Devolution and Deconcentration in Action

There are claims that the impacts of decentralisation reforms in many countries in Africa are mixed partly due to the ambiguous and contradictory nature of parallel operation of devolution and deconcentration policies. There is, however, evidence to suggest that these mixed systems of devolution and deconcentration, which are very common with decentralisation reforms in Africa, might work under certain conditions yet the literature does not tell us enough about this. So what are the processes through which such mixed systems work? Based on a comparative study of five municipal health directorates in Ghana, this book argues that informal relations, which are claimed by the literature on neo-patrimonialism to be detrimental to state performance in Africa, matter for mixed systems to work and that informal ties might not always undermine the performance of the local state. Public officers, donor agencies, researchers, and students will find this book useful as reference material.