For societies suffering an assortment of ailments—underperforming economies, undemocratic governments, physical insecurity—the prescription for change, whether homegrown or devised in a foreign capital, has in recent decades quite often included some dosage of decentralization. The reputed benefits of a robust decentralization are many: improved accountability in bringing government closer to citizenries; enhanced competition, and thus improved service provision and economic investment, between localities; creation of multiple policy laboratories; and increased autonomy for aggrieved minority groups, inter alia. In their edited volume, Making Decentralization Work, Ed Connerley, Kent Eaton, and Paul Smoke bring together seven pieces that, in varying ways, aim to take stock of whether and how the decentralization craze can live up to these promises. Gina Lambright's Decentralization in Uganda addresses many of the same themes, offering a detailed account of local variation within Uganda.

As Making Decentralization Work makes clear, “decentralization” can entail a wide range of reforms, touching in varying degrees upon political, fiscal, and/or administrative realms (Chapter 7, by Eaton and Larry Schroeder), and thus it would be foolhardy to try to render judgment on the strategy writ large. Thankfully, none of the contributors to this volume attempts such sweeping conclusions.

Despite their varying focuses, ranging from insecurity (Chapter 6, by Joseph Siegle and Patrick O'Mahony) to local-level democracy (Chapter 5, by Jesse Ribot, Ashwini Chhatre, and Tomila Lankina), the contributors converge on one point above all others: Decentralization, in whatever form, is not a panacea, and it should not be applied without careful consideration of the contextual factors of the target case and the specific goals of the reforms themselves, and due diligence to the implementation procedures (Chapter 8, by Smoke, on the latter point). When significant devolution of powers occurs in ill-suited local environments, or under politicized or poorly devised rollouts, the results can be, at best, the creation of another level of expensive and inefficient bureaucracy and, at worst, the reification of subnational authoritarian enclaves or descents into violent conflict (Chapters 5 and 6, respectively).

The myriad lessons of the contributions, which draw on case study literatures of decentralization experiences in countries as varied as India, Russia, Mexico, the United States, Indonesia, Senegal, Bolivia, Cambodia, Colombia, and many others, are best grounded in the piece by Jonathan Hiskey (Chapter 2). Hiskey argues that in order to achieve economic, political, or social development, decentralization needs to involve de facto, rather than simply de jure, empowerment of principals (i.e., citizens) vis-à-vis their new agents (i.e., local government officials). Principals need to be able to communicate their preferences, monitor agents, and sanction poor performance. As Hiskey and others, including Gary Bland (Chapter 3) and Derick Brinkerhoff and the late Omar Azfar (Chapter 4), point out, this means that decentralization will not bring about measurable progress in the absence of educated and engaged citizenries, transparent bureaucracies, clean local elections, limited meddling from central authorities and party leaders, and a robust (and democratically oriented) civil society.

Of course, the tremendous frustration here is that decentralization seems unlikely to succeed unless myriad conditions are already extant, and these conditions are quite often exactly those that are the aims of decentralization efforts in the first place. In their excellent and wide-ranging introduction, Eaton and Connerley note that decentralization is often embraced by those seeking to promote democracy, economic and social development, and public security, often simultaneously. But it seems unclear how a decentralization program can meet aims in one sphere without preexisting success in the others. The significant challenge, then, is designing a reform program that somehow breaks these vicious circles to promote meaningful development.

One country that has made significant, albeit wildly incomplete, strides in recent decades, at least as far as macroeconomic development, state capacity, and social stability are concerned, is Uganda, and it is a case that emerges often in the Connerley, Eaton, and Smoke volume. The country underwent a significant decentralization following the seizure of power by Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) in 1986. Museveni, one of the globally celebrated “new African leaders” of the 1990s, implemented a pyramidal structure that divided the country, in declining order of size, into districts, counties, subcounties, parishes, and villages. Although Museveni is better known for the provision of universal primary education, an extensive anti-HIV/AIDS campaign, and, most recently, a repressive campaign against anti-inflation protests, the decentralization program that unfolded under his watch represented a major innovation.

Of course, even in a country as geographically small as Uganda, there has been significant variation across space and time in the success of this experiment. Some local governments organized well-attended community meetings, drafted and approved budgets by established deadlines, filled key positions effectively, and generally made efficient use of development funds. Others were mired in disengaged publics, poor management, and outright misuse of scarce resources. In short, while the “resistance council” system, as it was originally called, likely contributed to the reconstruction of a state that had badly disintegrated in the wake of decades of harsh authoritarian rule and civil war, important intracountry gaps still exist, and often seem to be widening anew.

In Decentralization in Uganda, Lambright seeks to explain such variation in the performance of district governments. The author, who has written widely on political participation in Africa, draws here on a decade of closely following Ugandan national and local politics. The result is a wealth of finely detailed information about Ugandan politics and bureaucracy, much of which might only fascinate serious students of the country, but is more importantly an argument relevant to those interested in questions such as decentralization, good governance, and the relationship between formal and informal institutions in the developing world, more broadly.

Lambright finds that interdistrict variation cannot be explained by differences in local governments' administrative linkages to the center. Somewhat surprisingly, more regularized communication between district offices and Kampala ministries does not seem to be significantly related to various measures of local government performance. As she admits (p. 86), her proxy for these linkages—letters exchanged between districts and central ministries—in statistical analyses is imperfect. Further, it should be noted that her extensive coverage of the ineffective formal mechanisms for facilitating center–local ties (Chapter 5) amounts to a more general indictment of the Ugandan bureaucracy, rather than a means by which to explore variation across districts. Still, the discussion is enlightening (and disheartening), and her findings suggest that, rather than a focus on formal institutions, an emphasis on informal institutions is warranted.

In turning to the informal, Lambright's main topic of interest is patronage (Chapter 6). She argues that center-distributed patronage is associated with diminished local government performance, and her primary measure of this patronage—number of cabinet ministers from a district—is significantly and negatively correlated with assessments of local government performance by both the Ministry of Local Government (MoLG) and survey respondents. Patronage, Lambright argues, gives the center opportunities to meddle in local affairs, and it orients locals' attention away from their constituencies and toward Kampala. As chapters by Bland and Eaton and Schroeder in the edited volume conclude, this undermines the autonomy of local authorities and, in doing so, eviscerates local populations' ability to affect policy. However, Ribot, Chhatre, and Lankina in that volume point out that some degree of central control over local affairs is often desirable, in order to ensure that national priorities are maintained, established best practices are followed, and resources are used efficiently; the line between meddling and oversight is blurry and moving. In this sense, it would have been helpful if Lambright had explored more thoroughly the possibility that these strengthened “top-down linkages,” as she calls them, could in some cases result in improved local government performance.

While center-distributed patronage seems to have deleterious effects on local government performance, all governments in districts that are the beneficiaries of such largesse do not languish in inefficiency and fecklessness. Rather, Lambright argues, “bottom-up linkages”—that is, local support for the central government—are also key determinants of local government performance. She finds that Museveni's share of a district's vote is significantly and positively correlated with survey respondents' satisfaction with local government performance. Further, she argues that it is the interaction of top-down and bottom-up linkages that most determines local government performance. She draws this conclusion from intensive evaluation of three case studies: Lira, where both linkage dimensions are weak (i.e., opposition-supporting and patronage-deprived); Bushenyi, where both are strong (i.e., NRM-supporting and patronage-receiving); and Mpigi, where top-down are strong, but bottom-up relatively weak. In Lira, central officials do not have leverage to meddle in district affairs, but local officials, who are usually opposition members, successfully blame underperformance on the NRM, and the regime's perceived lack of legitimacy limits public engagement in local government (Chapter 8). In Bushenyi, strong support for the NRM gives local officials leverage that they use to protect their autonomy, and local government operates relatively effectively as a result. Finally, in Mpigi, local officials benefit from largesse but do not return the favor with above-average electoral support. This gives the center significant leverage over local officials (Chapter 7), thus harming district government performance.

Extending this logic, well-performing district governments should also be found in areas that receive relatively little patronage from the center, but whose populations demonstrate strong support for the NRM. Lambright does not seriously consider such cases; perhaps they do not exist in large numbers, at least in Uganda. However, the districts in Karamoja, in northeastern Uganda, would seem to fit into this quadrant, yet the region as a whole does not stand out as a stellar performer in MoLG assessments (p. 42).

These two new contributions share a call for attention to local contexts; no reform program will find success universally, and designs should allow for within-country flexibility. To be sure, this stress on complexity is a virtue of both works, but it also highlights enormous challenges. Readers looking for clear guidelines on how to make decentralization work, as the Connerley, Eaton, and Smoke's title promises, will likely be disappointed here. Clearly, it is time to move beyond the search for silver-bullet development solutions.