The article reviews the experiences with decentralisation of one West African country, Guinea, with the intent of drawing lessons and exploring approaches to assist countries in the sub‐region in rendering decentralisation—an effective means for service delivery improvements. Section II describes the West Africa context in terms of the dynamics of deconcentration–decentralisation and lays out a conceptual framework to guide the analytical assessment of countries in the sub‐region, attempting to decentralise. This framework is used in the Guinea case, described in Section III. Section IV concludes by synthesising the profile of Guinea, and positions its dominant style in relation to the proposed ideal types of decentralisation approaches. This part of the article discusses the implications of its findings for decentralisation policy and implementation, and offers some remarks on the road ahead for decentralisation in West Africa. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This article considers the experience of Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs) (Pacifying Police Units) of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as an innovative form of policing designed to deal primarily with high crime rate in "favelas." It also attempts to ascertain the extent to which the UPPs reflect a strategy for police reform. It does so by (i) reviewing the security crisis which engendered the UPPs as well as their predecessors, describing the socio-economic hardships of the favelas, further aggravated by high crime rates; (ii) describing the institutional and political environment giving rise to the policing policy underpinning the UPPs, and (iii) by assessing this innovation against a backdrop of systemic police reform models, singling out missing elements to constitute a true police system reform. This review provides a record of police policy of successive state governments, showing that the adoption of the UPPs followed a reactive political pattern while falling short of the requirements for proactively deliberate and comprehensive reform. Contrary to most of the guiding reform principles and elements discussed, policing reform in the State of Rio de Janeiro has indeed been bound by innovative incrementalism, following a pendular pattern, with little sustainability and a record of fluctuating achievements.

SUMMARY This paper reviews and documents a unique approach to poverty reduction targeting a segment of urban poor in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: the collectors of recyclable materials discarded by urban residences and businesses, along with their refuse. The approach is unique for Brazil because it combines assorted policy objectives at different governmental levels, two socially/security valued, two environmentally valued and one economically valued. The paper specifically seeks to (a) determine the current profile of collectors, both social and economic; (b) assess the current state of play of the dwindling collectors cooperatives programme, including perceptions of its performance by different stakeholders; (c) describe the current practices and players in the collection of recyclables, with its associated implications; (d) reconstruct the role of key players with a focus on the operational policies and administration of the programme by municipal departments; (e) assess the current priority among social and environmental objectives of the waste collection programme of the municipal government; (f) draw conclusions and recommendations on policies and administration for such programmes, to improve the social outcome for the collectors while still achieving the associated environmental objectives; and (g) draw some comparisons with other Latin American countries that have engaged in similar programmes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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WHY WE LIE ABOUT AID, PABLO YANGUAS A book reviewMuch has been written about international development aid, most of it critical on the grounds of how little it has to show for its considerable funding and expectations (Easterly, Peters, Moya, Katz, De Haan, Brautigan, Collins, Stiglitz, Gulrajan, and Collier, among many others).Yanguas, yet another critic of aid breaks from the pack with an intriguing and appealing twist: focusing not on aid's outcomes but how it is conceptualized and approached by donors who-according to him-