The Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative (LGI), in partnership with the Tocqueville Research Center (T–RC) in Budapest, has been conducting a multi-year project entitled ‘Indicators of Local Democratic Governance’ (hereafter:‘Indicators’). The project aims to help decision-makers and researchers assess and explain the state of local democracy in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. While there are numerous international research initiatives examining the condition of democracy on a national level, only a limited number of comparative inquiries have been launched at the subnational level. The ‘Indicators’ project is a modest but perhaps unique enterprise, having three broad aims: (a) the generation of original survey data and collection of other relevant statistical data; (b) regular reporting on the state of local democracy in Central and Eastern Europe; and (c) the dissemination of results and standardized datasets to inform developmental and policy reform initiatives.