This report - like the case studies it synthesizes - is founded on three assumptions:

• firstly, that poverty in Asia is still – and despite rapid urbanization - primarily rural (in numbers and in incidence);
• secondly, that rural local governments (LGs), despite their many weaknesses, have a potentially key role to play in the basic infrastructure and service delivery (ISD) which effective poverty reduction requires;
• but, thirdly, that the challenges for improving ISD through rural LGs are qualitatively much greater than through urban LGs, and that both these challenges - and also the opportunities – for making rural LGs more effective are poorly understood and documented.