Decentralization in Public Administration and Provision of Services: An East — Central European View

Abstract

Administrative decentralization is the technical side of democratization. Two examples are decentralization in the structure of public administration, and decentralization in provision of local services, which seems to be more complicated, Some type of integration is necessary for ‘real’ administrative decentralization, the purpose of which is to get closer to democratization. However, fragmentation is not a synonym of decentralization. According to my hypothesis the more decentralized a system the more necessary it is to integrate its basic units. There are different forms of integration. The scale is very wide: it varies from amalgamation, to the creation of voluntary associations among municipalities. Administrative decentralization does not exclude public managerial integration in service delivery. In East – Central European countries, parallel to the structural decentralization, different new forms of integration are emerging, simply as a result of the establishment of local institutions in place of former monopolies. This nonadministrative, functional, integration seems to be very important for the development of effectiveness in local democracy.