Decentralizing Governance: Emerging Concepts and Practices, edited by G. Shabbir Cheema and Dennis A. Rondinelli.

Abstract

Dennis Rondinelli's untimely death in March of 2007 over shadows this book and may have contributed to its incompleteness. His long-term commitment to an understanding of decentralized governance is unparalleled and his contribution to the literature on decentralization and development is clear. That being said, this book may not be the best way to remember him. The goal of the editors was to bring together a number of scholars to discuss the state of the art in decentralized governance. The book is an eclectic set of papers, some functional and some country studies, that examine decentralization from e-governance to performance, and from security and fragile states to fiscal decentralization and participation. Case studies include Peru, Uganda, Rwanda, the Philippines, South Africa, Latin America, and East Asia. There are several chapters in the current book that contribute to our understanding of the process of local government. The chapter on Peru is very useful with a strong empirical base. Goren Hyden's chapter is particularly interesting as befitting his work. Paul Smoke's chapter on fiscal decentralization is important as is Rondinelli's parallel governance chapter.