2. Centralization
In Jordan, the policy of decision making is governed by law, with decisions made by central authorities. Although the law identifies the municipality as an autonomous organization that has its own financial and administrative independence, municipal decision making is often centralized (Alnsour & Meaton, 2009). This is largely because many articles of the Municipalities' Law of 1955 limit the power and the autonomy of the municipalities and create a relationship of dependence and subordination to the state (Alnsour, 2014). For example, although each municipality is managed by a council comprised of a Mayor and six to eleven elected councilors, the state assigns an unelected manager for each municipality. In addition the law does not impose specific qualifications and/or experience for the elected councilors, and as a result many councilors do not have the scientific or technical expertise appropriate for the role, and often allow their own tribal and familial interests to influence decision making. The use of research in decision making processes is therefore not established practice. Under these conditions, managers often seek greater financial and administrative powers and fail to consider evidence
from research when making decisions (Meaton & Alnsour, 2012). Centralization is likely to be a major obstacle to the adoption and
use of research findings and we therefore hypothesize that centralization has a negative impact on the use of research in the decision making process.