Recently, scholars have made significant strides in unraveling the many puzzles of decentralization. Chief among these puzzles is the decision by national politicians to endorse policies that are tantamount to the surrender of authority. Since the national policymakers who stand to lose power to subnational actors control the very decision to decentralize, how can the adoption of decentralizing policies in so many different countries be explained? Two particularly robust and influential theories have been developed to explain decentralizing patterns in Latin America, the region that has generated some of the most dramatic episodes in the broader, worldwide trend of decentralization. Research conducted by Eliza Willis, Christopher Garman, and Stephan Haggard suggests that it is necessary to look inside political parties for clues as to why national policymakers endorse decentralizing policies.1 According to Willis, Garman, and Haggard, when political parties are organized so that subnational officials within them control the careers of national legislators, these legislators may support at the behest of their subnational patrons. For legislators in such parties, support for decentralizing legislation is not painless; after all, reduces the salience of the national decision-making arenas where all legislators operate. The need to please important subnational patrons, however, trumps these concerns. Where legislators are more responsive to national party leaders, they are less likely to support decentralization; subnational officials in these parties may well prefer but simply do not enjoy the leverage required for its passage. This theoretical framework enables Willis, Garman, and Haggard to explain variation in the decentralizing experiences of five key countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. Political parties are also central to the explanation of articulated by Kathleen O'Neill.2 According to O'Neill, decentralization represents a desirable strategy for parties with long time horizons, whose support at subnational levels appears more secure than their prospects in national elections.3 In other words, when national parties believe that subnational offices will be important to them in the future, they seek to make these offices more attractive and powerful by devolving powers from the national level. An important intertemporal trade-off characterizes the decision to decentralize, according to which governing parties at the nation-