Conclusion
Decentralization can be a way of improving access to services, tailoring government actions to private needs, and increasing the opportunities for state-society interactions. Subnational governments, however, will only be effective when they have access to the necessary human and financial resources to undertake the services they have been conferred.
Civil service reform --both capacity building and adjusting to decentralization-- addresses the first of these requirements. There is fairly widespread agreement that capacity-building at all government levels is an essential component of decentralization. The sequencing and priority levels of training --whether to train local or central governments first, for example-- depends on the country itself, although the subnational governments have generally been the first to be trained to accept their new responsibilities. There is less agreement over how to deliver the appropriate human resources package to the appropriate levels of government and how to coordinate human resource management across and between levels of government. The decision to decentralize or retain central control over human resource management --recruiting, hiring, salary-setting, etc.-- depends heavily on the existing degree of subnational capacity. The suggestions above outline some general coordination mechanisms, but the specific institutional arrangements for ensuring a consistent, efficient civil service must react to the kinds of institutional changes that decentralization has brought.