ปก
Decentralization in Developing Countries
A Review of Recent Experience
Dennis A. Rondinelli
John R. Nellis G. Shabbir Cheema
The World Bank
Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
บทคัดย่อ
Abstract have
A large number of governments in developing countries attempted to decentralize development planning and management responsibilities during the past decade Decentralization has taken a number of forms--deconcentration of functions within the central bureaucracy, delegation of semiautonomous or quasi-public corporations, devolution to local governments, and the transfer of functions to nongovernment organizations The results have been mixed In some countries decentralization has resulted in greater participation in development activities, more effective and efficient administration of local and rural development programs, and expanded administrative capacity outside of the national capital But in nearly all countries where governments have attempted to decentralize they have faced serious problems of implementation. Some problems arose from insufficent central political and bureaucratic support and others from ingrained centrist attitudes and behavior on the part of political and administrative leaders In some countries, decentralization policies and programs were inappropriately designed, organized, and carried Nearly everywhere it was tried, decentralization was weakened by out the failure to transfer sufficient financial resources to those rganizations to which responsibilities were shifted
If decentralization is viewed as an incremental process of institutional capacity-building many of the experiments of the past decade can be judged as moderately successful However, success depends heavily on careful planning and implementation The most successful seem to be those in which the programs of decentralization were small in scope were given adequate time to prove themselves were centered around specific financial or managerial functions, and included training component. In most developing countries, decentralization a be an incremental process of building the capacity of ngovernmental and local organizations to accept and carry out effectively new functions and responsibilities The process must be carefully nurtured from the center and accompanied by a shift in the ion of central bureaucracy from control to facilitation and support
Acknowledgements
ฝThe authors are grateful for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript from Geoff Lamb, David Leonard, and William Siffin.
I. Introduction
Developing countries have generally regarded unified centralized and regulatory government as highly desirable Centralization has tended to be both the norm and the ideal that pervades concepts of political, economic, and administrative organization in the Third world. It is not difficult to understand why this is the case In most countries that were formerly colonies, centralized political and administrative institutions were a direct legacy of the colonial rulers, and until recently these systems were largely left untouched, or were further centralized
centralized economic planning, intervention and control have been ed by national government authorities as the correct path to follow, despite frequent and increasingly detailed accounts of their negative A held suspicion in the Third World is that the principal widely effects mechanism of economic decentralization the market is immoral and anarchic and that its impersonal operation rewards the few at the expense of the Many neoclassical economists would agree that markets in developing many countries work imperfectly. But most would conclude that the proper solution this problem is to find ways of removing obstacles in order to allow the to market to operate more freely
Many Third World intellectuals and policymakers have a different interpretation they believe market imperfections just continuing central control and intervention This is not simply an economic debate there are powerful political reasons for maintaining central control and intervention. Many political leaders emphasize the primacy of the public sector, which provides positions in the civil service and parastatal institutions with which to reward loyal political followers. They keep under central government
control those factors such as wages prices, tariffs, food subsidies, and import and export regulations are considered to be tnost important for maintaining political stability Clearly, policies promoting centralization usually pay off, at least in the short run, in material and political returns for the dominant elites As long as economic centralization reinforces centralized political control it will have strong supporters--who usually appeal to the need for national unity--despite the most pe rationalistic economic criticisms Thus, throughout the discussion of administrative reorganization that follows, it should be remembered that tempts to counter centralization are intensely politi