A Report aimed at fostering sustainable economic, social and environmental development across the Commonwealth, featuring perspectives from some of the world's leading commentators.

Sierra Leone is widely cited as a positive example of the contribution that decentralisation can play in post-conflict reconstruction. This article critically examines this viewpoint from a political economy perspective as applied to an understanding of donor-driven institutional reform as well as the nature of hybridity and its impact on the sustainability of decentralisation processes. It examines the devolution of functions, finance, political and administrative powers, as well as its impact on three aspects of human development – primary health, basic education and rural water supply. The article concludes that external pressure can indeed ‘lock-in’ reforms but that a more nuanced, iterative and locally contextualised approach based on sound political economy analysis is needed in order to foster and sustain reform gains.

The Imperative of Good Local Governance is a true state-of-the-art volume in the field of local governance, decentralization and local democracy summarizing a substantial part of the insights from original research in the last 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 it brings together authoritative contributions from authors that to a large extent have been defining the field for the last decade or more. From a theoretical perspective it is adjoining top–down and bottom–up rationalities, which is further illuminated through a wide variety of key case studies. The case studies are selected for their relevance for 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.