The growth and decentralisation of the modern democratic state

Abstract. That modern democratic governments have grown is beyond dispute, as is the fact that this growth has promoted intense misgivings amongst a number of writers, not least amongst the followers of Hayek. But an examination of the growth in governmental activity reveals that it is the sub-national level of government which has absorbed a greater share of governmental growth than the centre. The author continues by exploring a number of reasons for this development and concludes that the most likely explanations lie in the continued urbanisation of most western countries; the associated need for more governmental services; and in the possibility that taxpayers' resistance to tax increases is lower at the sub-national than it is at national level.     

Governments,decentralisation, and the risk of electoral defeat

In the last three decades several countries around the world have transferred authority from their national to their regional governments. However, not all their regions have been empowered to the same degree and important differences can be observed between and within countries. Why do some regions obtain more power than others? Current literature argues that variation in the redistribution of power and resources between regions is introduced by demand. Yet these explanations are conditional on the presence of strong regionalist parties or territorial cleavages. This article proposes instead a theory that links the government’s risk of future electoral defeat with heterogeneous decentralisation, and tests its effects using data from 15 European countries and 141 regions. The results provide evidence that parties in government protect themselves against the risk of electoral defeat by selectively targeting decentralisation towards regions in which they are politically strong. The findings challenge previous research that overestimates the importance of regionalist parties while overlooking differences between regions.     

Policy networks,politics and decentralisation policies in Ghana

Policy‐making is a political process involving a network of actors with varied interests. This article uses policy network as an analytical framework to understand the politics of decentralisation policy‐making in Ghana from the perspective of interactions among interest groups. The article is based on a research study, which utilised semi‐structured interviews and documentary sources in its data collection. It argues that the lack of progress in decentralisation in Ghana can be explained by the politics surrounding government–interest group relations. The article also provides evidence to indicate how varied interests represented within the decentralisation policy networks affected politics and in turn influenced decentralisation policy‐making and outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Health information systems,decentralisation and democratic accountability

While decentralisation is a much‐used term in development discourse, there is lack of clarity about how much autonomy should be granted to local agencies in programme implementation. This is particularly the case in the health sector in developing countries where decentralisation has resulted in the primary health centre (PHC) being identified as the focal point for the delivery of basic health services to rural citizens. An important element of primary healthcare reform has been the implementation of health information systems (HIS). These systems primarily account for monies spent to higher levels of administration and funding bodies rather than account for primary healthcare provision to citizens. In this article, we focus on various emergent processes of change that are occurring under the auspices of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in India to strengthen the interface between the PHC and the community. We present a case study of Gumballi PHC in Karnataka, South India. Our findings reveal ways in which these new processes can be supported by conceptualising the HIS as more than a mere reporting tool. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corruption and support for decentralisation

Existing explanations of individual preferences for decentralisation and secession focus on collective identity, economic considerations and party politics. This paper contributes to this literature by showing that preferences for fiscal and political decentralisation are also driven by concern about the quality of government in the face of corruption. It makes two claims. Firstly, information on national-level corruption decreases satisfaction with national politicians, and subsequently increases preferences for decentralisation and secession. Secondly, information on regional-level corruption pushes citizens of highly corrupt regions to prefer national retrenchment and unitary states. The effects of this political compensation mechanism crosscut national identities and involve regions that are not ethnically or economically different from the core. We test our argument using a survey experiment in Spain and confirm its cross-national generalisability with data from the European Values Study.     

Democracy and decentralisation: local politics,marginalisation and political accountability in Uganda and South Africa

While democratic decentralisation is viewed as an important vehicle for development in sub‐Saharan Africa, its viability in practice is often doubted. Lack of resources, expertise, marginalised populations and the inexperience of local electors are all barriers to successful decentralisation. However, often overlooked are the diverse ways in which local people use the opportunities provided by democratic decentralisation to engage local authorities and demand accountability. Using examples from Uganda and South Africa,¹ this article demonstrates how local people use democratic openings to meet the challenges of marginalisation and demand accountability. While the data is from the mid to late 1990s, the evidence presented here is relevant to the continuing debate over democratic decentralisation for it reveals something that is not always recognised: lack of resources is not necessarily the problem; developing political capacity for demanding accountability for existing resources is what is important. The implication is that for decentralisation to be effective, practitioners must develop a better understanding of local political engagement so that their efforts may strengthen rather than thwart emerging political relations of accountability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social funds and decentralisation: optimal institutional design

Most of the 60+ developing countries that have established social funds (SFs) are decentralising their governments as well. But the question of how to tailor SFs—originally a highly centralised model—for a decentralising context has received relatively little attention in the literature. We first examine evidence on the ability of SFs to adapt to a decentralised context. We then lay out the implications of decentralisation for SF institutional design step‐by‐step through the project cycle. The topic is doubly important because social funds can increase their effectiveness, and the sustainability of their investments, by reorganising internal processes to take advantage of the political and civic institutions that decentralisation creates. Local government has an informational advantage in local needs and characteristics (time and place), whereas SFs have access to better technology and knowledge of sectoral best practice. The key is to create institutional incentives that best combine these relative advantages. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Dictator Game, Fairness and Ethnicity in Postwar Bosnia

This study considers the effects of ethnic violence on norms of fairness. Once violence is a foregone conclusion, will cooperative norms ever (re‐)emerge beyond ethnic boundaries? We use an experiment that measures how fairly individuals in a postconflict setting treat their own ingroup in comparison to the outgroups—in this case, examining the behavior of 681 Muslims, Croats, and Serbs in postwar Bosnia‐Herzegovina. To assess fairness, we use the dictator game wherein subjects decide how to allocate a sum of money between themselves and an anonymous counterpart of varying ethnicity. We find that the effects of ethnicity on decision making are captured by our experiments. Although results indicate preferential ingroup treatment, the incidence and magnitude of outgroup bias is much less than expected. We conclude that norms of fairness across ethnicity are remarkably strong in Bosnia, and we take this to be a positive sign for reconciliation after violent conflict.     

Service delivery in francophone West Africa: the challenge of balancing deconcentration and decentralisation

The article reviews the experiences with decentralisation of one West African country, Guinea, with the intent of drawing lessons and exploring approaches to assist countries in the sub‐region in rendering decentralisation—an effective means for service delivery improvements. Section II describes the West Africa context in terms of the dynamics of deconcentration–decentralisation and lays out a conceptual framework to guide the analytical assessment of countries in the sub‐region, attempting to decentralise. This framework is used in the Guinea case, described in Section III. Section IV concludes by synthesising the profile of Guinea, and positions its dominant style in relation to the proposed ideal types of decentralisation approaches. This part of the article discusses the implications of its findings for decentralisation policy and implementation, and offers some remarks on the road ahead for decentralisation in West Africa. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of ideology and elite networks in the decentralisation reforms in 1980s France

France saw historic decentralisation reforms under the leadership of Mitterrand and Defferre, his first Minister of the Interior, in the 1980s. This article highlights the role played by ideology and elite networks in the reform process. Ideological renewal determined the broad direction of policy change towards decentralisation, and placed the decentralist cause at the heart of the legislative programme of the incoming Socialist government. Yet it was the networks that linked the political, administrative and local elites, more than ideology, that shaped and constrained the details of the actual reform outcomes.     

Exploring the Budgetary Base in Georgia

This article is an exploratory study of the budgetary base in Georgia. Using agency, gubernatorial, and legislative estimates for all state agencies during the fiscal years 1980 to 1987, it examines the place of budgetary base decisions in the politics of state budgeting, and seeks to improve the theoretical understanding of that concept.     

Measuring decentralisation: the case of Kerala (India)

Attempts at measuring decentralisation are still in an underdeveloped stage. The reason for this lies in the failure to devise common standards against which measurement is possible and the lack of consensus about the very meaning of decentralisation. An attempt to measure decentralisation was made by Vengroff and Ben Salem in the context of Tunisia nearly a decade ago. An expanded and adapted version of this model is used to measure decentralisation in Kerala using the same judgmental criteria that they used after involving a panel of nine experts. These experts had a fairly good understanding of the practice of decentralisation to score on the basis of the adapted criteria. An ideal form of decentralisation envisaged in this measurement exercise is devolution. It has been found that on a scale ranging between 0 and 5, the state of Kerala obtained a score of 2.00 in spite of the fact that the investment that the state had made in decentralisation has no parallels anywhere in the developing countries. Such a low score, despite the much publicised campaign for decentralisation, was due to the focus on planning rather than on decentralisation issues. Attempts to measure decentralisation will not only enable us to develop more contextually valid measures of decentralisation, but also contribute to the clarification of the concept of decentralisation, particularly by identifying aspects neglected hitherto. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethnicity and electoral fraud in Britain

Several reports have highlighted that, within Britain, allegations of electoral fraud tend to be more common in areas with large Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. However, the extent of this association has not yet been quantified. Using data at the local authority level, this paper shows that percentage Pakistani and Bangladeshi (logged) is a robust predictor of two measures of electoral fraud allegations: one based on designations by the Electoral Commission, and one based on police enquiries. Indeed, the association persists after controlling for other minority shares, demographic characteristics, socio-economic deprivation, and anti-immigration attitudes. I interpret this finding with reference to the growing literature on consanguinity (cousin marriage) and corruption. Rates of cousin marriage tend to be high in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which may have fostered norms of nepotism and in-group favoritism that persist over time. To bolster my interpretation, I use individual level survey data to show that, within Europe, migrants from countries with high rates of cousin marriage are more likely to say that family should be one's main priority in life, and are less likely to say it is wrong for a public official to request a bribe.     

The limits of decentralisation: Legislative careers and territorial representation in Spain

Scholars of decentralisation in comparative perspective have argued that these reforms should lead to a ‘territorialisation of politics’. For the party system and the legislature this means that subnational interests will increasingly influence rules and practices as well as positions on policy choice. This study tests this proposition in Spain, which has undergone extensive decentralisation during its democratic history (1977–present). By examining the career trajectories of deputies in the ruling lower house, the study finds little evidence that decentralisation expanded the influence of subnational representatives within the party system or the parliament of democratic Spain. This was true despite the growing cohort of deputies with subnational experience in the Congreso, the ability of subnational party offices to recruit and place candidates on electoral lists, and the increasing importance of regional issues in national elections.     

Ethnicity and electoral manipulation in Russia

To what extent does electoral manipulation follow ethnic lines in Russia? Using an original dataset based on raion-level data, we find that the “ethnic component” of electoral manipulation is more nuanced than previous studies have suggested. Electoral manipulation was most prevalent in majority-minority raions across ethnic and non-ethnic as well as richer and poorer regions. We argue that concentrations of ethnic minorities provide: (1) greater incentives for electoral manipulation by the central state and regional elites in order to signal political dominance and (2) greater capacity to carry out electoral manipulation through networks of local co-ethnic elites. However, multilevel analyses suggest that the extent of electoral manipulation was also strongly contingent on regional context. Electoral manipulation was significantly higher in the more politically volatile Muslim regions, while socioeconomic differences among regions, by contrast, had no discernible effect.     

Ethnicity and Politics: Cohesion, Division and British Jews

Structural, cultural, psychological and materialist theories support the proposition that political cohesion and division in ethnic groups are a function of ethnic cohesion and division generally. The proposition is applied to British Jews, and data from the first nationally representative survey of British Jews are employed to test an empirical hypothesis linking strong manifestations of ethnicity to Conservative partisanship. Results from multinomial logistic regression analysis support the hypothesis, and transformations to probabilities demonstrate the strong effect of ethnic divisions on party divisions. Comparisons are drawn between British Jews and other British ethnic minorities, and between British and American Jews.     

Understanding recent trends in central-local relations: centralisation in Great Britain and decentralisation in the United States

Abstract. This article starts by noting that, whilst Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan apparently share similar conservative objectives, their policies differ radically with respect to intergovernmental relations. The author briefly reviews the trends towards centralisation and decentralisation in Britain and America respectively and suggests that the difference is because both leaders see 'intergovernmental relations' as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. Both leaders share the same objectives of reducing tax levels and the amount of government expenditure and of rewarding their supporters: objectives which, at least in part, both have achieved. But both have used different means, reflecting the different structure of government with which both leaders have to work. This view is supported by a brief review of policy on intergovernmental grants in both countries.