The Democratic Decentralization Programming Handbook conceptualizes decentralization as a reform that advances the exercise of political freedom and individual economic choice in a context of stability and the rule of law. Decentralization invests new actors with public responsibilities. The newly involved actors that decentralization empowers (or "should" empower) include appointed officials in subnational administrations, elected officials in subnational governments, and increasingly engaged citizens themselves. For the purposes of this Handbook, decentralization is defined as the transfer of power and resources from national governments to subnational governments or to the subnational administrative units of national governments. This definition is useful because it allows unbiased discussion and comparison of two of decentralization's common forms: deconcentration and devolution. Decentralization's promise is often accompanied by shortcomings, perils, and unforeseen consequences. In many cases, decentralization has so far failed to fix the problems it was adopted to resolve. This handbook thus takes pains to illustrate the empirical limitations of decentralization's promise.