Grindle Going Local

Decentralization, Democratization, and the Promise of Good Governance
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3035-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

Many developing countries have a history of highly centralized governments. Since the late 1980s, a large number of these governments have introduced decentralization to increase democracy and improve services, especially in small communities far from capital cities. In Going Local, an unprecedented study of the effects of decentralization on thirty Mexican municipalities, Merilee Grindle describes how local governments respond when they are assigned new responsibilities and resources under decentralization policies. She explains why decentralization leads to better local governments in some cases--and why it fails to in others.

Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, Grindle examines data based on a random sample of Mexican municipalities--and ventures into town halls to follow public officials as they seek to manage a variety of tasks amid conflicting pressures and new expectations. Decentralization, she discovers, is a double-edged sword. While it allows public leaders to make significant reforms quickly, institutional weaknesses undermine the durability of change, and legacies of the past continue to affect how public problems are addressed. Citizens participate, but they are more successful at extracting resources from government than in holding local officials and agencies accountable for their actions. The benefits of decentralization regularly predicted by economists, political scientists, and management specialists are not inevitable, she argues. Rather, they are strongly influenced by the quality of local leadership and politics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Grindle, Merilee S.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Kommunal-, Regional-, und Landespolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations ix

List of Tables xi

Acronyms xiii

Acknowledgments xv

CHAPTER ONE: Going Local: Governance on the Line 1

CHAPTER TWO: Decentralizing Mexico: A Cautious Journey 25

CHAPTER THREE: Competitive Elections and Good Governance 63

CHAPTER FOUR: At Work in Town Hall: Leadership and Performance 85

CHAPTER FIVE: Modernizing Town Hall 106

CHAPTER SIX: Civil Society: Extracting Benefits and Demanding Accountability 124

CHAPTER SEVEN: What's New? Patterns of Municipal Innovation 145

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Promise of Good Governance 164

Notes 187

Bibliography 205

Index 217

Über Autor(innen)

Merilee S. Grindle is Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development at the Kennedy School of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. She is the author, most recently, of Despite the Odds: The Contentious Politics of Education Reform (Princeton).