Decentralisation is among the most significant reforms of the past 50 years. It refers to the transfer of powers, responsibilities, and resources from the central government to elected authorities at the subnational level, with some degree of autonomy. Decentralisation covers three distinct but interrelated dimensions: political, administrative, and fiscal decentralisation. Finding the right balance among these dimensions and the right sequencing to implement them represent significant challenges in designing and implementing decentralisation reforms. The upscaling of subnational governance often accompanies decentralisation through inter-municipal cooperation, metropolitan governance, and regionalisation.
A growing number of countries in the OECD and beyond are moving toward asymmetric decentralisation, involving a differentiated allocation of competencies across subnational governments at the same administrative level.
Our paper features various forms of asymmetric decentralization,highlighting the pitfalls to avoid and the good practices to follow during implementation to maximise their benefits and minimise costs.
In recent decades, federal and unitary countries have seen a rising trend in the adoption or enhancement of regional governance reforms. The motivations behind these reforms vary across countries and evolve over time, leading to a broad spectrum of regional governance models.
Our report provides key information on regional governance reforms and their drivers, including an innovative typology of regional governance models across OECD countries. It features relevant recommendations, including tools to facilitate vertical cooperation across levels of government, encourage interregional cooperation, establish monitoring and evaluation processes, and enhance stakeholder engagement.
Over the past 15 years, there has been a significant improvement in inter-municipal cooperation. This involves two or more municipalities working together on specific tasks. It enables the provision of joint municipal services, share administrative costs, build greater human resources capacity and expertise, and reduce fragmented investment by promoting investment at the right scale.
Different formats exist in OECD and EU countries, ranging from informal co-operative agreements without a legal framework (single or multi-purpose, shared services agreements) to highly formalised arrangements involving entities under public law, even with taxing powers.
Enhancing cooperation and coordination of public policies on a metropolitan-wide basis aims to improve the quality of life and international competitiveness of large cities. Around two-thirds of the metropolitan areas in the OECD have a metropolitan governance body.
Special status is afforded to capital cities and metropolitan governance bodies that exceed a legally defined population threshold, to address specific challenges and capacities for these territorial units.
