Decentralisation and corruption: a review of the literature

This literature review provides a quantitative and qualitative assessment of existing, mostly published academic work on decentralisation and related problems of corruption. It covers mainly research within social anthropology, economics, law, and political science. The study finds that despite decentralisation's prominent place in recent development debate, fairly little empirical research has been done on its relation to corruption problems. The study identifies some areas in most need further research with an emphasis on questions relevant for development policy.