decentralisation
1. Concept of Decentralization
The Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan), once received their independence form USSR, started a massive decentralization process. Decentralization, generally speaking, is a process that aims to re-distribute powers and responsibilities from the top to lower levels of a government.
Fritzen S. A. and Lim W. O. distinguish four categories of decentralization: administrative (the transfer of policy making, planning and management responsibilities to the local levels), fiscal (the effort to increase the financial resources available at local governments), political (devolution of powers to democratically elected local governments) and market (assignment of the control over the resource allocation to non governmental bodies)1.
Further, these authors distinguish the sub-types of administrative decentralization: deconcentration and delegation. Deconcentration occurs when the center acts through geographically distributed branches, thus without practically transferring powers to the local governments. Delegation, on the contrary, takes place when the central government effectively transfers some powers to the local governments that, however, remain to a great extent accountable to the central government.
Differently from Fritzen and Lim, international organizations like, for example, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) differentiate three sub-types of administrative decentralization: deconcentration, delegation and devolution. Deconcentration is the weakest form of decentralization. It is mainly used by unitary states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are declared unitary states by their constitutions) in order to distribute managerial, fiscal and decision-making responsibilities to different sub-ordinated levels of central government2. Delegation is intermediate form of decentralization. According to the World Bank “through delegation central governments transfer
The Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan), once received their independence form USSR, started a massive decentralization process. Decentralization, generally speaking, is a process that aims to re-distribute powers and responsibilities from the top to lower levels of a government.
Fritzen S. A. and Lim W. O. distinguish four categories of decentralization: administrative (the transfer of policy making, planning and management responsibilities to the local levels), fiscal (the effort to increase the financial resources available at local governments), political (devolution of powers to democratically elected local governments) and market (assignment of the control over the resource allocation to non governmental bodies)1.
Further, these authors distinguish the sub-types of administrative decentralization: deconcentration and delegation. Deconcentration occurs when the center acts through geographically distributed branches, thus without practically transferring powers to the local governments. Delegation, on the contrary, takes place when the central government effectively transfers some powers to the local governments that, however, remain to a great extent accountable to the central government.
Differently from Fritzen and Lim, international organizations like, for example, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) differentiate three sub-types of administrative decentralization: deconcentration, delegation and devolution. Deconcentration is the weakest form of decentralization. It is mainly used by unitary states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are declared unitary states by their constitutions) in order to distribute managerial, fiscal and decision-making responsibilities to different sub-ordinated levels of central government2. Delegation is intermediate form of decentralization. According to the World Bank “through delegation central governments transfer