ABSTRACT
A prolonged period of institutional reforms has followed the fiscal crises of the developmental state in the 1980s, and the collapse of socialist economies since 1989. If one were to choose a single word to characterize the nature of institutional changes governments have instituted across many different sectors, that word would likely be “decentralization.” More than 60 national governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America claim to have launched decentralization initiatives in policy arenas as diverse as development, environmental management, health care, welfare, education and credit provision (OECD 1997: 47). This chapter focuses on the environmental management sector via forestry cases and examines institutional changes four national governments have pursued: in Senegal, Uganda, Nepal and Indonesia. The chapter examines the role of different actors in pursuing such reforms, and shows how these reforms are incomplete in many ways. Our argument is based on a close examination of the mechanisms through which central governments attenuate the meaning of decentralization reforms even as they profess to practice them. We examine the pressures that lead central governments to yield reforms as policy concessions, and the political obstacles that the same governments use to reduce the exercise of meaningful local authority. The two main sources of pressures for reforms are international actors and local elite and decision-makers. Interested actors within central governments assist in realizing the pressures toward reforms, sometimes more willingly than others. The two main strategies central governments use to undermine the ability of local governments to make meaningful decisions are: by limiting the kinds of powers that are transferred and the domain in which such powers can be exercised; and by choosing local institutions that serve and answer to central interests.
