In recent years, as the control and capacity of many centralized and formerly centralized states have withered, those small units of government have emerged as the experimental site for both grassroots democracy and local self-governance (Wei 2000). In other more decentralized countries, municipalities have become even more important than they were several decades prior. Fiscal stress at the higher levels of government resulted in an increase in the number of service responsibilities delegated to the local entities. Mouritzen and Svara (2002, 6) assert that municipal governments everywhere have become increasingly responsible for a vast array of public services: “some of these are developed locally and others are formed and funded at higher levels of government but delivered locally.” Compounding the challenge brought about by the magnitude of service responsibilities, the diversity of municipal residents and complexity of socio-economic and political problems make running a municipality a daunting public administrative task (Mouritzen and Svara 2002).