development results at the local level.
As such, it is the intent of Decentralization Net to focus not only on the traditional dimensions and pillars of decentralization, but to play an active role in connecting the research and practice surrounding decentralization to the need to improve the ‘localization’ of key public services—such as education, health services, access to clean drinking water and sanitation, and so on—and the strengthening of local and territorial development.