The last decade or so has been a rather tame time for analyses of democratic decentralization. Many new case studies have appeared, some of which – not least those that have focused on Africa – have been quite important, and some comparisons across continents have been valuable. But few major contributions to our understanding have emerged.

This book changes that. It is crucially important in several ways. It uses new methods to extract insights from a rich database – so that it offers us sophistication and rigour. It is a study of democratic decentralization, ‘warts and all’ – addressing key issues like corruption with admirable objectivity, and analysing things as they are and not as we might wish them to be. It does not seek to ‘sell’ or to condemn decentralization – it embraces ambiguity. It reminds us that local democracy is not a tidy process, so that we are bound to encounter great complexity. The highly credible, realistic analysis which emerges poses a formidable challenge to the pessimism in much of the literature about the impact of democratic decentralization on poverty.

That pessimism is mainly rooted in studies from Africa which stress the problem of ‘elite capture’ – whereby prosperous groups seize control of elected local councils and prevent resources from reaching poor people. One counterargument, which has by no means prevailed against the pessimists, emphasizes on an overlooked set of gains that poor people make when they engage with elected local councils. By participating, they enhance their ‘political capacity’ – i.e., their political awareness, their confidence as political actors, their political skills and their political connections to allies. Their capacity tends to increase even when they experience disappointment. Those who make this case argue that a severe shortage of political capacity is an important dimension of their ‘poverty’, alongside a severe shortage of incomes and assets.

Some of the findings in this new book resonate powerfully with that counterargument. The authors do not focus explicitly on political capacity, but they provide telling evidence of its constructive potential.

They demonstrate that despite complications and disappointments, participation – engagement with local democratic processes – can help poor people access resources and welfare programmes, reduce the probability of being vulnerable and improve the quality of local governance.