In Decentralised Governance, Jean-Paul Faguet and Sarmistha Pal brings together a broad selection of studies examining decentralisation and its impacts in developing states around the world. While offering valuable insights and practical resources for scholars, the collection could have benefitted from a unifying theory that transcended country boundaries, according to Kyle Scott.

Decentralised Governance: Crafting Effective Democracies Around the World. Jean-Paul Faguet and Sarmistha Pal (eds). LSE Press. 2023. 

The idea of decentralisation can be traced back at least to Johannes Althusius’ Politica, published in 1603, which gained in prominence during the 1960s with new editions and translations of the work. Althusius was writing against the loss of autonomy of local governing units through the rise of the centralised nation state. After World War II, the trend to centralise authority, and strengthen international governing authorities, led scholars in the 1960s to take up the charge against centralisation and argue for more local autonomy through decentralised governing systems, namely, through a federal structure where there is shared authority between local governing units and a central governing body. Belgium, Nigeria, Canada, the United States, and India are examples of countries with federal systems. There is an ongoing debate around the advantages and disadvantages of decentralised governing systems, into which enters Decentralised Governance: Crafting Effective Democracies Around the World (2023), edited by Jean-Paul Faguet and Sarmistha Pal. 

The methodological and regional pluralism of the chapters in this volume is a refreshing addition to the literature. 

Decentralised Governance is a collection of essays from a diverse range of scholars studying decentralisation in both democratic and autocratic regimes. The countries studied include, among others, Bangladesh, China, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, and Pakistan. After the first chapter, the remaining ten chapters are divided into three parts: Taking Stock of Six Decades of Decentralisation, Politics, and Mechanism Design. The chapters do not fit neatly under any one heading, but the division is helpful for the reader trying to tie together loose ends. 

The methodological and regional pluralism of the chapters in this volume is a refreshing addition to the literature. This broad range of policy focus, methodologies, and country focus makes it challenging to discern the state of the debate over decentralisation. This reviewer was left to conclude that institutional structure does not matter as much as a particular country’s mix of history, social norms, and electoral factors in determining the administration of public policy. This may have been the intention of the volume, but if it was, the point was never made explicit. A look at four chapters demonstrates this point. 

When the central government is entrenched and unaccountable to the populace, as in the case of Pakistan in 1958-69, 1977-88, and 1999-2008, elite capture and corruption at the central level is a greater threat than local mismanagement.

Chapters three, five, eight, and nine take up the public policy and administrative challenges decentralisation faces. Dilip Mookherjee, in chapter three, draws on the work of other studies to argue for the recentralisation of programmes in which autonomy of the local governing units is restricted in favour of oversight and enforcement from a central governing unit. The recommendations from the chapter include the utilisation of data and geotargeting to identify where resources are needed and to monitor the effectiveness of programmes. The chapter does not directly address competing claims, nor does the author address the normative challenge a technocratic government poses to citizen involvement in the governing process where the will of the people can be subjugated to computer models. There is also an assumption by the author that those in the central government are more trustworthy and competent, as Mookherjee does not introduce checks against the central government, which is what federalism, in part, is designed to do. 

The evidence introduced by Adeel Malik, Rinchan Mirza, and Jean-Philippe Platteau in chapter five can be read as a direct refutation of recentralisation in certain conditions. When the central government is entrenched and unaccountable to the populace, as in the case of Pakistan in 1958-69, 1977-88, and 1999-2008, elite capture and corruption at the central level is a greater threat than local mismanagement. In such a situation the central government can capture local governments to perpetuate a political agenda rather than address the needs of local populations. This situation allows for clientelism, elite capture, and corruption at the central level. 

Chapter five demonstrates why decentralisation should be pursued in certain contexts. Chapter eight, written by Michael Mbate, then makes an insightful and compelling case that electoral incentives at the subnational level can dictate national policies in Kenya. Mbate demonstrates that when the electoral incentives dictate, there can be collusion between the national and local levels, as well as among members of the national parliament, that influences local accountability outcomes. This is a case in which there is no clear answer on whether policy administration should occur locally or through a central body. 

The challenge for the reader is that each of the chapters utilises a different methodology, addresses different policy issues, and focuses on a different country. 

Farzana Afridi, Amrita Dhillon, Arka Roy Chaudhuri, and Dashleen Kaur take up the same question in chapter nine. Like Mookherjee in chapter three, they examine the question through a survey of the existing literature. Unlike Mookherjee, Afridi, et al. make the case that there is no clear answer as there are trade-offs within both decentralised and centralised systems. The chapter provides a convincing argument that social norms, historical, socioeconomic, and geographical contexts, and electoral incentives are all mitigating factors in whether centralisation or decentralisation will be most effective. But the chapter does not specify which mix of factors would yield the best results under a centralised or decentralised regime. 

The challenge for the reader is that each of the chapters utilises a different methodology, addresses different policy issues, and focuses on a different country. Without a clear paradigm or theory, the reader has no basis by which to weigh competing claims. In most edited volumes there is an opening chapter where the editors contextualise the chapters to provide readers with a way of understanding how the chapters work together within the existing literature, what questions they answer, how they answer them, why those questions are important, and how the volume moves the discipline forward. The editors’ chapter in this volume does not provide such a service. Instead, the opening chapter provides a loose summary of each chapter, outlines the structure of the book, and offers a superficial appraisal of the past fifty years of research in the subdiscipline. 

Individually, the chapters are interesting and provide relevant insights into how decentralisation functions within specific contexts. Taken as a volume, it is somewhat disjointed. With such a diverse set of studies, a reader would hope to come away with a key insight that transcends country boundaries that would contribute to theoretical or paradigmatic development. Such a volume would be valuable to political scientists, economists, historians, and policymakers. But instead, this volume chose a narrower focus to explain centralisation, decentralisation, or recentralisation within country-specific contexts. 

Even with these limitations, the book is a good resource. Each chapter is carefully researched, compelling, and clearly written. The beginning of each chapter provides an informative summary of its focus as well as a suggested citation. These are helpful features, particularly for the student new to decentralisation. The volume provides good insight into the academic debates within the field, and the reference lists for each chapter can be combined to provide a nearly comprehensive list of the most important studies on decentralisation in developing countries. This would help students and early career researchers to ground themselves in the scholarship and develop a research focus. For instructors of comparative politics, political economy, and economic development, this is a useful reference text from which to pull examples that can be used in lectures. For regional or country scholars, and for policymakers within these countries, working in these policy areas, this book is a valuable resource. 

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: dubes sonego on Shutterstock.

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