PROGRAMS DESIGNED FOR COMMUNITIES + LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
Variations in local-level institutions, laws, constraints, resources, culture, and political economy can thwart the implementation of a national program.
Legis offers extensive programs for provincial and local governments and communities to tailor national programs to local circumstances and monitor implementation and outcomes. Legis serves local governments and communities in revising their policies and programs to address persistent and emerging problems.
Within smaller communities, pressure to improve governmental service delivery typically comes from affected persons. Community leaders can respond to these concerns and win local buy-in by solving problems. Legis offers the Participatory Problem Solving approach as a framework for identifying and solving problems effectively together.
Legis works extensively in several key areas to serve communities and local governments.
Decentralization and Devolution to Local + Provincial Governments: Participatory Problem Solving is a unified framework that gives officials at the national and local levels — along with stakeholders and issue advocates — a common approach to identifying and describing problems, and then mapping solutions clearly from national responsibilities to provincial and local responsibilities. By bringing a comprehensive set of facts and perspectives together, the Legis approach results in robust solutions and defined zones of responsibility, allowing each jurisdiction to bring its unique strengths and capacities to effective implementation.
Smart Cities: Legis collaborates with municipalities in devising evidence-based, broadly participatory solutions.
Informal Jurisdictions: Informal Jurisdictions, historically underserved or abandoned communities where non-state institutions fill the void left by a non-functional state, face unique challenges when it comes to working toward collective solutions. Legis specializes in bringing these communities together around a shared process of identifying and prioritizing problems, assembling facts and multiple perspectives on the nature and causes of these problems, and devising solutions that draw on the strengths of the community rather than waiting for the state. In a groundbreaking recent article in the European Journal of Law Reform, one of Legis’s founders laid out the Legis approach to driving positive change in these communities (Seitz 2018).