Executive Summary: "The State of Local Governance: Trends in Shan - UNDP Myanmar 2015 This report aims to map the state of affairs and the evolution as witnessed over the past years with regards to governance reforms and service delivery, in particular for the sectors education, health and water supply, in Shan State. It provides a historical background to contextualise the present governance situation in Shan, which differs from all other Regions and States; it provides information on the various recent elections in the State; it seeks transparency of the State budget, and, against this background, it pays particular attention to the perceptions of citizens? regarding the changes they have witnessed. It finally tries to make the link between good local governance and the quality of service delivery, whereby it looks at aspects of decision-making powers in relation to budget discretion, the availability of budget envelopes, oversight and accountability. Shan State takes a special place amongst the fourteen Regions and States in the country as, in terms of area the biggest of all, covering almost 25% of the entire nation, and in terms of population by far the biggest of all States. Arguably, Shan State has the largest ethnic diversity amongst its population of all fourteen Regions and States. Related to this diversity - its location and the physical features of the terrain making it perfect for a natural border zone - Shan State has played an important role in the history of Myanmar. As far as the most recent history is concerned, this starts with the special position that was negotiated in the Panglong agreement, where Shan State was given the right to exit the Union after a period of 10 years if it would prefer to do so (and which it did not do). As much as the recent serious flaring up of fighting (early February 2015) in the Laukkaing area illustrates that peace and stability cannot yet be taken for granted, the earlier open conflicts in Shan State, which were as much based on economic interest as ethnic differences, seemed to have already for some time reached a situation of agreed status quo, amongst others reflected by the number of Self-Administered Areas as enshrined in the Constitution of 2008, and which are described as part of the local governance set-up in this report. Shan State is distinctly different (and also more complicated), as compared to most other Regions and States, but the mapping of local governance and service delivery also found a number of similarities with the findings in other areas. Overall, in Shan State, as in all other Regions and States, people clearly acknowledge the improvements in service delivery, notably for road infrastructure, education, health and, although to a lesser extent, water supply. People mentioned access to safe drinking water as the largest challenge in service delivery and people also asked for enhanced investments in this sector. As in other Regions and States,* people in Shan ask for more information from government, whilst they bestow (also in terms of information flow) a pivotal role on the indirectly elected Ward and Village Tract Administrators (W/VTAs), whom they consider more and more as a local development change agent. To support this process and to be able honouring the expectations of W/VTAs as ?intermediary? between the people and the township administrations, some dedicated capacity development activities may be indicated, both addressing the W/VTAs as well as the township administrations."