| By: |
Ivanyna, Maksym;
Shah, Anwar |
| Abstract: |
This paper is intended to provide an assessment of the impact of the silent
revolution (decentralization reforms) of the last three decades on moving
governments closer to people to establish fair, accountable, incorruptible and
responsive governance. To accomplish this, a unique data set is constructed
for 182 countries by compiling data from a wide variety of sources to examine
success toward decentralized decision making across the globe. An important
feature of this data set is that, for comparative purposes, it measures
government decision making at the local level rather than at the sub-national
levels used in the existing literature. The data are used to rank countries on
political, fiscal and administrative dimensions of decentralization and
localization. These sub-indexes are aggregated and adjusted for heterogeneity
to develop an overall ranking of countries on the closeness of their
government to the people. The resulting index is associated with higher level
of human development and lower level of corruption, and thus provides a useful
explanation of the Arab Spring and other recent political movements and waves
of dissatisfaction with governance around the world. -- |
| Keywords: |
localization,decentralization,home rule,fiscal autonomy,political autonomy,administrative autonomy,local governance,government accountability,trust in government,good governance,responsive,accountable and fair governance |
| JEL: |
H10 H11 H83 I31 O10 |
| Date: |
2013 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201338&r=ict |