"Why are some communities able to come together to improve their collective lot while others are not? This book advances a novel answer to this question by looking at variation in local government performance in decentralized West Africa: communities are better able to coordinate around basic...

There is considerable regional variation in incomes and poverty in the Czech Republic and gaps have grown over time. With the highest number of municipalities per head in the OECD, subnational government is very fragmented and the resulting lack of capacity at the local level reduces the quality...