Local government and rural development in Sri Lanka

The case of Sri Lanka commended itself to the purposes of the study in a variety of ways. On the one hand, the rural sector is institutionally rich both in terms of the number and the variety of local organizations. On the other hand, Sri Lanka"s performance on the development side has been mixed in character, reflecting unspectacular gains on the economic growth side, but unusual success in the pursuit of distributional equity. Most of the empirical work which has been done on the pattern of rural development in Sri Lanka has focused upon structural economic factors or on the role of economic institutions (rural credit, crop insurance schemes, etc.). Such research has gone a long way towards explaining the pattern of development outcomes, and it is not a purpose to take issue with this work, but rather to amplify one particular dimension of institutional change in Sri Lanka which has received relatively little attention.