Decentralisation and Good Governance 1 . Decentralisation and Conflict Management in Multicultural

1.1. Types of decentralisation In this paper, we shall be concerned mainly with forms of decentralisation other than federalism. Decentralisation is a very general term, conventionally used to describe the extent to which the political, administrative or fiscal powers of a central government have been shared or distributed, amongst territorially defined sub-national agencies or authorities. This spatial distribution usually forms a series of nested hierarchies coinciding with the territorial subdivisions. But within this broad definition, governmental decentralisation in practice exhibits an enormous variety of forms, based on different principles, and with widely differing purposes. Three main types can be identified: de-concentration, delegation and devolution. Only the latter is based on the principle of power sharing between national and sub-national units, in which the sub-units are granted legal, financial and/or political autonomy over agreed areas of activity (c.f. Turner and Hulme, 1997).