Decentralised Provision of Public Services in Developing Countries: A Review of Theoretical Discourses and Empirical Evidence

This article discusses the problems and prospects of provision of public services under decentralisation of the government. Traditionally, the provision of public services falls under the purview of a centralised planning process. But the system’s failure to adjust public services to heterogeneous local needs results in inadequate provisioning and improper maintenance of these services. Of late, decentralisation has been hailed as an alternative to take care of the service delivery problems. One of the major promises of decentralisation is that it brings popular participation and accountability to local governance, and therefore, makes local government more responsive to citizens’ desires and more effective in delivering services. The causal chain of decentralisation leading to greater citizen participation and voice and the resultant increase in accountability has been questioned both on theoretical and empirical grounds. A review of available empirical evidence also suggests that the success of decentra...