Determinants Of Decentralization Research Articles

Limits of decentralisation

The concept of decentralization has fixed content and the scope of meaning. At present, defining decentralization only through the lack of hierarchical dependence would be incorrect. One can speak of the external and internal limits of decentralization. The internal limits of decentralization are political or legal determinants of decentralization. The external limits of decentralization are those which closely interact with centralization – as an opposite category, but complementary to decentralization. Outside of decentralization and centralization, there is a place for autonomy. Autonomy is in contradiction with the state’s unitarian character.

Organizational innovativeness and its determinants in South Korean nonprofit human service organizations

This study compares the level of organizational innovativeness and its determinants in different types of nonprofit human service organizations. Based on theoretical conceptualizations of organizational innovation, it was hypothesized that community service organizations (CSOs) would be more innovative than residential service organizations (RSOs), and determinants of organizational innovation (such as organizations' characteristics, internal and external properties, and executive leadership) would influence innovativeness. Data from a survey of two types of human service organizations in South Korea (127 RSOs for children and 220 CSOs) revealed that the level of innovation in both types of organizations was not significantly different. The determinants of decentralization and formalization showed significant impacts on innovativeness in CSOs. Decentralization also had a significant positive effect on innovativeness in RSOs. However, executive leadership was a significant determinant of organizational innovativeness in CSOs only. Based on these results, administrative implications are suggested for the facilitation of organizational innovation in nonprofit human service organizations.

Elections and local government performance in Brazil

Abstract The 1988 federal Constitution introduced a complex and innovative institutional arrangement that not only reestablished political rights and democratic procedures, but also reinforced decentralization as a fundamental guideline for policy implementation in Brazil. As a result, municipalities have become pivotal actors in the policymaking process. Scholars of Latin American politics have given much emphasis to the causes and determinants of decentralization, but not much has been done toward a more general understanding of how this increased decentralization has affected policymaker behavior and policy outcomes. This paper aims to do exactly that. Specifically, it investigates how institutional arrangements and electoral competition affect local government performance. The theoretical basis is the electoral democratic theory that broadly highlights elections as instruments of citizen control in retrospective and prospective voting approaches. The research employs a large-N cross sub-national analysis based on a dataset of electoral, partisan, socioeconomic and public financial information collected from over 5500 municipalities. Local governments’ performance, our dependent variables, are synthetic indicators formulated from 2009 nationwide surveys on public education, health, housing and welfare services. The OLS regression results confirm the hypothesis that politics variables do matter in how politicians make decisions and implement policy under the new Brazilian democratic Era. The empirical evidences suggest that electoral competition does not present a direct effect on government performance, however, ideology and citizen participation do. Therefore, this paper helps to expand our understanding of a political system’s impact on public policy outputs, which is extremely important not only for academic purpose but also to support policymakers’ decisions.

Incomplete Contracts and the Internal Organization of Firms

We survey the theoretical and empirical literature on decentralization within firms. We first discuss how the concept of incomplete contracts shapes our views about the organization of decision-making. We then overview the empirical evidence on the determinants of decentralization and on the effects of decentralization on firm performance. A number of factors highlighted in the theory are shown to be important in accounting for delegation, such as heterogeneity and congruence of preferences as proxied by trust. Empirically, competition, human capital, and IT also appear to foster decentralization. There are substantial gaps between theoretical and empirical work and we suggest avenues for future research in bridging this gap (JEL O31, O32, O33, F23).

Explaining political decentralization in parliamentary democracies

This article explores the determinants of political decentralization in 29 OECD parliamentary democracies. I examine how the decision to enact political decentralization is mediated by the partisan composition of parliamentary governments. Specifically, I hypothesize that four features impact the ability and motive to institute political decentralization: government ideology, policy decentralization platforms, power and stability, and the presence of ethnoregionalist parties in the national legislature and as government members. Empirical results reveal that ideology and policy platforms play little role in the decision to enact political reform. However, there is strong evidence that powerful and stable governments and the rise of ethnoregionalist parties in national politics substantially increase the probability of political decentralization. Government composition plays a significant role in institutional change and should be considered in future models on the determinants of decentralization.

Descentralização de políticas públicas sob a ótica neoinstitucional: uma revisão de literatura

O artigo tem como finalidade desenvolver uma revisão de literatura sobre descentralização, com foco no caso brasileiro, ressaltando a importância dos pressupostos do neoinstitucionalismo na compreensão desse fenômeno. Em função das particularidades do nosso federalismo, é consenso na literatura a necessidade de se observar fatores de ordem institucional como normas constitucionais, estratégias de indução à cooperação, regras de funcionamento das relações federativas, entre outros. A frase rotineiramente utilizada nas ciências sociais é que "as instituições importam" no estudo das políticas públicas. De fato, esse postulado parece consolidado, mas os desafios do pesquisador devem direcionar-se para a identificação das instituições e seus efeitos sobre os processos de descentralização, superando a predominância das abordagens normativas por intermédio de pesquisas metodologicamente válidas e consistentes. Nesse sentido, o artigo procura demonstrar como aspectos das três principais versões da teoria neoinstitucional podem servir como ferramenta analítica e metodológica válida na abordagem de questões centrais à temática, como as causas e os determinantes da descentralização e sua notória proliferação. O objetivo não é esgotar o tema, ao contrário, é destacar o rol de possibilidades que essa perspectiva oferece, principalmente, para o avanço das investigações de natureza positiva.

Decentralization in Financial Institutions: Theory and Evidence from China

Decentralization facilitates more efficient use of local information but also can lead to agency problems and commitment failures. This paper develops simple models of a two-tier hierarchy (the center vs. the local) to study the optimal division of lending authority between central and local bank managers. Using a unique data set collected by the authors from a survey of rural financial institutions in China, we empirically assess the determinants of decentralization. We find that concerns over agency problems (collusion and government influence) and especially commitment failures (excessive refinancing) explain the recent trend toward centralization of lending authority. We conclude that the inability of financial systems to exploit local information in weak institutional environments may substantially limit the efficiency of financial intermediation despite financial market liberalization.

Intra and Interorganizational Determinants of Decentralization

A model combining structural and interorganizational causes of the decentralization of decision-making was constructed to investigate the merits of intra versus interorganizational determinants of decentralization in organizations. Relationships in the model were estimated with data from a sample of American corporations. The estimated parameters of the model, despite high zero-order correlations for all relationships, suggested a more parsimonious explanation of decentralization than is currently offered by existing research literature. Findings partially confirm and refute past research which has sought solely environmental or structural explanations. More important, the findings integrate and render some past findings consistent. It is concluded that decentralization of decision-making in corporations is more the consequence of geographical dispersion and coalition formation than other aspects of structure, size, and other features of interorganizational relations, such as competition. These latter factors appear to affect decentralization only indirectly and then through the geographical dispersion of a corporation. An adequate explanation of decentralization, therefore, requires a multidimensional approach that includes both inter and intraorganizational causes. Along with other recent work, this study offers additional evidence of the major theoretical importance of geographical differentiation, an often ignored concept, in understanding complex organizations.