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Summary of How to Measure Decentralization: A Summary of the Global Literature Review on Decentralization Measurement

Core Content

Decentralization is a multifaceted concept that involves the transfer of authority, resources, and responsibilities from central to sub-national governments. It is broadly categorized into three types: political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization. Each type has distinct characteristics and implications for governance and policy implementation.

The paper reviews various approaches to measuring decentralization, highlighting the lack of a universally accepted framework. Scholars have developed different indicators to assess the degree of decentralization, but these often reflect varying theoretical and methodological perspectives, leading to inconsistencies in measurement.

Main Views

1. Types of Decentralization

• Deconcentration: Transfer of authority within central government to lower levels.
• Delegation: Transfer of responsibility to non-bureaucratic entities, indirectly controlled by the center.
• Devolution: Transfer of power to sub-national local authorities, often involving legal and institutional changes.

The three types of decentralization are interlinked, with fiscal decentralization typically being the most quantifiable, while political and administrative decentralization are more complex and less measurable.

2. Measurement Challenges

There is no consensus on how to measure decentralization due to:

• Diverse theoretical perspectives on the nature and scope of decentralization.
• Methodological differences in data collection and interpretation.
• Limited availability of data, especially at the municipal level, which hinders comprehensive assessment.

Key Indicators and Methods

1. Regional Authority Index (RAI)

• Developed by: Hooghe et al. (2016)
• Approach: A score-based index that evaluates self-rule and shared rule across ten dimensions.
• Dimensions:
  • Self-rule: Institutional depth, policy scope, fiscal autonomy, borrowing autonomy, and representation.
  • Shared rule: Law-making, executive control, fiscal control, borrowing control, and constitutional reform.
• Advantages:
  • Comprehensive and objective.
  • Covers 95 countries and a 70-year period (1950–2018).
• Limitations:
  • No data on sub-national governments with populations under 150,000.
  • Focuses on authority, not expenditure or revenue, which may not fully capture the impact of decentralization.

2. Local Autonomy Index (LAI)

• Developed by: Ladner et al. (2019)
• Approach: Based on weighted indicators across seven dimensions.
• Dimensions include political, fiscal, and administrative factors.
• Advantages:
  • Focuses on local government autonomy.
  • Considers access to decision-making at higher levels.
  • Offers insights into vertical intergovernmental coordination.
• Limitations:
  • Geographic coverage is limited to Europe.
  • May not be easily replicable in other regions without relevant data.

3. Dardanelli's Model

• Approach: A 7-point coding scheme across 22 policy areas and 5 fiscal categories.
• Advantages:
  • Provides a theoretical framework for analyzing dynamic de/centralization.
  • Allows sectoral analysis of decentralization outcomes.
  • Offers a comparative basis for assessing federal systems.
• Limitations:
  • Limited to six federal countries.
  • Ambiguous attribution between policy areas and decentralization levels.
  • Over-reliance on indicator-based outcomes may not reflect the complexity of decentralization.

Key Reflections on Indicators

1. Fiscal Indicators

• Strengths:
  • Most quantifiable and widely used.
  • Include sub-national expenditure and revenue share.
• Limitations:
  • May overestimate decentralization.
  • Lack of data on sub-state levels.
  • Focus on financial resources rather than policy autonomy.

2. Political Indicators

• Least investigated dimension.
• Most studies focus on elections and multi-level governance.
• Opportunities exist for exploring sub-national party systems, citizen participation, and intergovernmental political relationships.

3. Administrative Indicators

• Have seen significant development over the past two decades.
• RAI and LAI are examples of comprehensive frameworks that provide qualitative insights.
• Help balance the over-reliance on fiscal indicators.

4. Overarching Reflections

• Correlations between indicators remain underexplored.
• Conceptual theories linking indicators to causal factors are still lacking.
• Definitions of decentralization are divergent, leading to conceptual inconsistencies among scholars.

Conclusion

Integrated quantitative and qualitative approaches using RAI-type indicators are considered the most comprehensive and objective measures of decentralization. Including citizen perspectives enhances the robustness of these measures. However, political decentralization remains under-researched, and fiscal and administrative indicators could benefit from further refinement to capture the full complexity of decentralization. The paper emphasizes the need for more nuanced and standardized indicators to better reflect the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of decentralization.

References

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• Dardanelli, P., Kincaid, J., Fenna, A., Kaiser, A., Lecours, A. and Singh, A.K. 2019. Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Theorizing Dynamic De/Centralization in Federations.
• Dardanelli, Paolo and Wright, Kieran. 2021. Devometrics: How to Measure Decentralisation? A Review of the Literature.
• Diamond, L. and Tsalik, S. 1999. Size and Democracy: The Case for Decentralization.
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