Drawing on field-based data and experiences from the practice of democratic decentralization and local governance over the last three decades in Ghana, this book examines whether and how democratic decentralization and local governance reforms in developing countries have produced the anticipated development outcomes. In seventeen related contributions, the authors present four relevant focal themes, including conceptual and historical trajectories of decentralization and local governance; institutional choice, democratic representation, and poverty reduction; local governance, resource capacity, and service delivery; and non-state actors, local governance and sustainable development. The book blends perspectives of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to provide a holistic analysis of linkages between decentralization, local governance, and sustainable development efforts, presenting a novel and useful guide for science, policy,and practice of bottom-up governance and development. It provides relevant lessons and experiences for scholars, policy-makers, and development practitioners in Africa in particular and developing countries in general.

Autorentext

Prince Osei-Wusu Adjei is a development geographer with expertise in decentralisation and local governance, poverty and livelihood studies and gender equality dynamics in Africa. He holds a PhD in Geography and Rural Development. He is currently an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Geography and Rural Development of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana, and formerly a Senior Fellow of the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), University of Ghana. He was the 2018 African Scholar to the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, as Senior Researcher. He serves as the coordinator for the sustainable transformation of rural Africa Programme (STRAP-Research and Policy Initiative) under the Centre for Interdisciplinary Development Research in Africa, Ghana, and associate editor of the Journal of Science and Technology (JUST).

Samuel Adu-Gyamfi is an expert in historical and political studies. He holds a PhD in History and is currently an Associate Professor and former Head of Department of History and Political Studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. Samuel Adu-Gyamfi is the Senior Editor for Cogent Arts and Humanities Journal with over fifty publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is also a fellow of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Development Research in Africa and a member of Historical Society of Ghana. His research interests and expertise include history of health policies, decentralisation, local governance and history of Ghana.