ABSTRACT
OUR analytical description of decentralization gives the im pression of a carefully worked-out system. This impression is by and large correct-for the system as i t is today. But this analysis also seems to imply-as does every systematic description-that today's structure has been planned this way. This implication is dangerously misleading. Indeed decentral ization would be worthless and unworkable, i f not outright destructive, had i t been imposed as a theoretically-devised plan of corporate organization. Not only would such a plan have been r i g i d , doctrinaire and incapable of growth and development, i t would have antagonized the people who were to work wi th i t and under i t as an artifact spun out of thin air, unrelated to actual experience and actual problems, and imposed on them by executive fiat. Decentralization, i n other words, would have been regarded as a form of "enlightened despotism." The important fact about "enlightened despot ism"—also the one fact "enlightened despots" always forget —is that, while i t appears as enlightenment to those i n power, i t is despotism pure and simple to those under i t . Another and potentially even more serious result of a theoretical over-all plan would have been that every practical problem demand ing a solution would have appeared as a challenge to the plan and as an attack on its basic principles-simply because no plan, however good, can foresee practical problems of the future and can solve them in advance. Final ly , a theoretical system is always more concerned wi th the question whether the solution to a concrete situation is i n harmony wi th the
principles of the plan, than whether i t is appropriate to the situation. A theoretical plan becomes an end i n itself; and concrete administrative action-the first job of any system of government-becomes impossible.
