USAID Democracy & Governance: Democratic Decentralization Programming Handbook

The Democratic Decentralization Programming Handbook conceptualizes decentralization as a reform that advances the exercise of political freedom and individual economic choice in a context of stability and the rule of law. Decentralization invests new actors with public responsibilities. The newly involved actors that decentralization empowers (or “should” empower) include appointed officials in subnational administrations, elected officials in subnational governments, and increasingly engaged citizens themselves.