Decentralization Democratic Governance And Civil Society In Comparative Perspective

This volume studies the relation of decentralization to democratization at both intermediate and local levels and analyzes how decentralization is transforming the relationship between the state and civil society.

Successful reforms need coherent approaches in which a range of stakeholders are willing to share responsibilities and resources in order to achieve the ultimate outcome of poverty reduction in developing countries. This book provides a framework to access intended outcomes generated by decentralization measures implemented in Asian and African countries. It is based on comparative analyses of different experiences of decentralization measures in six developing countries.

This book examines the renewed interest and commitment that countries across the world have shown in recent decades towards adopting models of decentralising, or "downsizing" the state, and moving towards more participatory models of government. It examines systems of decentralised development such as self-managing co-operatives from a global and comparative perspective with a focus on developing countries. Drawing on examples from Kerala and a few other states in India, as well as Cuba, Bangladesh and South Africa among other countries, the book offers critical perspectives on the positive impacts of these experiments and the promises these offer for the future. It discusses the challenges of implementing these models, how well these work in coordination with the civil society and the state, issues of transparency and democratic oversight as well as corruption and capture of power due to entrenched structures of inequality. The volume analyses welfare and development models and self-management interventionsin countering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also looks at the meritsand demerits of decentralisation in countering the global socioeconomic and environmental crisis and the rise of authoritarian populism in many countries. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of development studies, political science, business, community development, social justice as well as of co-operative management programmes. It will also appeal to students of political economy as well as development professionals, think tanks and policymakers.

The trend toward greater decentralization of governance activities, now accepted as commonplace in the West, has become a worldwide movement. This international development—largely a product of globalization and democratization—is clearly one of the key factors reshaping economic, political, and social conditions throughout the world. Rather than the top-down, centralized decisionmaking that characterized communist economies and Third World dictatorships in the twentieth century, today's world demands flexibility, adaptability, and the autonomy to bring those qualities to bear. In this thought-provoking book, the first in a new series on Innovations in Governance, experts in government and public management trace the evolution and performance of decentralization concepts, from the transfer of authority within government to the sharing of power, authority, and responsibilities among broader governance institutions. This movement is not limited to national government—it also affects subnational governments, NGOs, private corporations, and even civil associations. The contributors assess the emerging concepts of decentralization (e.g., devolution, empowerment, capacity building, and democratic governance). They detail the factors driving the movement, including political changes such as the fall of the Iron Curtain and the ascendance of democracy; economic factors such as globalization and outsourcing; and technological advances (e.g. increased information technology and electronic commerce). Their analysis covers many different contexts and regions. For example, William Ascher of Claremont McKenna College chronicles how decentralization concepts are playing out in natural resources policy, while Kadmeil Wekwete (United Nations) outlines the specific challenges to decentralizing governance in sub-Saharan Africa. In each case, contributors explore the objectives of a decentralizing strategy as well as the benefits and difficulties that will likely result.

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

Successful reforms need coherent approaches in which a range of stakeholders are willing to share responsibilities and resources in order to achieve the ultimate outcome of poverty reduction in developing countries. This book provides a framework to access intended outcomes generated by decentralization measures implemented in Asian and African countries. It is based on comparative analyses of different experiences of decentralization measures in six developing countries.

The last decades of the 20th century saw a new interest and commitment in democracies across the world in "downsizing" the state. Two decades into the 21st century, the results seem to be mixed, with some "success stories" as well as some not so successful experiments. This book examines experiments in decentralized development and related topics as cooperativism and self-management from a global and comparative perspective with a view to arriving at some general conclusions about the viability and promise offered by these.Drawing on examples from across the world, the book offers various critical perspectives on the extent to which the experiments in decentralization and participatory democracy may have had some positive impact in counteracting these tendencies and the promises these offer for the future. Some of the related sub-themes discussed include the relation between state and sub-state institutions, and the degree to which these work in coordination and in synergy with civil society, the role of the legal and regulatory framework provided by the state to ensure constitutional morality and the rule of law, democratic oversight and transparency, and facing the challenge posed by entrenched structures of inequality that lead to "elite capture" of power, clientelism and corruption. At this critical historical juncture as the world is facing a convergence of several crises that threaten our future: a socioeconomic crisis wrought by the devastating impact of the neoliberal global economy, an environmental crisis spawned by a global system that pursues unlimited extraction and consumption of natural resources, and a crisis of liberal democracy with the rise of ethnic nationalism and authoritarian populism led by autocratic strongmen in many countries--all of these exasperated by the Covid 19 pandemic - this volume has a special relevance.The book will be of interest to students and researchers of international development, political science, business, community development, social justice as well as of cooperative management programs. It will also appeal to students of international development and international political economy as well as development professionals, think tanks and policy makers.

This is a true state-of-the-art volume in the fields of local governance, decentralization, and local democracy. It summarizes many of the insights emerging from original research of the past decade. It is also a future-looking volume with explicit policy relevance, paving the way for innovative thinking, and acting, on the next phase of development in the field. In a unique way this book brings together authoritative contributions from authors who to a large extent have been defining the field for the last decade or more. It looks at how good governance is created from top-down and bottom-up perspectives, illustrated through a wide variety of case studies. The case studies were selected for their relevance to the theoretical perspectives offered, as well as for their paradigmatic power in the current global evolution of decentralized policies and politics. The volume concludes that overall, local development and local politics will not go away--it has a huge potential--but also that the field is full of unfulfilled promises, some of which could be remedied through the perspectives revealed in this volume.