Decentralisation and Devolution

This is the report of the Commonwealth Workshop on Decentralisation and Devolution, which was held in Edinburgh, in co-operation with the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, over three days in June 2000.

The workshop participants - government ministers, parliamentarians, representatives of political parties, senior figures in civil society and academics from 17 Commonwealth countries - considered how decentralisation can enhance democratic decision-making, where the distribution of powers should ideally lie and what role local government can usefully play in bringing governance closer to the people.

As the Commonwealth Secretary-General said in his message to participants, decentralisation of power from the centre is the single "most important current issue in democracy today and is of as much interest to the Commonwealth as it is to the wider international community".

The workshop was the fifth in the Commonwealth Secretariat's Deepening Democracy series.

Download the report in PDF.