dictionary, the term implies transforming decision making power from central government to its regional government. The dictionary sees decentralization as a political phenomenon, which involves sharing decision-making power with its local level governments.
Different people use the term, decentralization to mean very different things. For Hyden (1983:85) the concept of decentralization is broad and concerns many different phenomenon, as a result it is not surprising those writers to disagree on a common definition. There is much evidence that the impact of decentralization varies from one country to another. Those arguments signify the complexity a~d debatable nature of the subject.
"Decentralization is the assignment of fiscal, political administrative responsibilities to lower levels of government is occurring worldwide for different reasons, at different paces, and through different means (World Bank: 1998:4). The World Bank sees the term as political, administrative and also financial phenomenon. Thus decentralization could be seen as a condition that moving away from centralized management system. Centralization and decentralization may not be as diametrically opposing concepts or mutually exclusive forms, of political or administrative organizations as all governments have mixture of centralized and decentralized functions.
For Robbins (2000), decentralization as a managerial and organizational phenomenon and it refers to the degree to which decision making is concentrated at a single point in the organization. Robbins' idea could also be applied to the government, when decision-making power is highly concentrated within a center. However it would not be possible to draw a clear line to distinguish the two terms, decentralization and centralization though it could be regarded as a position in which one extreme involves high degree of concentration and other extreme involves high degree of Decentralization.
Smith (1985: 1) sees decentralization as both reversing to concentration of administration at a single center and concerning powers of local government. For him decentralization involves transferring decision making power and administration from the center to lower levels of governments and also seems to be much related with politics.
Conyers (1981: 108) defines decentralization as at any transfer of powers or functions of government from the national level to any sub national