Dissatisfied with centralized approaches to delivering local public services, a large number of countries are decentralizing responsibility for these services to lower-level, locally elected governments. The results have been mixed. This chapter provides a framework for evaluating the benefits...

Dissatisfied with centralized approaches to delivering local public services, a large number of countries are decentralizing responsibility for these services to lower-level, locally elected governments. The results have been mixed. The paper provides a framework for evaluating the benefits and...

A recent trend in decentralization in several large and diverse countries is the creation of local jurisdictions below the regional level - municipalities, towns, and villages - whose spending is almost exclusively financed by grants from both regional and national governments. This paper argues...