2006 August, Jesse C. Ribot, Arun Agrawal, Ann M. Larson / World Development
The majority of national governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America claim to have launched decentralization initiatives in policy arenas as diverse as development, environmental management, healthcare, welfare, education, and credit provision. Thus this article focuses on the environmental management sector via forestry cases and examines institutional changes that six national governments have pursued: in Senegal, Uganda, Nepal, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. The article shows that these reforms are incomplete in many ways and identifies specific mechanisms through which decentralization reforms are attenuated.
Most decentralization reforms are either flawed in their design, or encounter strong resistance from a variety of actors that erodes their effectiveness. This article illustrates this observation by analyzing six different experiences of decentralization in the forestry sector. The cases selected are counted among the most important or innovative of efforts to decentralize. This paper’s objective is to examine comparatively the structure and out-comes of decentralization in these critical cases in relation to the justifications advanced for pursuing them, and show how calculations of political–economic gains affect decentralization processes. This paper’s comparative analysis suggests that fundamental aspects of decentralization, including discretionary powers and downwardly accountable representative authorities, are missing in practice.
This article is broadly empirical and comparative, identifying common patterns and regularities across diverse cases from three continents. This paper’s case discussion contributes to a more informed theoretical discussion of the reasons for the failure of decentralization initiatives. To frame the presentation of this paper’s case studies, the analysis first provides a working definition of decentralization, and to outline the major justifications of decentralized decision making. The second part of the paper examines the main features of decentralization of forestry policy in the six cases, two each from Africa (Senegal and Uganda), Asia (Nepal and Indonesia), and Latin America (Bolivia and Nicaragua). In each case, this paper’s review articulated justifications of decentralization, the extent to which governments have actually decentralized decision making and other powers regarding the environment and natural resources, the actors who have come to gain new powers, and some observable social and environmental outcomes.
The ensuing section draws on the case evidence to examine the attenuation of decentralization initiatives and maintenance of centralized control. We conclude by focusing on key factors that would make decentralization reforms more effective.
