decentralization has been a big challenge in most developing countries. This study aims to address the question "does decentralization … improve service delivery levels at the local level, as promised?" This study reviews work on decentralization and service …

governance and service delivery. This has been largely in the context of decentralization reforms in which central governments …

decentralization, based on relationships of accountability between different actors in the delivery chain. Moving from a model of … central provision to that of decentralization to local governments introduces a new relationship of accountability …. Only by examining how these relationships change can we understand why decentralization can, and sometimes cannot, lead to …