The Role and Impact of Culture in Decentralized Governance

Upon the request of the United Nations Development Program, the Capstone team was asked to analyze how cultural influences enhance or inhibit the processes of democratic decentralization in developing countries. Prior to the work of this Capstone team, virtually no research had been conducted that attempted to either empirically or theoretically evaluate the role of culture in decentralization efforts. Therefore, the intent of the Capstone team was to specify recommendations for approaching such analysis for future in-depth research. To this end, the Capstone team developed a framework that simplified both the broad notion of culture and the processes of decentralization into sets of specified cultural dimensions and system requirements. The Capstone team then applied this framework to comprehensive case studies on the nations of Cambodia and Uganda.