Canada, Russia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Macedonia, Switzerland, South Africa, China, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Spain, Uganda, the Philippines, Tanzania, India, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, Turkey, Serbia, Algeria, Sudan, Moldova, Morocco, Cameroon, even France…What can such...

Peru represents a laboratory for examining the different approaches to the centralized or decentralized delivery of public services over the past quarter of a century. There is a renewed and increasing interest in decentralization in Peru as a mechanism to generate more involved decision making...

This paper focuses on the evolving pattern of fiscal decentralization and its impact on the growth of per capita GDP of the districts in Nepal. The dependent variable is the growth of the per capita district agricultural GDP, which is, used as a proxy for the annual growth of per capita district...

In spite of their long history and constitutional status, local governments in Bangladesh have a poor record of being an efficient, accountable and responsive provider of public services at local level. Over the decades, the local government system in Bangladesh has been “more an area of...

Recent socio-spatial studies point out a number of ongoing trends in the “scale division of labor of the state,” including among others, “destatization,” "denationalization, and “internationalization.” We draw on the literature in public economics to review several approaches to...

Rule #1 Fiscal decentralization should be viewed as a comprehensive system.Rule #2 Finance follows function.Rule #3There must be a strong central ability to monitor and evaluate decentralization.Rule #4 One intergovernmental system does not fit the urban and the rural sector. Rule #5 Fiscal...

Rule #1 Fiscal decentralization should be viewed as a comprehensive system.Rule #2 Finance follows function.Rule #3There must be a strong central ability to monitor and evaluate decentralization.Rule #4 One intergovernmental system does not fit the urban and the rural sector. Rule #5 Fiscal...

The People’s Democratic Republic of Lao (Lao PDR), landlocked between Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, China, and Viet Nam in the core of Southeast Asia, accounts for a population of some 5.8 million over a total surface of 236,800 square kilometers. Latest estimates would place poverty rates at...

Although there are obvious differences in the political systems of China and India, there are surprising similarities in their respective approaches to decentralization. Both countries face similar design issues with their intergovernmental systems, such as the lack of clear expenditure...

Vietnam is a poor country with large and increasing needs in infrastructure, education, health, and other areas of the public sector. The current policy of the Government of Vietnam (GOV) is not to increase tax effort, but actually to reduce it. Recently, the GOV has cut the rates of several...