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Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee (eds).
MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2006, 373pp.
During the past quarter century decentralization of government has been underway in all parts of the world. Renewed interest in decentralization in developing and transition countries was brought about mainly by the spread of market and democratic principles. However, most of the vast literature on decentralization has remained based on the rationale for decentralization in developed countries: inter-regional competition can increase the efficiency of service delivery when production factors are able to move freely. This volume breaks with this tradition in a number of important ways. It recognises that factors are largely not mobile and that locally there are serious weaknesses of administrative capacity and political accountability.
A broader conceptual framework for successful decentralization is needed under these circumstances. To strengthen local governance one must go beyond economic cost-benefit analysis to consider politics, emerging civil society, and the private sector. This broader view of governance provides an important step in tracing the linkages between transferring authority within the government to the sharing of power among key governance institutions. After presenting a conceptual framework for evaluating the diverse decentralization experiences, Bardhan and...