Currently there is a propensity that decentralized hierarchy is adopted by organizations. Vast realms of research endeavor have been committed to understand the advantages and setbacks of decentralized organizations, and their results indicate that inadequate decentralization will constrain the creativity of employees while over decentralization may push the company towards chaos. However, litt...

OBJECTIVE To examine whether decentralization has improved health system performance in the State of Ceara, north-east Brazil. METHODS Ceara is strongly committed to decentralization. A survey across 45 local (municipio) health systems collected data on performance and formal organization, including decentralization, informal management and local political culture. The indicators for informal...

Decentralization reforms aim at strengthening democracy by promoting political participation among citizens. Research shows (1) that information is a prerequisite for political participation and (2) that people face different private costs in acquiring information. Here we combine the two lines of research and ask: what private costs hamper the acquisition of information on decentralization? Fo...

D ecentralization is a major feature of current institutional innovation throughout the world. In Latin America, most countries have recently implemented decentralization policies following a long tradition of centralized government. Argentina has not been the exception. The decentralization of educational services from the federal to provincial governments was an important component of the str...

We study secessionist conflict driven by cultural and economic motives in a political union of two regions, and analyze under what conditions partial decentralization may serve as a conflict-mitigating strategy. While the probability of a successful secession is increasing in heterogeneity, it is increasing in interregional income inequality if and only if the union is socially efficient to sta...

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...

An important piece of the major fiscal and structural reforms undertaken in Argentina in the early 1990’s was the decentralization of education services from the federal government to the provincial governments. The theoretical literature does not find absolute superiority of centralization or decentralization in the provision of public services. We evaluate empirically the effect of the decent...