Improving local governance enhances the effect of policies.  Efforts to co-ordinate policies, adapt them to local conditions, and orient them in partnership with business and civil society, bring significant benefits.  They enhance outcomes due to the superior quantity and quality of the information brought to bear in the implementation of programmes and to overall synergy. Local governance is about the ways to take an integrated approach to local development and policy design.

Various tools have been experimented with to improve local governance.  Partnership is one of the main ones. Partnerships have been established throughout OECD countries to tackle issues of economic development, employment, social cohesion and the quality of life.  LEED has examined the experience of 14 countries as part of the OECD Study on Local Partnerships.  Another tool is decentralisation, for which LEED has recently examined the case of labour market policy.

The role of regional strategic platforms, open governments, agents of change and other new forms of governance which promote integrated and endogenous development have also been examined.  The ways to improve policy co-ordination at local and regional levels, and in particular between economic development and labour market policy, are now being investigated as part of a new project.

A Forum on Partnerships and Local Governance has been created to foster the exchange of experiences between partnerships at the international level.  A scientific committee grouping academic researchers and experts has been set up at the Trento Centre to advise local governance activities.

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