Implications of “Democratization from Above”

Reforms that bring about greater democracy to local levels of government are commonplace throughout the developing world. Yet, the puzzle of why and when these reforms come about has not been adequately addressed by the existing literature. In particular, while we have gained an increased understanding of the factors contributing to democratization at the national level, much of the variation in the degree to which local democratic institutions are established and encouraged cannot be understood in light of these national-level changes. Moreover, while the existing literature has significantly increased our understanding of the causes of fiscal and administrative decentralization, it has left open several unanswered questions about the causes of local democratization as distinct from these other forms of decentralization. The central purpose of this book has been to address these gaps to contribute to a better understanding of why and when democracy at the local level is established and consolidated. While conventional wisdom would dictate that local democratization is implemented with the motive of increasing the autonomy of local actors, this book has developed and tested the argument that, in much of the developing world, local democratization is often implemented as a strategy for monitoring and disciplining local intermediaries who play an important role in targeting patronage and mobilizing support on behalf of elites at higher levels of government. Since political parties could in principle provide government elites with an alternative channel for disciplining intermediaries without implementing local democratization, the research thus highlights the importance of party organizational characteristics in shaping incentives of government elites to implement local democratization. Thus, the argument implies that government elites have a greater incentive to implement local democratization when they lack access to an effective party organization or when they face competition for control over their party's key organizational networks. The book has relied on a range of evidence at multiple levels of analysis and from multiple contexts to show support for these and other implications of the argument. The argument and findings of the book have several broader implications. First, they suggest the insight that local democratization is often used as a means of gaining control over local actors when alternative channels of gaining this control are not viable or politically attractive. The book has primarily focused on political party organizational networks as one possible channel.

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