Globalization, the information revolution, and regional and ethnic conflicts have made it imperative for a large and growing number of countries around the globe to reexamine the roles of various orders of government to secure peace, order, and good government and to reposition their roles in improving social and economic outcomes and retaining relevance in the lives of their citizens. This reexamination has resulted in a silent revolution sweeping the globe, which is slowly but gradually bringing about rearrangements that embody diverse features of supranationalization, confederalization, centralization, provincialization, and localization. The vision of a governance structure that is slowly taking hold through this silent revolution indicates either a gradual shift from unitary constitutional structures to federal or confederal governance for a large majority of people or a strengthening of local governance under a unitary form of government. (In 2007 there were twenty-eight federal or quasi-federal and twenty decentralized unitary countries with a combined total of about two-thirds of the world's population.) This new vision of governance has also led to a resurgence of interest in fiscal federalism principles and practices as federal systems are seen to provide safeguards against the threat of centralized exploitation as well as decentralized opportunistic behavior while bringing decision making closer to the people. This book responds to this felt need by providing a synthesis of the literature on the theory and practice of multicentered, decentralized economic governance.