ABSTRACT
For a variety of reasons—historical, political and economic—the governments of developing countries in the South are generally more centralized than those of developed countries in the North. Nevertheless, as a result of a complex of factors including globalization and structural adjustment, decentralization is occurring in many countries of the South (Olowu, 2001, Helmsing, 2003a, 2003b; Olowu, 2003; Smoke, 2003). As decentralization is increasingly taking place across many low and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it is apparent that the question of sub-national planning is acquiring greater policy significance (UNCDF, 2002; Smoke, 2003). Issues of sub-national development planning encompass sets of planning initiatives which are undertaken by any tier of government other than that of central government and represent a particular sub-set of local economic development planning initiatives (Bloch, 2000).
