Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 16th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Working Group on Local Government Author(s) Astghik Mavisakalyan The Sydney University Sydney Australia Title Development priorities in an emerging decentralized economy: The case of Armenia local development programs File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Based on a data set including 217 communities in Armenia, this paper studies the choice of priorities of local development programs for the period of 2003-2005. Local development programs aim at improving public infrastructure and promoting local business development, the latter of which is documented to be having a relatively minute share. Faced with this evidence, the paper explores possible explanations in the institutional setting of local policy-making with reference to ongoing discussions on the state of decentralized governance in Armenia. In addition, given the scope of local development programs, the degree of their responsiveness to community needs is explored for the case of drinking water infrastructure priorities. The responsiveness is suggested to be higher in places where residents have better access to information on programs provided in newspapers.