Local government and decentralization in the Sudan [experiences leading up to the 1981 Local Government Act]
In: Public administration and development: the international journal of management research and practice, Band 3, S. 209-222
ISSN: 0271-2075
In: Public administration and development: the international journal of management research and practice, Band 3, S. 209-222
ISSN: 0271-2075
In: Cambridge studies in comparative politics
1. Introduction; 2. The political process; 3. Administrative efficiency; 4. Competition among governments; 5. Fiscal policy and redistribution; 6. Fiscal coordination and incentives; 7. Citizens and government; 8. Checks, balances, and freedom; 9. Acquiring and using knowledge; 10. Ethnic conflict and secession; 11. Data to the rescue?; 12. Conclusion: rethinking decentralization.
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Working paper
In: Public administration and development: the international journal of management research and practice, Band 29, Heft 4, S. 316-329
ISSN: 1099-162X
AbstractKerala is regarded as one of the most decentralized states in India. Through a 'big bang' approach, Kerala implemented a significant fiscal decentralization program and then built the capacity of its local governments. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyze its local government discretion and accountability in political, administrative and fiscal domains. We find that Kerala's local governments have a very high degree of discretionary power accompanied by a high degree of accountability towards citizens. But the areas of administrative accountability and financial management need to be strengthened. Also there may have been excessive focus and investment on social accountability mechanisms at the cost of local government discretion and formal public sector accountability mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In: Public administration and development: the international journal of management research and practice, Band 30, Heft 3, S. 215-231
ISSN: 1099-162X
AbstractA large part of the decentralization literature is fragmented along political, fiscal, or administrative lines. In this article we employ a diagnostic framework to draw these dimensions together in a coherent manner to focus on analyzing local government discretion and accountability in Tanzania. Tanzania seems to have a deconcentrated local government system with central appointees having large powers at the local level. Centrally‐funded mandates—such as constructing secondary schools—dominate local government plans and budgets. Central control over administrative functions has ensured that administrative decentralization is yet to occur. In the fiscal sphere, progress has been made in transparency and harmonization of transfers in the last 5 years but local governments still have some way to go in raising own revenues, being less reliant on transfers, and ensuring downward accountability. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In: Journal of international development: the journal of the Development Studies Association, Band 33, Heft 6, S. 975-1004
ISSN: 1099-1328
AbstractThis paper examines the mediating effect of democracy in explaining the relationship between decentralization and government size for the period 1970–2013. We proxy decentralization by fiscal decentralization, use total spending as our primary measure of government size and adopt the V‐Dem high‐level democracy indices as measures of democracy. Our main finding is that the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government spending differs under different types of democracy. From the interaction term, the negative effect of fiscal decentralization diminishes as the democracy level gets higher, particularly for participatory democracy irrespective of whether government size is measured by spending‐to‐GDP or employment.
[eng]This article analyses Spanish Mayors' perceptions on three areas of possible reforms that are currently on the local government agenda: re-scaling, amalgamations and metropolitanization. This study shows two main features: On the one hand, a relative homogeneity regarding mayors' perceptions of reforms and, on the other hand, a consistent difference in the mayors' orientations from two groups of autonomous communities. The first ones acceded to the 'fast track' decentralization process that unfolded in Spain since 1978, due to the pressure exerted by their political leaders; the second group acceded to autonomy in a later wave, equating the distribution of power in all the territories of the state. Specifically, it is found that homogeneity in responses is only apparent when the two groups of mayors are considered. Thus, those from 'fast track' regions are more in favor of decentralization towards their regions and structures of coordination or cooperation between levels of government than mayors in 'slow track' autonomous communities. We conclude that, in a scenario of shared power and multilevel interdependence, fast-track mayors tend to protect more intergovernmental agreements that favour spaces where they can control the formulation of policies that affect them. ; [spa] Este artículo analiza la percepción de los alcaldes españoles en tres áreas de posibles reformas que actualmente están en la agenda del gobierno local: reordenación, fusiones y creación de gobiernos metropolitanos. Este estudio revela dos características principales. Por un lado, una homogeneidad relativa de las posiciones de los alcaldes respecto a las reformas y, por otro, una diferencia consistente en las orientaciones de los alcaldes de alcaldes de dos grupos de comunidades autónomas. Las primeras accedieron al proceso de escentralización por la vía rápida que se desplegó en España a partir de 1978, debido a la presión ejercida por sus líderes políticos; el segundo grupo accedió a la autonomía en una ola posterior, equiparando la distribución del poder en todos los territorios del Estado. Específicamente, se ha descubierto que la homogeneidad en las respuestas sólo se aprecia cuando se consideran los dos grupos de alcaldes mencionados. Así, los de las regiones de la vía rápida están más a favor de la descentralización hacia sus regiones y de estructuras de coordinación o cooperación entre niveles de gobierno que los alcaldes en las comunidades autónomas de la vía lenta. Concluimos que, en un escenario de poder compartido y de interdependencia multinivel, los alcaldes de la vía rápida tienden a proteger más los acuerdos intergubernamentales que favorezcan los espacios donde puedan controlar la formulación de políticas que los afectan.
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In: Princeton Legacy Library
Adding to the literature on the effects of government decentralization, this paper uses a large sample of individual responses from more than a hundred countries about public's perceptions of government's performance along various dimensions to study the relative influences of different types of decentralization, including fiscal decentralization, administrative decentralization, federalism, and aggregate decentralization. Our results show that fiscal and administrative decentralization are qualitatively alike in that greater decentralization in each case improves perceptions of the government performance. Federalist states' performance and overall decentralization are viewed somewhat differently. With regard to tax administration particularly, fiscal and administrative forms of government decentralization result in better outcomes than overall decentralization. Finally, service industries and large firms, ceteris paribus, perceived government performance differently.
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In: Social policy & administration: an international journal of policy and research, Band 21, Heft Summer 87
ISSN: 0037-7643, 0144-5596
In the past several decades, many countries, among them non-democratic, chose to decentralize their governments. Building on insights provided by the "second generation" wave of research on fiscal federalism, this paper proposes a unified model to account for this. The idea is that decentralization serves as a commitment device to ensure that ex post chose policies will reflect regional preferences, thereby boosting individual productive effort incentives. This theory may explain the decentralization process in China in 1980-1990s, as well as the fact that government decentralization is generally more prevalent in democracies.
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This paper analyzes the relationship between fiscal decentralization, the duration of fiscal consolidation episodes, and their success for 17 OECD countries between 1978 and 2009. The consolidation of the general government budget appears to be of longer duration when expenditure decisions are more decentralized. We also find that transfers from higher levels of government are cut during consolidation episodes, suggesting that central governments shift the burden of consolidation towards lower tiers of government. This is especially true when the latter have little legal autonomy to raise tax revenues and have little influence over executive decisions taken at the central level. We document that this increases local governments' public debt/GDP ratios. In terms of the success of consolidation episodes, countries with greater degrees of decentralization appear to make smaller improvements in their primary balance when consolidating.
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In: CESifo Working Paper Series No. 6013
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In: CESifo Working Paper Series No. 4809
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Working paper