ABSTRACT
This chapter presents important nexus among the processes of state strengthening, governmental decentralization, and democracy promotion at local levels in Sub-Saharan Africa. A recent World Bank survey recorded increased prominence for decentralization initiatives in sub-Saharan African countries. US Agency for International Development (USAID) established its policies and programs for assisting decentralization very early in the new millennium USAID 2000a, 2000b. The foregoing pattern of reductionism has marginalized civil society's importance as a venue for asserting and defending the basic rules of the political game, in terms of which government is to be held accountable to the citizenry. In short, civil society's met democratic, other-than-electoral function, derived from its pedigree in the history of political theory, has been deeply discounted by reductionist conceptions of civil society in contemporary democratization literatures. Very little attention has been devoted, particularly since 2000, to the politics of federalism, which, of course, underlie and may overshadow whatever decentralized governance may be institutionalized.
