"Understanding Decentralization in Political and Institutional Context: Motives, Opportunities and Constraints "

Client
The World Bank
Faculty
Paul Smoke and Nora Libertun De Duren
Team
"Priya Aggarwal, Martha Bowen, Samantha Brooks, Carolyn Githinji, Leila Jerusalem, Malini Krishna"

"The World Bank Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PRMPS) group has done considerable work on public sec­tor decentralization and has recently become interested in exploring the historical, political, and institutional context in which decentralization unfolds. In order to formulate more strategic and pragmatic decentralization support activities and to conduct more robust comparative work, the Bank is developing a diagnostic to help analysts understand these contextual dynamics. The Capstone team performed an extensive literature review and developed and refined a framework to analyze six case countries: Bosnia, China, Kenya, Nicaragua, Uganda, and Vietnam. In addition, the team conducted a workshop to present and receive feedback on their findings, as well as to provide a forum for dialogue among decentralization experts on how to broaden and improve the analysis of decentralization as an approach to poverty reduction, service delivery, and increased democracy in the developing world. "