IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ays/ispwps/paper0829.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decentralization in Bangladesh: Change Has Been Elusive

Author

Listed:
  • William F. Fox

    (The University of Tennessee)

  • Balakrishna Menon

    (The World Bank)

Abstract

In spite of their long history and constitutional status, local governments in Bangladesh have a poor record of being an efficient, accountable and responsive provider of public services at local level. Over the decades, the local government system in Bangladesh has been “more an area of policy experimentation than one of stable institutional development” (Rahman and Islam 2002: 154). Decentralization reforms are debated every few years under governments of all hues, various committees are launched, recommendations are made, and even piecemeal actions are taken. Yet, to date, an accountable and capable local state that upholds public interests at the local level remains elusive to Bangladesh. This paper analyses the factors encumbering the development of such a local state. It draws both political economy narrative and fiscal data to identify the challenges.

Suggested Citation

  • William F. Fox & Balakrishna Menon, 2008. "Decentralization in Bangladesh: Change Has Been Elusive," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0829, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper0829
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://icepp.gsu.edu/files/2015/03/ispwp0829.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roy Bahl & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2013. "Sequencing Fiscal Decentralization," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(2), pages 641-687, November.
    2. North,Douglass C. & Wallis,John Joseph & Weingast,Barry R., 2013. "Violence and Social Orders," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107646995, Enero.
    3. Ehtisham Ahmad & Bob Searle, 2006. "On the Implementation of Transfers to Subnational Governments," Chapters, in: Ehtisham Ahmad & Giorgio Brosio (ed.), Handbook of Fiscal Federalism, chapter 15, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Bird, Richard M. & Smart, Michael, 2002. "Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers: International Lessons for Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 899-912, June.
    5. Ehtisham Ahmad & Maria Albino-War & Raju Singh, 2006. "Subnational Public Financial Management: Institutions and Macroeconomic Considerations," Chapters, in: Ehtisham Ahmad & Giorgio Brosio (ed.), Handbook of Fiscal Federalism, chapter 16, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. United Cities and Local Governments, 2011. "Local Government Finance," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14696, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Cristian Sepulveda, 2020. "A Theoretical Rationale for the Fiscal-Gap Model of Equalization Transfers," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 76(1), pages 1-28.
    2. M Devendra Babu, 2009. "Fiscal Empowerment of Panchayats in India: Real or Rhetoric?," Working Papers 229, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    3. Mr. Ehtisham Ahmad & Ms. Mercedes Garcia-Escribano, 2006. "Fiscal Decentralization and Public Subnational Financial Management in Peru," IMF Working Papers 2006/120, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Paul Smoke, 2014. "Why theory and practice are different: The gap between principles and reality in subnational revenue systems," Chapters, in: Richard M. Bird & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), Taxation and Development: The Weakest Link?, chapter 9, pages 287-325, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Andersson, Krister P. & Smith, Steven M. & Alston, Lee J. & Duchelle, Amy E. & Mwangi, Esther & Larson, Anne M. & de Sassi, Claudio & Sills, Erin O. & Sunderlin, William D. & Wong, Grace Y., 2018. "Wealth and the distribution of benefits from tropical forests: Implications for REDD+," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 510-522.
    6. Indra de Soysa & Synøve Almås, 2019. "Does Ethnolinguistic Diversity Preclude Good Governance? A Comparative Study with Alternative Data, 1990‐2015," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(4), pages 604-636, November.
    7. Shiran Victoria Shen, 2021. "Integrating Political Science into Climate Modeling: An Example of Internalizing the Costs of Climate-Induced Violence in the Optimal Management of the Climate," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-24, September.
    8. Marianna Belloc & Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati, 2016. "Earthquakes, Religion, and Transition to Self-Government in ItalianCities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1875-1926.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2013. "Ekonomia kontra polityka: niebezpieczne rady w kwestiach polityki ekonomicznej," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 11-12, pages 113-136.
    10. Eric Hilt, 2014. "History of American Corporate Governance: Law, Institutions, and Politics," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 1-21, December.
    11. Uribe-Castro, Mateo, 2019. "Expropriation of church wealth and political conflict in 19th century Colombia," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 1-1.
    12. Bramoullé, Yann & Goyal, Sanjeev, 2016. "Favoritism," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 16-27.
    13. Busby, Joshua & Smith, Todd G. & Krishnan, Nisha & Wight, Charles & Vallejo-Gutierrez, Santiago, 2018. "In harm's way: Climate security vulnerability in Asia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 88-118.
    14. Pamfili Antipa & Vincent Bignon, 2018. "Whither Economic History? Between Narratives and Quantification," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(3), pages 17-36.
    15. World Bank, 2015. "Republic of Yemen," World Bank Publications - Reports 23660, The World Bank Group.
    16. Johnson, Noel D. & Koyama, Mark, 2017. "Jewish communities and city growth in preindustrial Europe," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 339-354.
    17. Andrianova, Svetlana & Demetriades, Panicos & Xu, Chenggang, 2011. "Political Economy Origins of Financial Markets in Europe and Asia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 686-699, May.
    18. Richard Langlois, 2013. "The Institutional Revolution: A review essay," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 26(4), pages 383-395, December.
    19. Wegner, Gerhard, 2013. "Capitalist transformation without political participation: German capitalism in the first half of the 19th century," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 13/14, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..
    20. Nan Zhang & Melissa M. Lee, 2020. "Literacy and State–Society Interactions in Nineteenth‐Century France," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 1001-1016, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper0829. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paul Benson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ispgsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.