Over the last two decades development policy has touted civic participation as a magic bullet for solving problems at the local level—from improving livelihoods, to selecting beneficiaries for public programs, providing housing after earthquakes and floods, or improving village infrastructure....

The streets of Kibera, one of the largets slums in Africa, are narrowly winding pathways strewn with garbage, divided down the middle by streams of sewage and waste that make walking treacherous.

In theory, the informational advantage of decentralizing the eligibility criteria for a federal antipoverty program could come at a large cost to the program's performance in reaching the poor nationally. Whether this happens in practice depends on the size of the local-income effect on the...

This paper assesses the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper of Vietnam, known as the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS). It is an action program to achieve economic growth and poverty reduction objectives. This paper reviews the objectives and tasks of socio-economic...