Emerging Practices in Intergovernmental Functional Assignment

Attaining the benefits of (especially fiscal) decentralization in government remains an enduring challenge, in part because, the re-arrangement of public functions across levels of government has often been carried out poorly.

This book aims at providing a firmer conceptual basis for the re-arrangement of public functions across levels of government. In doing so, it also offers practical advice for policy makers from developing and emerging countries and development cooperation practitioners engaged in such activity. Combining a theoretical approach for inter-governmental functional assignment with an in-depth analysis of real-life country cases where functional assignment has been supported in the context of international development cooperation, it underscores the common technical and political challenges of FA, and also demonstrates the need to expect and support country made and context-specific solutions to FA processes and results.

Examples are drawn from a number of countries from developing/transition counties from the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and the OECD, which outline and suggest advisory approaches, tools, principles and good practices and approaches.

This text will be of key interest to scholars, students, policy-makers and practitioners in public policy, decentralization, local governance studies, public administration and development administration/studies.

Gabriele Ferrazzi, Ph.D: Has worked for over 20 years as a consultant on decentralizatiodministrative reform projects of relevance to functional assignment supported by German development cooperation (GIZ) and other development partners (like Asian Development Bank, Canadian International Development Agency, United Nations Capital Development Fund, Swiss Development Cooperation). Most of his experience has been in Asia, particularly Indonesia and Cambodia. He has also taught development topics in Canadian universities, and is currently adjunct professor at the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph.

Rainer Rohdewohld is a senior decentralization policy advisor from German development cooperation (GIZ), with more than 20 year work experience on administrative reform, decentralization reforms and local governance capacity building in Asia (Indonesia, Cambodia, India) and West Africa (Ghana). Starting 1 August 2015 he will be on an extended leave of absence from GIZ. He has worked with other development agencies like Asian Development Bank and Swiss Development Cooperation. Previously, he taught development topics at the political science institute of the Freie Universitat Berlin (Germany).