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The multifaceted nature of decentralization, democracy, and development renders relationships among them ambivalent and conditional. It is certainly possible to decentralize in ways that foster local democracy and improvements in socioeconomic well-being. The empirical record, however, is mixed, and not only because the phenomena of interest have multiple dimensions and are open to interpretation. Whatever its form, decentralization is inherently political. In the African context, the extent and form of decentralization has been influenced by international support, the challenges of extending state authority in relatively young multi-ethnic states, and, increasingly, electoral considerations. By the 1980s, the broad consensus in the constructive developmental role of a strong central state that had characterized the immediate postwar period gave way to a growing perception of statist approaches as impeding democracy and, especially, development. For some, decentralization implied an expansion of popular participation that promised greater sensitivity to local knowledge and more responsiveness to local concerns. Others saw decentralization as part of a broader agenda of scaling back the central state, reducing its role, its size, and its costs. Yet others saw decentralization as part of a strategy of achieving sustainable natural resource management or political stability in post-conflict societies. By the early 1990s, a wide variety of international organizations were promoting decentralization and providing both financial and technical support for decentralization reforms. In the African context, political decisions about whether and how to decentralize reflect the continued salience of ethno-regional identities and non-state authorities, especially traditional or customary leaders. Incumbents may decentralize because they hope to consolidate their political position by crowding out or co-opting rivals, depoliticizing conflicts, or deflecting blame to subnational actors. Indeed, reforms made in the name of decentralization often strengthen the political center, at least over the short to medium term. Whether it attempts to co-opt or sideline them, decentralization interacts with and may reinforce the salience of ethno-regional identities and traditional authorities. To the extent that democracy presumes the equality of all citizens, regardless of ascribed status or identity, the reinforcement of ethno-regional identities and unelected authorities threatens democracy. The international spread of decentralization reforms coincided with the increasing prevalence of multiparty elections. In countries that hold elections, electoral considerations inevitably influence political interests in decentralization. Central government incumbents may view decentralization as a way to keep voters happy by improving access to and the quality of public services, as a form of political insurance, or as strengthening rivals. Whether incumbents and challengers view decentralization as a threat or an opportunity depends on not only the form of decentralization under consideration, but also their estimations of their competitiveness in elections at various levels (national, regional, local) and the interaction between the spatial distribution of electoral support and the electoral system. Electoral dynamics and considerations also influence the implementation and consequences of decentralization, perhaps especially when political rivals control different levels of government. Whether decentralization promotes democracy and development hinges on not only the form of decentralization, but also how broader political dynamics condition decentralization in practice.

On a continent where the majority of people are poor, do political parties represent class cleavages? Do parties have strong linkages to ordinary voters? Do economic policies address their needs? In the initial years following democratic transitions across the African continent in the 1990s, the answers to such questions were negative. Clientelism and patronage were the principal means by which parties interacted with their constituencies; elites and elite interests determined the objectives of political parties; voters in many African countries shifted parties frequently; and neoliberal economic policies largely reflected the preferences of foreign donors and international financial institutions. As parties and voters have adjusted to the institutional arrangements and political demands associated with democracy, a more heterogeneous political landscape has materialized since 2010. Party systems demonstrate distinct patterns of variation, from the more stable, institutionalized systems in Ghana and Botswana to fluid, inchoate configurations in Benin and Malawi. These variations in the degree to which party systems have institutionalized affect economic policy choices by parties and those who benefit from them. Furthermore, democratic politics has intensified pressures on ruling parties to provide goods such as electricity and education. Here too, patterns of goods provision show substantial variation over time and across countries, calling attention to the differences in the incentives and capacities of parties to respond to distributive demands by the electorate. To explore the political and economic heterogeneity of contemporary Africa, scholars have combined well-established qualitative and comparative approaches with new analytical tools. The use of cross-national public opinion surveys, field and survey experiments, satellite imagery, and geo-coded data have enabled more systematic, fine-grained study of the economic determinants of party system competition, economic voting, the distribution of goods, and the management of private sector development by ruling parties in recent years. These empirical approaches enrich understanding of the relationship between parties and political economy in Africa and facilitate more fruitful comparisons with other regions of the world.

Subnational governments are increasingly involved in foreign policy and foreign relations in activities usually labeled as paradiplomacy or constituent diplomacy. This phenomenon is due to the rising capacity of substate territories to act in world politics and has been aided by advances in transportation and telecommunications. National governments’ control of foreign policy has been permeated in many ways, particularly with globalization and “glocalization.” Since 1945, subnational governments such as Australian states, Canadian provinces, and U.S. states have sought to influence foreign policy and foreign relations. Subnational leaders began traveling outside their national borders to recruit foreign investment and promote trade, even opening offices to represent their interests around the world. Subnational governments in Belgium, Germany, and Spain were active in world politics by the 1980s, and these activities expanded in Latin America in the 1990s. Today, there are new levels of activity within federal systems such as India and Nigeria. Subnational leaders now receive ambassadors and heads of government and can be treated like heads of state when they travel abroad to promote their interests. Not only has paradiplomacy spread to subnational governments across the world, but the breath of issues addressed by legislatures and leaders is far beyond economic policy, connecting to intermestic issues such as border security, energy, environmental protection, human rights, and immigration. Shared national borders led to transborder associations being formed decades ago, and these have increased in number and specialization. New levels of awareness of global interdependencies means that subnational leaders today are likely to see both the opportunities and threats from globalization and then seek to represent their citizens’ interests. Foreign policy in the 21st century is not only affected by transnational actors outside of government, such as multinational corporations and environmental groups, but also governmental actors from the local level to the national level. The extent to which subnational governments participate in foreign policy depends on variables related to autonomy and opportunity. Autonomy variables include constitutional framework, division of power, and rules as determined by legislative action or court decisions. Opportunity variables include geography, economic interdependence, kinship (ethnic and religious ties), as well as partisanship and the political ambitions of subnational leaders. Political culture is a variable that can affect autonomy and opportunity. Paradiplomacy has influenced the expectations and roles of subnational leaders and has created varying degrees of institutionalization. Degrees of autonomy allowed for Flanders are not available for U.S. states. Whereas most subnational governments do not have formal roles in international organizations or a ministry devoted to international relations, this does occur in Quebec. Thus, federalism dynamics and intergovernmental relations are evolving and remain important to study. In future research, scholars should more fully examine how subnational leaders’ roles evolve and the political impacts of paradiplomacy; the effects of democratization and how paradiplomacy is diffused; how national and subnational identity shapes paradiplomacy, and the effects paradiplomacy has on domestic and international law as well as political economy. The autonomy and power of subnational governments should be better conceptualized, particularly because less deference is given to national-level policy makers in foreign policy.

The role of the state in economic development is broad, old, and metamorphic. Drawing on historical political economy and a critical reading of new institutional scholarship, our understanding of the developmental state is contextual and complex. Successful developmental state formation is the result of stable political-economic environments, cultural legacies of earlier state-making functioning as mental maps for new statecraft, coherent institutional and policy entrepreneurship, and sustained growth that gives positive feedback in state-making. Latin American state developmentalism has always been diverse, before and after the debt crisis. In the era of state-led industrialization, the Latin American developmental state “failed” because, with domestic and regional markets small and dependence on foreign markets and financial capital high, macroeconomic policymaking did not learn to deal with crises and cyclical external conditions. Developmental state success in the 21st century depends on undertaking less volatile political-economic pathways to facilitate organizational learning by doing. In exclusionary Latin America more than in other corners of the world, developmental state success also means reconciling economic and social goals.

Since independence, African states have been striving for economic development, but relatively few countries have achieved their goal. Between 1970 and 2016, real GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa grew by an annual average of just 0.48%. However, there was a wide range of economic performance across different countries, as well as clear variation in growth rates over time. Countries such as the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Madagascar had, on average, a negative growth rate in terms of real GDP per capita. Meanwhile, countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Swaziland had positive average annual growth rates of at least 3%. The differences in economic growth rates reflect the diversity of economic structures, governance, and political stability across African states. Although deeper economic integration among African countries may work to reduce the large disparities in economic development, any projections must nonetheless recognize that countries will differ in their economic trajectories. Variation over time is also important. The dominant patterns of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s on the one hand, and the 1970s and past the 1990s on the other, were quite different, reflecting a long business cycle. If we look solely at economic growth statistics, the 1980s and 1990s can be described as lost decades. On average, real GDP per capita on the continent declined annually by 1.54% and 0.62% in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. By contrast, between 2000 and 2016, real GDP per capita increased by an annual average of 2.13%. One important debate has focused on whether these shifts are primarily the result of domestic or international factors. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have been blamed for the decline in the economic fortunes of African countries in the 1980s. At the same time, they are praised for pulling many countries out of unsustainable macroeconomic policies. Moreover, a balanced overview of Africa’s development trajectory must conclude that even without major policy shifts such as those brought forth by the SAPs, many countries would still have remained highly dependent on one or just a few commodities, and would therefore have continued to experience wild swings in their business cycles in the absence of international intervention. The lack of economic diversification of many economies on the continent means that the future is hard to predict. However, the prerequisites for a prosperous Africa are not a mystery—they include good governance, economic diversity, and genuine economic integration.

Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, yet neither its road to membership nor its time in the Union have been easy. In the 1990s and 2000s, the accession process provided an impetus for political and economic reforms, but the EU’s famed transformative power worked unevenly. Bulgaria started its journey later than other countries in post-communist Europe, and had to deal with worse domestic and external political and economic impediments, and thus failed to close the gap with the wave of nations entering the EU in 2004. The sense of unfinished business paved the way to a post-accession conditionality regime, subjecting Bulgaria and Romania to special monitoring and regimenting them into a special category apart from other members. Despite efforts by successive governments in Sofia, the country has not made it into either the Schengen area or the eurozone’s antechamber, the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM-2). The limited progress in reforming the judiciary and combatting high-level corruption and organized crime has prevented Bulgaria from continuing its journey to the core of Europe, unlike some of the 2004 entrants from Central and Eastern Europe. Being part of the Union has not made a profound difference when it comes to deep ingrained ills such as state capture, and the lack of accountability and transparency in policymaking. Some critical areas have witnessed serious backsliding—notably the national media, where the EU has few formal competences or levers of influence. Yet, Bulgaria’s EU membership should not be written off as a failure. On the contrary, it has delivered enormous economic benefits: increased growth, expanded safety nets in times of recession (especially after 2008), improved economic competitiveness, new opportunities for entrepreneurship, cross-border labor and educational mobility, and transfer of knowledge and skills. As a result, EU membership continues to enjoy high levels of public support, irrespective of the multiple crises it has gone through during the 2010s. Political parties by and large back integration, though soft Euroscepticism has made inroads into society and politics. While the EU has had, caveats aside, a significant domestic impact, Bulgaria’s imprint on common institutions and policies is limited. It lacks the resources and political clout to advance its interests in Brussels. That generates risk in light of the growing divide between a closely integrated core and a loose periphery, likely to expand in the wake of Brexit. Bulgaria is affected by decisions in the eurozone but has little say over them. The absence of leverage is particularly striking in external affairs. Despite its geographic location, next to the Western Balkans and Turkey and in proximity to Russia and Ukraine, Bulgaria has rarely, if ever, been on the forefront of major decisions or policies to do with the EU’s turbulent neighborhood. At the same time, Bulgaria has been exposed to a series of crises affecting the Union, notably the antagonistic turn in relations with Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East.

The resource curse hypothesis suggests that countries that are rich in natural resources are more likely to experience poor economic growth and other developmental problems. Latin American countries show a mixed picture, confirming the idea that the resource curse is not a deterministic phenomenon and that dependence on, rather than abundance of, natural resources is associated with developmental failures. When looking beyond the nation state, local communities may benefit from royalties accruing to regional governments, often, though, at the expense of other socioeconomic liabilities (as in the case of negative environmental externalities). The case of Ecuador is in many ways exemplary of the resource curse in Latin America and the failure of policies to overcome the curse. While the country was always a commodity exporter, the intensification of extractive activities and the expansion of the extractive frontier (over the last five decades) intensified the severity of boom-and-bust cycles and compromised socio-environmental values in the vicinity of extractive activity.

The successful negotiation of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaty inaugurated a new historical era in the Republic of Panama. Politically, the implementation of the Treaty from 1979 to 1999 transformed what, since 1903, had been a protectorate of the United States into a fully sovereign republic. Economically, the integration of the canal into Panama’s internal economy, and that of the country in the global market, created new opportunities for the development of the country. The treaty also put an end to the dispute between Panama and the United States over the control of the rent and revenues produced by the canal, transferring it to the government of the Republic of Panama, and so creating an unprecedented source of resources for investment. More than forty years on, however, Panama faced a combination of sustained (but uncertain) economic growth, persistent social inequity, constant environmental degradation, obsolescence of its institutional system, and increasing internal political tensions, all expressions of the contradiction between the natural organization of the territory of Panama, and the spatial organization of its economy, society and government imposed and maintained since the European conquest of the 16th century. This contradiction is also aggravated by the dispute over control of the canal rent between different sectors of Panamanian society. In short, the country is in a transition stage in its development, which may lead it to overcome the contradiction in developing into a prosperous and equitable republic, or into increasing conflicts that may worsen the contradictions inherent to a centralist and authoritarian tradition of governance.