Editor – As highlighted by Andrew Green and his coworkers in relation to Balochistan, Pakistan (1), budgetary mechanisms for resource allocation are often a neglected component of policies of decentralization. This is particularly true when a single sector is decentralized. Any attempt to develop a needsbased allocation mechanism may deal with this problem to some extent, and several other meas...

The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design. The theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about this relationship, and it has remained virtually unexamined by empiricists. In this paper, we make a first attempt at examining this issue empiric...

D ecentralization is a major feature of current institutional innovation throughout the world. In Latin America, most countries have recently implemented decentralization policies following a long tradition of centralized government. Argentina has not been the exception. The decentralization of educational services from the federal to provincial governments was an important component of the str...

Decentralization reforms aim at strengthening democracy by promoting political participation among citizens. Research shows (1) that information is a prerequisite for political participation and (2) that people face different private costs in acquiring information. Here we combine the two lines of research and ask: what private costs hamper the acquisition of information on decentralization? Fo...

The democratization that took place in Japan over the latter half of the twentieth century led to local governments achieving a degree of autonomy that allowed them to manage aspects of public policy in such areas as regional development, welfare, environmental development, and government information disclosure. As these local authorities increasingly became active players in the policymaking p...

This paper looks at the relationship between fiscal and political decentralization and the evolution of regional inequalities in a panel of 26 countries – 19 developed and 7 developing – for the period between 1990 and 2006. Using an instrumental variables method, it finds that whereas for the whole sample decentralization is completely dissociated for the evolution of regional disparities, the...

Currently there is a propensity that decentralized hierarchy is adopted by organizations. Vast realms of research endeavor have been committed to understand the advantages and setbacks of decentralized organizations, and their results indicate that inadequate decentralization will constrain the creativity of employees while over decentralization may push the company towards chaos. However, litt...

OBJECTIVE To examine whether decentralization has improved health system performance in the State of Ceara, north-east Brazil. METHODS Ceara is strongly committed to decentralization. A survey across 45 local (municipio) health systems collected data on performance and formal organization, including decentralization, informal management and local political culture. The indicators for informal...

We study secessionist conflict driven by cultural and economic motives in a political union of two regions, and analyze under what conditions partial decentralization may serve as a conflict-mitigating strategy. While the probability of a successful secession is increasing in heterogeneity, it is increasing in interregional income inequality if and only if the union is socially efficient to sta...