Motivations to decentralize
The mainland Southeast Asia region has, during wars, the last decade, enjoyed a period of relative peace and economic growth that contrasts with the civil wars, international conflicts, mass migrations, and emigrations that characterized the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Although Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia experienced the most devastation and turmoil during that period, China and Thailand, the other two countries of the region with which we are concerned here, were inevitably affected by the unrest and mass movements of people and experienced their own domestic conflicts.
With the advent of greater stability in the past 10-20 years, the governments of mainland Southeast Asia have begun to decentralize various political, administrative, and fiscal functions to lower levels of government. In China and Vietnam, policy statements promote the notion of grass-roots democracy as a good in itself and a central reason for increasing the local (i.e., commune and village) authorities in policy implementation and limited development planning. In China, perhaps the greater driver of decentralization has been the desire for improved fiscal efficiency and reduced fiscal burden on the central government (e.g., Fan 1999).Likewise in Vietnam, new fiscal arrangements increase the tendency of government departments to push expenditures down to the next level whenever possible (Rao, 1999).