Contents: General introduction, Mwangi S. Kimenyi and Patrick Meagher; Decentralization, governance and public services: the impact of institutional arrangements, Omar Azfar, Satu Kahkonen, Anthony Lanyi, Patrick Meagher and Diana Rutherford; Institutional design and the governance challenges of plural societies, Patrick Meagher; Ethnicity, institutions, and governance in Africa, Mwangi S. Kimenyi and John Mukum Mbaku; Failure by design? fiscal decentralization in West Africa, Georges Korsun and Patrick Meagher; Political disciplines on local government: evidence from the Philippines, Omar Azfar, Tugrul Gurgur and Patrick Meagher; Roads to somewhere: localizing governance of rural infrastructure programs in Nepal, Patrick Meagher with Betty Wilkinson and Kumar Upadhyaya; Decentralization in Russia: impact on quality of governance, Leonid I. Polishchuk; Index.