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Zusatztext "Grindle's research has a strong practical orientation! and focuses on the nuts-and-bolts of implementing sustainable reform in industrializing countries. . . . Going Local is applied research at its best." ---Francis E. Hutchison! ASEAN Economic Bulletin Informationen zum Autor Merilee S. Grindle Klappentext Many developing countries have a history of highly centralized governments. Since the late 1980s, a large number of these governments have introduced decentralization to increase democracy and improve services, especially in small communities far from capital cities. In Going Local, an unprecedented study of the effects of decentralization on thirty Mexican municipalities, Merilee Grindle describes how local governments respond when they are assigned new responsibilities and resources under decentralization policies. She explains why decentralization leads to better local governments in some cases--and why it fails to in others. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, Grindle examines data based on a random sample of Mexican municipalities--and ventures into town halls to follow public officials as they seek to manage a variety of tasks amid conflicting pressures and new expectations. Decentralization, she discovers, is a double-edged sword. While it allows public leaders to make significant reforms quickly, institutional weaknesses undermine the durability of change, and legacies of the past continue to affect how public problems are addressed. Citizens participate, but they are more successful at extracting resources from government than in holding local officials and agencies accountable for their actions. The benefits of decentralization regularly predicted by economists, political scientists, and management specialists are not inevitable, she argues. Rather, they are strongly influenced by the quality of local leadership and politics. Zusammenfassung A study of the effects of decentralization on thirty Mexican municipalities. It describes how local governments respond when they are assigned new responsibilities and resources under decentralization policies. It explains why decentralization leads to better local governments in some cases - and why it fails to in others. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acronyms xiii Acknowledgments xv CHAPTER ONE: Going Local: Governance on the Line 1 CHAPTER TWO: Decentralizing Mexico: A Cautious Journey 25 CHAPTER THREE: Competitive Elections and Good Governance 63 CHAPTER FOUR: At Work in Town Hall: Leadership and Performance 85 CHAPTER FIVE: Modernizing Town Hall 106 CHAPTER SIX: Civil Society: Extracting Benefits and Demanding Accountability 124 CHAPTER SEVEN: What's New? Patterns of Municipal Innovation 145 CHAPTER EIGHT: The Promise of Good Governance 164 Notes 187 Bibliography 205 Index 217 ...
