Over the last two decades, there has been a worldwide trend towards decentralization of power and resources to lower tiers of governments especially in developing countries. Even though the motives for doing so are diverse, mostly it is considered as a political reaction to the failure of traditional top-down anti- poverty efforts. However, academic literature reveals that evidences regarding to whether this decentralization policy is working for the poor are not conclusive. This book, therefore, approaching decentralization as multidimensional process, presents an in-depth analysis of its...