Topic Guide on Decentralisation and Local Government - 2011

This topic 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 cuttingedge research and recent case studies.

The guide includes summaries of key texts. Each short summary links to an extended summary which can be found in the alphabetised appendix.

This guide was written in September 2009 by Zoë Scott (Research Fellow in DFID’s Governance and Social Development Resource Centre) with assistance from Nick Devas (Senior Lecturer, International Development Department, University of Birmingham, UK) and Dr Munawwar Alam (Governance and Institutional Development Division, Commonwealth Secretariat). It was updated in March 2011 by Sumedh Rao (ResearchFellow in the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre).