Implementation Of Decentralization Policies Research Articles

Fiscal Decentralization: Its Impact on Cities Growth

Indonesia currently adopts a new decentralization policy. In the past, central government had been the major role of regional and cities development. With the new policy, central government has transferred its role in developing cities and regions to the local governments. This policy adopts two complimentary laws. Law No.22/1999, which is basically the devolution policy, has been accompanied by Law No.25/1999, which basically is the fiscal decentralization policy. Both laws reflect that decentralization policy in Indonesia has adopted the concept of "money follows functions".Before the implementation of decentralization policy, the government of cities had been benefited from many facilities built by central government on the city area. With the decentralization policy, it is expected that a reduced role of central government will have a significant impact on the growth of cities in Indonesia. The policy has three major fiscal instruments; a block grant funding, a specific grant and revenue sharing. The block grant funding is considered as the most important instruments of fiscal decentralization in Indonesia. About 80 percent of financial transfer from central to local governments will be in the block grant type of transfer. In the past, the use of transfers was determined by central government specifically. Therefore, the role of block grant was very minimal. With the new fiscal decentralization scheme, the benefits of cities from central government investments are expected to decrease. Therefore, there is a question to what extend the cities will be sustainable in the decentralization era.This paper attempts to answer the impacts of current fiscal decentralization policy on the growth of the cities. The first objective of the paper is to evaluate the current intergovernmental tranfers and their impact to cities revenues. Secondly, by utilizing a regional macroeconometric model, this paper also elaborates the implication of the transfers to the city growth and interregional disparity in Indonesia.

Political Variables and Governmental Decentralization in Peru, 1949-1988

Although decentralization is probably the institutional reform most frequently proposed for Third World countries, it has proven to be an elusive topic for both practitioners and analysts of development. Studies of centralization and decentralization are overwhelmingly descriptive, formalistic, or episodic. This article attempts to improve our understanding of how macro-political factors affect the adoption and implementation of decentralization policies in Latin America.

The eclipse of idealism: health planning in Zambia

An Interim National Development Plan was introduced in 1987-88 in Zambia. There seems to be much planning but the plans have created many problems. Health sector financing has been affected by the downward turn in copper prices since 1976. The government started a policy of fee-paying for all provided to expatriates and for most nonlifesaving services provided to those Zambians who used public services. There is urban bias in existing resource distribution. Health facilities have increased greatly since independence. However imbalances between rural and urban areas remain. There has been some progress but about 25% of the rural people remain not served by a health facility. The servicing of rural health facilities is very poor so that more geographic access does not necessarily mean better health care. In 1984 75% of the 32 rural health centers did not have enough antimalarial drugs for treatment in 1983. One of the crucial issues concerning Zambian health facilities is how can the present set up cope with fast population growth and declining funds? Maternal-child health have been very much affected by this situation. Implementation of decentralization policies show that they have been burdened by the availability of resources and many administrative problems. The political subdivisions within districts (wards) are not well set up to act as development units. Political problems have hampered the start of primary health care (PHC). Limits on achieving PHC planning goals resulted from structural deficiencies within the national implementation and development planning system both in short and longterm planning. The governments national health development plans did not detail how activities would relate to major health problems where resources were to be distributed or what priorities grounded the plans according to The World Banks report. Planning is needed because structural deficiencies in priority-setting exist and because political forces do not agree about structures of allocation and authorization. Development planning is especially difficult with financial constraints. A reconstruction of the principle of equitable distribution in health allocation is required. It is likely that per capita health expenditures will rise but not keep pace with the gross national product health service indicators will go down and only a limited number of policy choices will be available for health development. (authors modified)