Decentralisation and the Local State Political Economy of Local Government in Bangladesh

Decentralisation and the Local State is the first book of its kind in Bangladesh that deals the issue from rigorous theoretical perspectives and real practical experiences. The first three chapters provide detail theoretical mapping on decentralisation and local government in relation to the different theoretical dimensions of state, class, capital, crisis from Marxist and non-Marxist discourses. In Bangladesh the theoretical discourse of ‘local state’ is introduced for the first time through the study in the form of this book. This is a single book which enmeshed many individual disciplines such as Political Science, Development Economics, Political History, Political Sociology, Urban sociology, Development Anthropology and Public Administration together towards providing the study of local politics, local state and central-local relations a new direction with a new focus on political economy. The study begins with very broad global canvas but ends with very specific focus on Bangladesh with a detail political history of its local governance. The Theories of decentralisation have been examined from three other rhetorical lenses i.e. democracy, development and the politics too. Readers may get amazed to find many pertinent comparative analyses at different points with India, Nepal, Sri Lanka to Europe especially the UK as well as different African and Latin American countries regarding various developments of decentralization and local government.