How does politics affect the implementation of decentralisation processes? This paper from the World Bank examines evidence from several African case studies and finds that decentralisation is essentially a political process in which many actors influence the path of reforms. It concludes that reforms must pursue a politically-sensitive approach in which coalition-building and accountability mechanisms feature as prominently as technical analyses and interventions.
One of the more significant, if less publicised, reforms in Africa over the past twenty years has been the progressive decentralisation of the state. Although not all countries have fully revived local governance, a recent World Bank study indicated that no country in Africa today propounds a preference for the centralised state. Indeed, nearly all countries claim in one way or another to be decentralising power, resources and accountability to local levels. The rich technical literature that has developed to support this transition, however, tends to neglect the political underpinnings of decentralisation and the difficulties in implementing the process effectively.
Case studies from Africa illustrate vividly the vast gap between rhetorical advocacy for decentralisation on the one hand and a genuine readiness on the part of central governments to devolve or delegate authority and resources to local governments. Indeed, the experiences suggest that a country is likely to make a rapid and sustained transition from a centralised to a decentralised state structure only if all of the following three enabling political conditions are in place:
- There is sufficient fluidity in the macro-political discourse to enable basic issues of state structure to find their way onto the political agenda.
- There exists a powerful political coalition with both the incentive and the authority to push through policies of decentralisation.
- There exist stakeholders at the community level who are sufficiently engaged to be supportive of, and/or responsive to, initiatives by political elites to shift resources and accountability downwards.
Only in rare circumstances will these three enabling political conditions be in place. As such, in most settings movement towards decentralisation will be incremental. Moreover, as the result of the give-and-take among political elites inherent in decentralisation, diverse visions of where the process might be going and diverse strategies for taking advantage of ‘windows of opportunity’ emerge, making the process of decentralisation invariably a messy one. Taking this into account, the following represent recommendations drawn from case study experiences for a politically sensitive approach to decentralisation reform:
- Efforts to support movement towards decentralisation should focus at least as much on the process of building coalitions of support, as on the details of technical design.
- Reformers should not presume that decentralisation always is the preferred alternative for effecting change in the short- and medium-term, but should consider the desirability and feasibility of a broad range of alternative strategies for strengthening downward accountability
- Reformers committed to strengthening downward accountability should work to ensure that a vision of a democratically decentralised polity comprises the long-run backdrop to which more pragmatic and diverse strategies adopted in the short- and medium term are intended to converge over the longer-term
