This is a rich collection of case studies and will be valuable to anyone seeking a wide range of examples of local governance and decentralisation in developing countries. It covers Indonesia, India (Kerala and Karnataka), Sri Lanka, Uganda, South Africa and Ghana. With the exception of Sri Lanka, all the countries have two chapters devoted to them by different authors, thus providing a broader perspective on both the context of decentralisation and research findings.

We review recent evidence regarding decentralization and state strength and argue that decentralization can deepen democracy without compromising state strength if adequately designed. We examine how decentralization affects five key aspects of state strength: 1) Authority over territory and people, 2) Conflict prevention, 3) Policy autonomy and the ability to uphold the law, 4) Responsive, accountable service provision, and 5) Social learning. We provide specific reform paths that should lead to strengthening in each. Decentralizing below the level of social cleavages should drain secessionist pressure by peeling away moderate citizens from radical leaders. The regional specificity of elite interests is key. If regional elites have more to lose than gain from national schism, they will not invest in politicians and conflicts that promote secession. Strong accountability mechanisms and national safeguards of minority rights can align local leaders’ incentives with citizens’, so promoting power-sharing and discouraging local capture or oppression. “Fragmentation of authority” is a mistaken inference; what decentralization really does is transform politics from top-down to bottom-up, embracing many localities and their concerns. The state moves from a simpler, brittler command structure to one based on overlapping authority and complex complementarity, where government is more robust to failure in any of its parts. Well-designed reform, focusing on services with low economies of scale, with devolved taxation and bail-outs prohibited, should increase public accountability. Lastly, we advance a novel way that decentralization can strengthen democracy: by allowing citizens to become political actors in their own right, the small scale of local politics should promote social learning-by-doing, so strengthening political legitimacy, state-building, and ‘democratic suppleness’ from the grassroots upwards.

This resource guide provides practical guidance for designing, implementing and evaluating decentralisation reforms and local government practices to ensure they are as effective as possible. It also synthesises and presents current debates on the impact of decentralisation and local government on poverty reduction, service delivery and conflict as well as providing links to cutting-edge research and recent case studies.

This article examines the relationship between chiefdom authority and decentralization in post-war Sierra Leone. The chieftaincy has been in crisis for some time and is widely thought to be responsible for contributing to rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) recruitment. However, chiefs remain an important influence in Sierra Leone, and there is little demand for an end to the chieftaincy system. Rather than an abolition of chieftaincy, governance at local level requires constructive relationships between chiefdoms and local governments and not simply a reshuffling of agrarian class relationships or old ways of doing politics. This in turn requires a reform of the chieftaincy system and the resolution of local political tensions arising from decentralization.