The hypothesis that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on public goods provision is widely accepted. Notably, most work on this issue fails to distinguish adequately between national versus subnational governance. We find that subnational empirical evidence in particular is inconclusive, and...

There has long been an emphasis on the importance of decentralization in providing better quality public services in the developing world. In order to assess the effectiveness of decentralization I examine here the case study of Uganda, which has seen major decentralization of power over the...

Although formal education is often considered an indicator of political leaders' quality, the evidence on the effectiveness of educated leaders is mixed. Besides, minimum education qualifications are increasingly being used as requirements for contesting elections, making it critical to...

Tanzania has been a relative success story in Africa in terms of political reform. While foreign aid has helped strengthen institutions that advance accountability, it simultaneously supports a status quo that undermines accountability and democratization. This study first explores the ways in...

It is widely believed that clientelism-the giving of material goods in return for electoral support-is associated with poorer development outcomes. However, systematic cross-country evidence on the deleterious effects of clientelism on development outcomes is lacking. In this paper we examine...

In this study an attempt has been made to assess the potential of land as a municipal financing tool in four Indian cities, to enable better public service delivery and attainment of the MDGs. The institutional arrangements for land use are fragmented in India's cities between the urban...

In order to implement clean energy transition programmes, the national and sub-national governments in Nigeria will incur some cost. In the same way, failure to implement the policies will come with some costs. This paper therefore considers the fiscal policy implications of Nigerian...

In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana, and investigate the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of local public goods and services delivery by MMDAs. Using data from composite budgets of all 216 MMDAs, we...

In this paper we use the new Government Revenue Dataset to analyse fiscal decentralization. We find that developed countries are on average more decentralized than developing countries and that Asia, Europe and North America are among the most fiscally decentralized regions. In our econometric...