ABSTRACT
This chapter examines China's institutional reorganization since the late 1970s, which has had a significant impact on the nation's central-local relations. It deals with a conceptual construction of how to measure institutional decentralization. The chapter explores the organizational changes that have taken place during the process of institutional decentralization in post-Mao China. It proposes an alternative conceptual framework to measure changes in central-local relations. It outlines a careful examination of three main characteristics in the institutional framework of central-local relations: institutional design, institutional function and institutional differentiation. Institutional readjustment is important for analyzing China's post-Mao decentralization on two fronts: it provides an administrative framework from which to understand economic decentralization; and it is a significant component of China's changing central-local relations. Traditional measurements of decentralization focus on the degree of decentralization taking place. Dennis A. Rondinelli and Shabbir G. Cheema distinguish four types of decentralization: deconcentration, delegation, devolution, and debureaucratization.
