This is a study of whether setting up democratic local councils in four developing countries (Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Bangladesh and India) actually makes any difference to the popularity, responsiveness and effectiveness of local government and administration. The authors make an important contribution to current debates about "good governance" and whether decentralization can provide better services for the mass of the population--the poor and the disadvantaged in rural areas. The book is comparative, and based on detailed local fieldwork and popular surveys.

Advocates of pluralist, competitive politics have regarded decentralization as a device for deepening democracy or for prying closed systems open and to give interest groups space in which to organize, compete and otherwise assert themselves. Some politicians in central governments see it as a means of delegating expensive tasks to others lower down. From a political economy perspective, this study examines the origins of the current wave of decentralizations in less-developed countries and its implications, especially its promise and limitations for rural development. It is based mainly on...

Research in recent years on aid effectiveness shows that significant obstacles in fragile states--insecurity, poor governance and weak implementation capacity--usually prevent aid from achieving the desired results in these environments. This study investigates the attributes and effectiveness of donor-supported programmes and projects that worked well under difficult conditions in fragile states. Presented in this study are nine development initiatives in six less developed countries--Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste and Uganda. The cases show that development...

This is a study of whether setting up democratic local councils in four developing countries (Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Bangladesh and India) actually makes any difference to the popularity, responsiveness and effectiveness of local government and administration. The authors make an important contribution to current debates about "good governance" and whether decentralization can provide better services for the mass of the population--the poor and the disadvantaged in rural areas. The book is comparative, and based on detailed local fieldwork and popular surveys.

Bandaranaike's story illuminates the development of democratic politics in Sri Lanka.

Against the Odds is a Machiavellian study of the machinations of three senior politicians in quite different developing countries who adroitly played the tough political game in ways that reduced poverty.
The three--former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh--had scarcely heard of one another, and never communicated. And yet they used a broadly similar repertoire of political devices - persuasion, distractions, bargaining, stealth and pressure - to pursue broadly similar...

Providing a thorough reassessment of our understanding of politics in Third World societies, this book contains some of the liveliest and most original analyses to have been published in recent years. The severity of the political and economic crisis throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1980s has highlighted the inadequacy of existing political science theories and the urgent need to provide new paradigms for the 1990s.

Providing an overview of Third World politics, this book examines political institutions and state-society relations in such countries as Kenya, India, Chile, Ghana and Ethiopia.

India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), passed in 2005, has been among the developing world's most ambitious anti-poverty initiatives. By 'guaranteeing' 100 days of work annually to every rural household, NREGA has sought to advance the Indian constitution's commitment to securing citizens' 'right to work'. This book is not a technical evaluation of programme performance. It offers instead a detailed analysis of the politics surrounding NREGA: the model of political action that motivated its architects, the public advocacy and parliamentary maneuvering involved in its...

James Manor is acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on Indian politics, especially how it is affected by caste, political economy -- particularly poverty and its alleviation -- regionalism and modes of political leadership.

This book distills his six decades of research, scholarship and writing on these topics, presenting the reader with a definitive collection of chapters covering the full spectrum of Manor's expertise.

The first section is a commentary on the emergence of a consolidated democracy in India, and discusses political awakening and political decay, which,...