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AbstractCriticism of the achievements of the Welfare State have led to more emphasis on the role of local government in providing new styles of welfare services. This has presented a challenge to Labour party authorities in Britain and can be seen as an aspect of conflict with Conservative party central government. The article analyses the effect of placing more emphasis on local service delivery to which much publicity has been given. Voluntary agencies have also been given an increased role, for a variety of motives. This raises questions about local democracy, answerability, and user‐control, which go beyond mere party polemics and involves fresh discussion of the future role of local government.

Vast changes have been wrought in the British governmental machinery during the past quarter-century—alterations in scope, structure, and administrative procedures made necessary in part by the rigours of economic depression and war and further intensified by the demands of an emerging welfare state. Of these changes one of the more significant has been the development by the central government departments of a complex and intricate system of regional organization to decentralize many of their more important functions. Today "administrative regionalism" characterizes the administration of fifteen major government departments. On January 1, 1956, 16,318 non-industrial civil servants (the national total was 636,771) were stationed outside Whitehall in regional offices established in eleven "regional capitals" and were working (with minor exceptions) in uniform geographical areas in accordance with established government policy. Several hundreds of thousands of the other civil servants were employed in local offices, such as post offices, employment exchanges, national insurance offices, pensions offices, district works offices, and so on. Some departments have regional offices and local offices; others have regional offices only.Decentralization of national programmes is unavoidable if governmental machinery is to function at all effectively. This is true not only in democracies, but also in countries under authoritarian rule, such as the Soviet Union. The administrative problems encountered in the decentralization of governmental functions are many. The purpose of this article is to examine Britain's experience in order to secure answers to a number of important questions. Why has it been necessary for the British to establish a system of regional administration? To what extent can the responsibilities of a national government be decentralized? What form does such decentralization take—policy formation, or administration and execution, or both? What type of administrative organization has been developed on the regional level? How is the work of a particular ministry in each of the eleven regions co-ordinated and to what degree have procedures been devised for standardizing work programmes throughout the country? Within a given region, how are matters that concern two or more departments dealt with?

In this paper we apply both cross-section and panel analysis to the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and government quality. We find that fiscal decentralization improves government quality but not if it is accompanied by political decentralization. The negative impact of political decentralization on the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government quality persists when controlling for the degree of democratic maturity across countries.

Despite growing interest in decentralized governance, the local government systems that comprise the most common element of decentralization around the world have received little systematic attention. This article, drawing on the first systematic index of decentralization to local government in 21 countries, demonstrates a close relation between Social Democratic welfare states and an intergovernmental infrastructure that in important respects ranks as the most decentralized among advanced industrial countries. This empowerment of local government in these countries was less an outgrowth of Social Democratic welfare state development than a preexisting condition that helped make this type of welfare state possible.

Although the region remains highly centralized, the tendency toward decentralization is quite strong. Not only is a larger portion of the general government budget executed from the subnational government level, the autonomy that these governments have in deciding how much to spend and what to spend on is increasing as well. In this context, it is important to analyze the possible effects of the move toward decentralization on fiscal performance.

Thesis (D.P.A.)--National Institute of Development Administration, 2020 504 ; This research studies the impacts of fiscal decentralization on local government performance and inclusive growth. The unit of analysis was 76 provinces in Thailand (all provinces with the exception of Bueng Kan), and the research period was 2010 to 2017. The analysis of the economic growth model indicates that fiscal decentralization, excluding grants had a negative relationship with economic growth with no statistical significance, while fiscal decentralization, including grants had a positive relationship with economic growth with no statistical significance. However, local government performance had a positive statistically significant relationship with economic growth. The research results are used to develop policy recommendations on balancing revenue and expenditure decentralization of local government organizations and to increase the efficiency of human resources and utilities in order to achieve economic growth. In addition, the research finds that grants allocated to local government organizations help to increase income distribution equality and reduce the number of poor. Moreover, increased per capita income is a key factor in reducing the number of poor people but this has no effect on income distribution equality. The policy recommendations on fiscal decentralization are made based on the research results, including those on improving local tax collection to be more fair and equitable and determine the criteria for the allocation of grants to local government organizations by focusing on poverty alleviation and income distribution equality. ; - ; [preview](https://repository.nida.ac.th/bitstream/662723737/5504/4/b212198.pdf.jpg)