Boosting Competitiveness Through Decentralization

This book examines the relationship between global economic processes and decentralization. It argues that through decentralization policies, the imperatives of neoliberal rules of competitiveness have been diffused into local governments and economies, generating different local development models. Whether decentralization produces democratic opening at the local level is contingent on how the local economy is integrated into global economic processes, and which social and economic groups are empowered, and disempowered, in that transition.