Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries

Over the past three decades the developing world has seen increasing devolution of
political and economic power to local governments. Decentralization is considered an important
element of participatory democracy and, along with privatization and deregulation, represents a
substantial reduction in the authority of national governments over economic policy. The
contributors to Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries examine this
institutional transformation from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, offering detailed
case studies of decentralization in eight countries: Bolivia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia,
Pakistan, South Africa, and Uganda.Some of these countries witnessed an unprecedented "big bang"
shift toward comprehensive political and economic decentralization: Bolivia in 1995 and Indonesia
after the fall of Suharto in 1998. Brazil and India decentralized in an uneven and more gradual
manner. In some other countries (such as Pakistan) devolution represented an instrument for
consolidation of power of a nondemocratic national government. In China local governments were
granted much economic but little political power. South Africa made the transition from the
undemocratic decentralization of apartheid to decentralization under a democratic constitution. The
studies provide a comparative perspective on the political and economic context within which
decentralization took place, and how this shaped its design and possible impact.Contributors:Omar
Azfar, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Pranab Bardhan, Shubham Chaudhuri, Ali Cheema, Jean-Paul Faguet, Bert
Hofman, Kai Kaiser, Philip E. Keefer, Asim Ijaz Khwaja, Justin Yifu Lin, Mingxing Liu, Jeffrey
Livingston, Patrick Meagher, Dilip Mookherjee, Ambar Narayan, Adnan Qadir, Ran Tao, Tara Vishwanath,
Martin Wittenberg