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  4. New Book Explores Decentralization in the Middle East and North Africa

New Book Explores Decentralization in the Middle East and North Africa

Published

GLD is pleased to announce that its newest edited volume, Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa (University of Michigan Press, 2025), is now available!

Edited by Kristen Kao and Ellen Lust, with contributions from fourteen Middle East and North Africa specialists from around the world, the volume explores the design and implementation of decentralization and associated inequalities in participation and representation. By focusing on the MENA region, it provides a rare contribution to debates on decentralization while examining what Lina Khatib called “one of the most important and often contentious issues in the debate about governance, reform, and development in the Middle East and North Africa.”

We are grateful to the Hicham Alaoui Foundation for supporting the project and to Rose Shaber-Twedt, the University of Michigan Press, and all who contributed chapters and reviews.

The full book is available Open Access here. 

You can also find two chapters in Arabic translation under “Supplemental Materials” here.

The Project Behind the Pages

The project leading up to the edited volume aimed to enhance understanding of local governance in the MENA region, focusing on the experiences of individuals. As part of the project, scholars from Europe, the MENA region, and the US have utilized diverse methodologies to examine subnational governance. The project was funded by the Hicham Alaoui Foundation.

The project extended existing research on decentralization but also departed from the few studies of decentralization in the MENA region. Those studies typically focused on how decentralization was implemented and how it often reinforced rather than reduced authoritarianism in the region. By unpacking perspectives and governance experiences at the local-level, the project sought to reveal how decentralization policies affected citizens’ everyday lives.

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