This paper examines broadly the intergovernmental structure in the Middle East and North Africa region, which has one of the most centralized government structures in the world. The authors address the reasons behind this centralized structure by looking first at the history behind the tax...

This paper discusses decentralization (administrative, fiscal and political) of government in public service provision. It aims to facilitate understanding among practitioners, policy makers, and scholars about what decentralization entails in practice compared to theory. A review of the...

There have been important developments in the decentralization of the government structure in Turkey since the early 1980s. This paper examines economic development and growth in Turkish provinces. Although there is a rich literature on the economic effects of government decentralization from...

Indonesia's "big bang" decentralization in 2001 shifted much of the responsibility for local economic development from central government to district and city governments, which today number more than 450. But the performance of these districts has varied widely. This paper attempts to...

The central governments of many developing countries have chosen to decentralize their anti-poverty programs, in the expectation that local agents are better informed about local needs. The paper shows that this potential advantage of decentralized eligibility criteria can come at a large cost,...

When external effects are important, markets will be inefficient, and economists have considered several broad classes of economic instruments to correct these inefficiencies. However, the standard economic analysis has tended to neglect important distinctions and interactions between the...

While there is extensive knowledge about how to design fiscal decentralization policies, considerably less is understood about how a decentralization program should be sequenced and implemented. Countries embarking on decentralization often struggle with decisions about the essential components...

Dissatisfied with centralized approaches to delivering local public services, a large number of countries are decentralizing responsibility for these services to lower-level, locally elected governments. The results have been mixed. The paper provides a framework for evaluating the benefits and...

Decentralization and increased stakeholder involvement have been major elements of water sector reform as ways to promote sustainable and integrated resource management particularly of river basins. Based on an analytical framework for relating decentralization and stakeholder involvement to...