ABSTRACT
According to many international authors, 1 decentralization (for forms and a definition see Box 1) must be seen as one of the most important recent development policy approaches to pushing through reforms of government and administration with the aim of (a) achieving better government performance, (b) perpetuating the promotion of local democracy, (c) supporting broad-based regional development and (d) promoting national integration. For Simon (Simon 2001, p. 151), therefore,
there is no alternative to decentralization as a development strategy today: it is being propagated everywhere and introduced even in developing countries, as well as it can be. This does not alter the fact that it is constantly the subject of critical analysis. This criticism may quite rightly refer to numerous problems associated with the decentralization concept and most certainly to even more numerous shortcomings of decentralization in practice. But if the two aspects are not measured against some ideal or other, but compared to the other available options for reforming government and administration, the conclusion is obvious: there is practically no proposal that can be taken seriously for reverting to and introducing centralist structures rather than resorting to decentralization. As a general rule, then, it is no longer a question of whether decentralization should be the goal in developing countries, but simply how it can be achieved, and what insights in this respect can be gained from past experience.
