气候变化领域集成服务门户

Decentralization initiatives have been launched in the majority of developing countries, but these rarely lay the foundations necessary to reach decentralization's purported efficiency and equity benefits. This paper uses a comparative empirical approach to show how central governments in six countries-Senegal, Uganda, Nepal, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Nicaragua-use a variety of strategies to obstruct the democratic decentralization of resource management and, hence, retain central control. Effective decentralization requires the construction of accountable institutions at all levels of government and a secure domain of autonomous decision making at the local level. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.