Government elites across the developing world have differed considerably in the degree to which they have fostered or undermined local democracy. In several situations, these elites have taken significant steps to establish and empower well-functioning democratic institutions at the local level even in the absence of pressures from below. In other situations, they have failed to create such institutions – or even undermined such institutions that already exist – even when it is clear that such institutions would be appealing to the general public. While the previous chapters have shown the usefulness of the book's argument in explaining the variations in the implementation of local democratization in the Indian context both at the national and the state levels, this chapter shows how the book's argument can make sense of some of these puzzles of local democratization outside the Indian context.

In particular, this chapter uses case illustrations as well as quantitative evidence from across the developing world to show support for the hypotheses that, all else equal, government elites have a greater incentive to implement local democratization when: (1) they face greater competition for control over their party organizational networks and (2) their parties have less access to effective organizational networks. Condition (1) is important in shaping the incentives of government elites to implement local democratization since it makes it less attractive for government elites to rely on existing party organizational networks to monitor and discipline local intermediaries. Condition (2) is important since it shapes the capacity of government elites to use the existing party organizational network as a means to monitor and discipline local intermediaries. In both these situations, I argue, local democratization offers an alternative channel through which government elites can monitor and discipline local intermediaries who can then be co-opted through governmental patronage.

I show support for condition (1) using illustrative cases of key instances of local democratization reform in Venezuela and Indonesia as well as a statistical analysis. While the information in the cases is not comprehensive enough to allow for detailed process tracing, the cases offer useful illustrations of how the book's argument could be relevant in explaining instances of local democratization outside the Indian context. The test of the argument is conducted using a statistical analysis based on a cross-national dataset of local democratization reforms for all countries with a population over 10 million across the developing world.