How does the degree of political decentralization in a country affect the quality of its government? Greater political decentralization might make governments more honest and efficient by bringing officials “closer to the people”, forcing them to compete for mobile capital, and facilitating the satisfaction of diverse local tastes. On the other hand, it might create coordination problems or roa...

This article describes the local government system established in the 2001 Devolution Plan and its evolution over the period 2002-07, with a focus on two essential public services, education and health. We believe that the devolution of service delivery functions, delegation of financial powers, decentralization of authority, and deconcentration of executive powers, can, together, lead to bette...

D is pursued for a variety of reasons: technical, political, and financial. On the technical side, it is frequently recommended as a means to improve administrative and service delivery effectiveness. Politically, decentralization usually seeks to increase local participation and autonomy, redistribute power, and reduce ethnic and/or regional tensions. On the financial side, decentralization is...

This paper investigates the determinants of government size at the provincial level in China. We employ the panel data model as a platform for empirical analysis and control for endogeneity in the study. Our study shows that openness to trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) may curtail government expansion, and that the provincial-level public sector is characterized by economies of scale. ...

during the last two decades, decentralization has been supposed as a tool for making the public sector policies more efficient. despite the claimed benefits, there are some costs; some of decentralization theorists believe that devolution of pure public goods provision to local governments has led to the failure of decentralization policies. this article uses game theory to study the implicatio...

Environmental protection is a basic public service that the government must guarantee and closely related to health. An important driver of environmental pollution in China local government’s pursuit rapid economic development while ignoring under Chinese-style fiscal decentralization system. On basis principal–agent theory between central governments, this study analyzes deterioration caused b...

The democratization that took place in Japan over the latter half of the twentieth century led to local governments achieving a degree of autonomy that allowed them to manage aspects of public policy in such areas as regional development, welfare, environmental development, and government information disclosure. As these local authorities increasingly became active players in the policymaking p...