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Regional Variations in Local Governance Louis A. Picard Jerry Silverman Elinor Ostrom Draft Final Report September 7, 2006 Prepared by PADCO 1025 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW Suite 170 Washington, DC 20007-5204 Phone: 202.337.2326 Fax: 202.944.2351 Email: padco@  Abstract The original Scope of Work, “Regional Variations in Local Governance Traditions,” was expanded to look at aspects of public choice in regional contexts. This paper opens a discussion about the effect of regional differences on decentralization and local governance from the perspective of public choice theory and parallel governance. Public choice theory posits that social and political universals override culture in determining the success of decentralized democratic governance. Parallel governance explains that communities, often culturally-defined, which do not receive the public goods they seek from formal government, turn to parallel governance structures. Following an introductory overview, Section One presents key insights derived from public choice theory and notions of parallel governance, focusing on the universality of conflicts about the specification, allocation, operations, and use of public goods and services and the need to resolve those conflicts within any sustainable societies. Section Two presents regional variations in local governance traditions and decentralization structures and practices within and between the four main regions of the world (as classified by USAID). Various reasons for those variations are identified: (i) external influences (colonial experience/historic imperialism, and the effect of contemporary foreign assistance); (ii) internal influences (notably political culture and values); and (iii) the organization and behavior of parallel governance systems.?The paper concludes with a summary of initial findings and ideas for future work.  Introduction This paper addresses regional variations in local governance. In