POLITICAL DECENTRALIZATION AND PROMOTING PARTICIPATIVE CULTURE, SOLUTIONS IN COUNTERACTING THE FINANCIAL GLOBAL CRISIS
Author(s): Simona Mina / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2011
Keywords: decentralization; civil
society; welfare state; crise
Decentralization in the field of providing public
services reflects what federalism represents for the
governing systems. It evolved in the United States in
the 50’s and it is exemplified as the Tiebout Model: the
local public administrations accomplish and implement
the policies on its own; the individuals will be able to
choose among them, which in turn will lead to higher
competition and quality. A major difference exists, in
situations where decentralization emerged as a result of
a strategy, compared to the ones in which it represented
the collapsing result of the state, due to the impossibility
of the latter to sustain the public services. In certain
states, such as the post-communist ones as well as the
ones in Eastern Asia and Africa, decentralization
emerged as a reaction against the authoritarian regimes
and the states’ incapability of providing certain services.
At that moment it represented the only feasible solution,
not being the result of strategic planning. This type of
“forced” decentralization determines certain application
problems, in a sense that the transfer of power is
accomplished in time. As a conclusion, decentralization
represents the transfer of power which changes a
subordinate type relation in to a coordinating type
relation; it’s a relative concept, which is defined in
rapport to other levels of institutional organization. The
decentralization term can be applied to other
organizations, except for the public sector, but in
general it is used in providing public services by the
administrative system. Before the neo-liberal speech,
decentralization was marginal, in the speech regarding
development based on a centralized state. In the 80’s,
the neo-liberalism promoted by the Reagan
administration in the United States and Thatcher in
Great Britain considers decentralization as an essential
policy for the minimal involvement of the state, by
privatizing the public services. In the 90’s the
acknowledgment of the state’s role in development as
well as decentralization become key elements in the
reform of public administration. The new path, the new
public management, refers to the reform of the public
system, following the private management guidelines.
The new public management confers decentralization
the main role in improving the provided services by the
public administration, its objective being the transition
from a single unit administration regarding the
management of services, to a system that is based on a
larger number of players which administer and
implement these services. The Neo-liberalism
implemented by Margaret Thatcher represented a model
for reinventing the governing act (reinventing
government), by adopting solutions from the markets mechanisms and reaffirming the government’s
efficiency. The public’s problems cannot be solved by
a single “actor”, such as the state, in a world that is in a
full state of globalization, with insufficient national
budg
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