Welcome to the Democratisation, Decentralisation and Local Governance Network website!

The dlgn_Democratisation - Decentralisation and Local Governance Network is SDC's exchange network on democratisation, decentralization and local governance.

Good governance has become a central concern in the past 10 years. Decentralisation for better local governance shall improve the state’s capacity to cope with its various tasks and functions indispensable for development. Almost every democratic country in the world started to decentralise and introduced local elections at some time over the last 50 years.

Decentralisation is seen as a means to improve governance, make political processes more democratic and participative, strengthen local power and make the state less prone to conflict. But decentralisation processes are essentially political and always part of more comprehensive reforms which affect local and national power systems. Local actors’s ownership and alignment with local policies, along with harmonised support procedures, are key elements of successful decentralisation support.

The Swiss Development Cooperation Agency (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs is engaged in decentralisation support since many years; in 2007, 21 projects were running under this heading on all five continents.