This note discusses the interface between community-driven development (CDD) and decentralization. In particular, it focuses on the aspects of decentralization programs related to local government capacity building, where the practical application of CDD principles becomes meaningful. The note considers how the principles of CDD are being incorporated into local government capacity building pro...

Many scholars claim that public transit’s long-term ridership decline can be attributed to the decentralization of U.S. metropolitan areas and the decline of the central business district (CBD) as their primary economic engine. However, recent research has begun to challenge this view and has prompted this reexamination. Using multivariate analysis, we examine the relationship between the stren...

The death of the English National Health Service (NHS) may be slow in coming but that does not mean that it is not the Conservative-led UK government’s desired end state. The government is displaying tactical cunning in achieving its long-term purpose to remould the British state. Powell seeks greater clarity amidst the confusion but the lack of clarity is a principal weapon in the government’s...

Devolution, as other types of decentralization (e.g. deconcentration, delegation, privatization), profoundly changes governance relations in the health system. Devolution is meant to affect performance of the health system by transferring responsibilities and authority to locally elected governments. The key question of this article is: what does devolution mean for human resources for health i...

Over the past two decades many countries have undertaken to decentralize government functions and transfer authority and responsibilities from central to intermediate and local governments, and often to communities and the private sector. Decentralization is potentially important to agricultural knowledge and information systems, but decentralization is not an end in itself, and successful dece...

We argue that decentralization is particularly beneficial to firm performance in “bad times”. We present a model where bad times increase the importance of rapid action, and improve the alignment of incentives of managers within firms. We test this idea exploiting the 2008-2009 Great Recession using firm-level cross country panel data combined with our survey data on firm organization. We find ...