Decentralization in Africa contains a remarkable collection of 12 chapters, 10 of which present national co-authored case studies of Sub-Saharan African countries that follow a first impressive and comprehensive chapter on the theoretical, conceptual and analytical issues of decentralisation. The analysed countries are presented in alphabetical order in the chapters: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. The conclusive chapter presents African decentralisation in comparative perspective.

In Chapter 1, the book opens with an interesting and very informative contribution by one of the editors, developing the concepts that guide the analysis in the subsequent chapters. It focuses on four issues: authority, autonomy, accountability and capacity, which are used as valuable analytical tools in understanding the complexity of each country's moves towards decentralisation. But in the author's view, ‘decentralisation’ is too vague a term to measure the intended beneficial outcomes in terms of local responsiveness, improved service delivery, effective accountability and the local contribution to economic stability and development. Decentralisation must be defined in three forms: deconcentration, delegation and devolution. Combining these four key dimensions with the three forms of decentralisation results in an implicit analytical matrix pertinent for comprehensive comparison of the decentralisation roadmap in the selected countries. In addition, these four dimensions are not only properly defined and specified conceptually, but should also be inversely described in their probable consequences if decentralisation goes ‘without’ one or more of them. The challenge and difficulties of studying the 10 countries in this framework are evident particularly because the outcomes are deeply influenced by the social and historical circumstances of each country, and because the trade-offs between these four dimensions of governance vary from one place to the other. So the additional objective given to the chapters is to understand why specific country choices were made.

The analytical framework also requires to touch on the political economy of decentralisation, defined in the following items: (i) the control over resources such as appointments, personnel, substantive areas of responsibilities, the budget; (ii) the funding of sub-national governance (SNG) and the mix between own resources and transfers; (iii) the human resource management at the sub-national level, in terms of capacity building, working and contractual conditions; and (iv) the number of government layers, the size and number of SNG units.

The 10 case studies all present the same analytical structure, which makes the book very informative in the way the relative position of two or several countries can be directly compared. All are co-authored by scholars native and resident of the studied country, a fact that is not very common and is remarkable from the double internal-external perspective. The chapters also all include a short history of the decentralisation origins and moves in the relevant country and a detailed analysis, always well informed, of the four key dimensions: authority, autonomy, accountability and capacity. Interestingly some chapters reduce one or the other dimension to narrower specific considerations: for example ‘fiscal’ autonomy, viewed from the point of view of taxation, or accountability interpreted in ‘participative democracy’. Yet no one chapter treats in depth the political economy of decentralisation: the assignment of functions and financial powers between government layers, transfers and equalisation, budgeting – all at the core of the political economy preoccupation – are merely described or summarily analysed (for example, only three chapters contain tables giving decentralised public finance information). In a large majority of chapters this theme is addressed from the political point of view, looking at the political incentives and processes with which governments give away or retain powers and resources.

In conclusion, this volume provides an excellent insight to the state of art in decentralisation in the selected sub-Saharan countries for scholars in socio-economic and political sciences. The introduction organises the conceptual framework and analytical sequence in a very informative and pertinent manner which can be used for other country case studies (not only in Africa) and will certainly remain useful in analysing the dynamics of decentralisation in the selected countries. The conclusion also summarises the main results in comparative tables which pinpoint the main issues and failures: useful for drawing tomorrow's road map in the process of learning from each other. In sum, a must on the bookshelves of any researcher with an interest in decentralisation – in Africa and outside – from the point of view both of the analytical method it proposes and its transposition in real world analysis.