In Vietnam and Laos, most decentralization has occurred within specific sector-water, forestry,and agriculture-and has taken the form of deconcentration. In this respect, reforms described loosely as decentralization have been more centralizing than decentralizing. Reforms represent an effort to consolidate state control and start-defined development gains in these as well as to increase state control over remote areas.
In Cambodia, a larger experiment in political and fiscal decentralization has taken place, bolstered by massive aid inflows for national reconstruction. A pilot scheme for decentralization development planning was was undertaken in first 5, then 10, Cambodian provinces. The consultative group of donors for Cambodia made implementation of a national decentralized development program a centerpiece of its negotiations with the Cambodian government.
Thailand has embarked upon the most ambitious decentralization reform in the region-a full-scale political decentralization to the sub-district level. Here, profound reform was made possible by the coincidental alignment of political parties is and intellectuals interest of political parties sought to strengthen their support base in the rural areas by increasing the voice of rural constituencies in development decision-making intellectual elites with broader democratic aspirations were largely responsible for drafting the language about decentralization in the Constitution.
In several countries, a more progressive form of decentralization has emerged in donor-financed decentralized planning programs. Such programs typically involve selected provinces. For instance, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency experimented with a decentralized development budget scheme in five Vitnamese provinces.
An assessment of this scheme formed one of our case studies. This experiment helped catalyze another donor program in the northern provinces that has ambitious decentralized budgeting and implementation structures. Decentralized planning in the agricultural sector in Laos benefited from substantial donor staff and funds, via the Lao Swedish Forestry Programme. While perhaps unrepresentative of the Lao experience as a whole, this case is indicative of donor attempts to bolster articulation of local concerns in the region as a whole. Indeed, such donor programs could prove to be a harbinger of the future.