Book Review: Decentralization and Popular Democracy: Governance From Below in Bolivia

• Author: Alexander Ruiz-Euler
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414013486439
• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Date: 01 August 2013
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

998 Comparative Political Studies 46(8)

Faguet, J.-P. (2012). Decentralization and Popular Democracy: Governance

From Below in Bolivia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Reviewed by: Alexander Ruiz-Euler, University of California San Diego,

San Diego, CA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0010414013486439

A recurrent debate in political science and development economics is how to

incorporate citizens into the political process, whether this has any beneficial

effects on the policy-making process, and, ultimately, how it affects the qual-

ity of people’s lives. Particular emphasis is made on the inclusion of histori-

cally excluded sectors such as women or indigenous peoples in the definition,

design, oversight, and execution of their budget. From micro-project devel-

opment experiments in areas ravaged by civil war or invasion to national and

regional development policies, the dominant narrative is to promote citizen

involvement in the definition of the policy choices that affect their lives.

Political localism is seen as a reliable mechanism to bring the government

closer to “the people”, devolving to local governments power wielded by

central governments in order to increase democratic responsiveness.

These ubiquitous claims are, however, empirical questions that have proven

difficult to test. Widespread decentralization during the last three decades has

been accompanied by empirical work that is as extensive as inconclusive.

Fundamental questions about the effects of decentralization on core aspects of

governance remain open-ended. What happens when power is devolved to

citizens? Is decentralization “good” or “bad” in a specific policy domain?

How does it shift government responsiveness, if at all? Does budget follow

citizen needs more closely once local governments are in charge of its alloca-

tion? Indeed, there is a fundamental discrepancy between the enthusiasm of

policy makers and the contradictory scholarly findings on the subject.

Decentralization and Popular Democracy: Governance From Below in

Bolivia addresses this discrepancy upfront with theoretical and methodologi-

cal clarifications on the nature of decentralization. The core argument of the

book is that scholars and policy makers have been posing questions in a way

that perhaps necessarily leads to the current conundrum. The dominant

approach to evaluate a devolution of power to citizens asks whether the

effects have been positive or negative in a given policy domain: Has decen-

tralization helped the quality of policy over education, health, development,

taxes, and so on? This approach attempts to find a general answer of the type,

“Decentralization is better/worse for a given policy domain.” The lack of

consistent empirical conclusions contrasts sharply to the amount of resources