The study of decentralization has become something of a fashion, not least because it seems to encapsulate the process of democratization in Latin America and the shift to a neoliberal policy framework, and because it has been adopted by the political Left in sharp contrast to the state-centered policies of previous decades. Decentralization has been seen as the answer to improving the quality of popular participation in Latin America, to improving the quality of public services, and to improving the efficiency in the allocation of public resources.

The book under review carefully avoids overloading the concept and adopts a predominantly political focus in its analysis of decentralization. The concentration is on process rather than outcome—and what outcomes are discussed are those at the level of intergovernmental relations, rather than the results on the ground. This approach has the virtue of concentrating the analytical focus, and the editors have done a splendid job in ensuring that the various contributors not only focus on the same issues and adopt broadly but not entirely the same approach, but even engage in a certain level of interchange—occasionally a mild disagreement—between the chapters. The book also has a strong sense of history—something often lacking among the more committed advocates of decentralization.

The editors introduce the volume in a thorough and illuminating discussion of the various approaches to the study of decentralization. One strong theme is that there is no necessary link between democracy and decentralization, and they stress that it has a long history in Latin America, but that there is no reason to think that the current reforms might not be reversible, as they have in certain cases. They ask the question under what conditions national politicians would surrender power to subnational units. Their answer revolves around the interaction between national and local elites, and is placed in specific institutional and electoral settings. They are not very impressed by the arguments of economic efficiency used to justify decentralization, and are skeptical about the argument that the process owes its origins to prompting by agencies such as the World Bank. They are concerned, above all, with the incentives that face politicians at all levels, the linkages between the levels, and the career paths of politicians—what the editors call the institutional and electoral approaches.

The remaining chapters adopt or modify these main arguments, and there are case studies of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, and Mexico; Argentina is discussed at length in some of the general chapters. The three general chapters look at the links between political and fiscal decentralization, decentralization and market reform, and intergovernmental fiscal relations. The result is a particularly well-focused volume of essays.

Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America leans heavily toward the study of federal systems and includes only two countries with a unitary state (though Venezuela is an odd and unstable hybrid). The choice of Chile is in some ways a little odd as the process there is very tentative at the political level (less so at the level of the delivery of social services). Colombia, which saw a dramatic process of decentralization after the Constitution of 1991 might have made a better choice. The book might have more sharply contrasted decentralization in federal states with unitary ones.

Politicians have incentives to behave in certain ways, but although the authors also consider demographical factors in explaining the trend toward decentralization, there is little stress on the ideological attractiveness of the process at present. Politicians also have ideas, even ideologies, and to explain, for example, why the Workers Party has become not just the main advocate of decentralization but of a certain kind of radical and participatory style of decentralization is a topic worth considering. Indeed, the dominant ideological belief in decentralization shared by International Financial Institutions, local technocrats, the political Left, indigenous groups, church-based groups, and so on does represent a significant shift in political thinking.

But these are mild criticisms set against the undoubted virtues of a book that is a model of how to present a rigorous argument and then to sustain it in the comparative analysis of specific experiences.