Since its adoption in 2015, the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development has shaped not only international development cooperation but also the design of national trajectories for social and economic development. In tandem with other global agendas adopted that year (such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and UN Habitat's New Urban Agenda) it remains the global and regional blueprint for sustainable development despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The term "localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)" has been used to capture the importance of subnational governments for achieving national SDG agendas. However, there is little deeper analysis of the required nexus between fiscal, political, and legal arrangements for SNGs; their involvement in national policy arenas (which discuss and decide on national SDG strategies); and the need for locally disaggregated data systems on the one hand, and effective SDG localization strategies on the other hand. It is this aspect which the present publication explores in greater detail by using country examples and conceptual analyses. The text will be of interest to policymakers, scholars, students and practitioners in public policy and public administration, decentralization, and sustainable development, with a focus on the Asia and Pacific region. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO).

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 to provide a firmer conceptual basis for the re-arrangement of public functions across levels of government. In doing so, it 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 (FA) 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 developing/transition countries 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.

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 to provide a firmer conceptual basis for the re-arrangement of public functions across levels of government. In doing so, it 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 (FA) 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 developing/transition countries 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. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.