In recent years, authoritarian states in the Middle East and North Africa have faced increasing international pressure to decentralize political power. Decentralization is presented as a panacea that will foster good governance and civil society, helping citizens procure basic services and fight corruption. Two of these states, Jordan and Morocco, are monarchies with elected parliaments and recent experiences of liberalization. Morocco began devolving certain responsibilities to municipal councils decades ago, while Jordan has consistently followed a path of greater centralization. Their experiences test such assumptions about the benefits of localism. Janine A. Clark examines why Morocco decentralized while Jordan did not and evaluates the impact of their divergent paths, ultimately explaining how authoritarian regimes can use decentralization reforms to consolidate power. Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco argues that decentralization is a tactic authoritarian regimes employ based on their coalition strategies to expand their base of support and strengthen patron-client ties. Clark analyzes the opportunities that decentralization presents to local actors to pursue their interests and lays out how municipal-level figures find ways to use reforms to their advantage. In Morocco, decentralization has resulted not in greater political inclusivity or improved services, but rather in the entrenchment of pro-regime elites in power. The main Islamist political party has also taken advantage of these reforms. In Jordan, decentralization would undermine the networks that benefit elites and their supporters. Based on extensive fieldwork, Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco is an important contribution to Middle East studies and political science that challenges our understanding of authoritarian regimes’ survival strategies and resilience.

Dissatisfied with centralized approaches to delivering local public services, a large number of countries are decentralizing responsibility for these services to lower-level, locally elected governments. The results have been mixed. The paper provides a framework for evaluating the benefits and costs, in terms of service delivery, of different approaches to decentralization, based on relationships of accountability between different actors in the delivery chain. Moving from a model of central provision to that of decentralization to local governments introduces a new relationship of accountability-between national and local policymakers-while altering existing relationships, such as that between citizens and elected politicians. Only by examining how these relationships change can we understand why decentralization can, and sometimes cannot, lead to better service delivery. In particular, the various instruments of decentralization-fiscal, administrative, regulatory, market, and financial-can affect the incentives facing service providers, even though they relate only to local policymakers. Likewise, and perhaps more significantly, the incentives facing local and national politicians can have a profound effect on the provision of local services. Finally, the process of implementing decentralization can be as important as the design of the system in influencing service delivery outcomes.

This volume, the first of its kind in the English language, examines the law and politics of federalism and decentralization in the Middle East and North Africa. Comprised of eleven case studies examining the experience across the region, together with essays by leading scholars providing comparative and theoretical perspectives and a synthetic conclusion by the co-editors, the volume offers a textured portrait of the dilemmas of decentralization during a period of sweeping transition in the region. The collection addresses an important gap in the comparative decentralization literature, which has largely neglected the MENA region. Both retrospective and forward-looking in orientation, the book is a valuable resource not only for scholars of comparative politics, constitutional design, and Middle East studies, but also for policy makers evaluating the feasibility and efficacy of decentralization as a vehicle for improving governance and responding to identity conflict in any part of the world.

In conducting political science research today, one's methodology is of paramount concern. Yet, despite the obvious chasm between theory and practice that all scholars experience in the field, there are no specific guidebooks on meeting the methodological and ethical challenges that fieldwork presents. Political Science Research in the Middle East and North Africa helps fill this vacuum, focusing specifically on doing research in the one of the most important regions in contemporary world politics. Janine A. Clark and Francesco Cavatorta have gathered together a large and diverse group of researchers who study the region and focus on methodological "lessons learned" from their first hand experiences of employing a variety of research methods while conducting fieldwork. The contributors also look at the challenges of conducting field research in a variety of contexts, such as in areas of violence, and using research methods such as interviewing and ethnography. This volume will therefore be an invaluable companion book to more standard methods books and a useful tool, not just for Middle East scholars, but for all researchers conducting research in complex settings.

Faguet identifies the factors that determine the outcomes of national decentralization on the local level