Methodology for Assessing Decentralization

[Glen Wright]

Dear Colleagues:   I am pleased to join Fitz as co-moderator for the Decentralization Topic.  My main area of interest is fiscal decentralization, but that is connected to the whole range of issues that relate to local governance and decentralization.  Over the past year I have undertaken to develop decentralization assessments, strategies and policy documents in Somaliland, Puntland, and Albania.  The challenge in doing these are many, but the initial challenge is how to develop some framework or methodology for doing the assessment and then translating that into some coherent, integrated and practical roadmap for implementing decentralization.  So, I have searched around for some methods or technique that would help me to develop this framework.

What I found useful and have used is the methodology proposed by Boex and Yilmaz that they describe in their paper An Analytical Framework for Assessing Decentralized Local Governance and the Local Public Sector.‎  It proposes a framework of political, administrative and fiscal decentralization that I found useful as a starting point for doing an assessment. I have found this to be useful and would be interested to know what your opinions are of this methodology, have you used it, and how it might be developed further. 

I would be glad to share the Decentralization Reports I did for Somaliland, Puntland, and Albania as well and welcome your sending me your reports or methodology approaches as well.  I think a good exchange of information and opinions might lead to some further developments with assessing and measuring decentralization.

[syilmaz]

Dear Glen,

Thanks for citing to our paper. Jamie Boex has started a series of country case studies based this framework. Currently, he and I are working on a paper to apply the framework to Sierra Leone context. Seperately I have developed what I call discretion and accountability framework (see the attached piece). I'd interested in getting feedback on that as well. best

[avilajr]

Thanks Glen for sharing the framework for assessing decentralization.  Just like you my area of interest is in fiscal decentralization.  It would be interesting to use the framework for assessing decentralization here in the Philippines after more than 20 years of implementation.  best regards.

[Glen Wright]

Dear Serdar:   Thanks for your contribution to this discussion.  I will read your paper with care and provide some response in next days.  I believe the practitioners in this field need a much better framework of analysis and then apply this analysis on a more consistent basis across countries.  I have had some discussions with Jamie about this as well.

One of my main concerns is that there are a number of so-called decentralization indicators and these tend to be one-time snapshots of a country situation with little follow-up on a regular basis.  I think this is one of the main failures of these decentralization indicators, that other indicators, such as transparency and corruption, among others, have avoided.  Is there a solution to this.

Please continue to contribute to this with additional comments and contributions of the literature.

[Glen Wright]

Dear Avilajr:  Thanks for this comment.  I have had some experience in working in the Philippines and it would be interesting to see how decentralization could be assessed there.  Based on your experience, how applicable do you see the methodology developed by Boex and Yilmaz as being possible to utilize in the Philippines.  Are there parts of it that would be difficult to apply.

You might also go to www.localpublicsector.org and you will find there a number of country studies that apply the assessment model.  Unfortunately, Philippines is not one of them, but you might see if you could utilize this framework for the Philippines. 

If you have some examples of fiscal decentralization products based on your work, please share with us as well.  Exchanging experiences would be very useful.

[Glen Wright]

Serdar:  I read your paper with great interest and it does present a very comprehensive view of this important issue that you raise with regard to discretion and accountability. What drew my attention was the four possible combinations you identified as follows:  "There are four possible combinations of discretion and accountability in any given country context: (i) both are very low – highly centralised countries with no local government accountability; (ii) discretion is high but lacks accountability – this combination may actually create perverse incentives for local governments, making them vulnerable to capture by elites or prone to reckless decision-making; (iii) countries are more focused on establishing accountability structures for local governments, in many cases in the form of ex ante approvals and input controls, but without a high degree of discretion for decision-making, local governments are overloaded by accountability requirements, primarily to upper levels of government which make the major decisions, with little incentive for being accountable towards citizens; and (iv) local governments have a high degree of discretionary power accompanied by a high degree of accountability towards citizens. This scenario assumes that decentralisation in all dimensions (political, administrative, and fiscal) is fully implemented, and it successfully integrates both public and social accountability approaches."

What I would be interested in is more definition of the conditions of each of these and how you would be able to assess in specific country situation where a country would fit to any one of these combinations.  I keep looking for some grading system for decentralization assessment.  Have you done something along these lines within your research.

[Glen Wright]

I attach the use of the assessment matrix I did for a Decentralization Policy for Somaliland last year.  I found gathering information in this format to be useful method to develop the basis for defining decentralization policies.  Although, it is not really an measuring or indicator assessment, it does provide some basis for developing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats for decentralization.  Let me know if you find this interesting and useful and practical in your own work.  I would be willing to share the complete Decentralization Policy document that provides the full scope of the decentralization assessment, decentralization policy statements, and roadmap for decentralization.

[Glen Wright]

There is a great difficulty in expressing what decentralization policy means to those policy makers who are to make the decisions.  In the policy documents I have reviewed and the ones I have written even, it is difficult to provide a concise statement of what various aspects of decentralization policy should contain. In my recent assignment in Somalialand, the best advice I got came from the Vice President who told me the policy needs to be simple and communicable to the citizens.  So, in that effort, I wrote a series of decentralization policy statements, that I thought might meet this requirement.  I attach these here and would welcome comments on these.  The policy statements are based on the political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization descriptions provided by Boex and Yilmaz as previous cited.