Decentralization and Its Implications for Urban Service Delivery

摘要

This paper reviews efforts to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of urban service delivery in developing countries. It argues that failures in urban service delivery are not merely the result of a lack of technical knowledge on the part of local government staff, but also reflect constraints and perverse incentives confronting local personnel and their political leadership, and that these, in turn, are often the inadvertent result of problems in the relationship between central and local government. In this respect, the report views the spread of decentralization as a potentially fortuitous phenomenon. As a political phenomenon, decentralization is widespread. But the objectives of decentralization--as it is observed in practice--appear only tangentially related to administrative performance. Decentralization affects not only urban services, but also social sectors, non-urban infrastructure, and--conceivably--the stability of national economies and the effectiveness of poverty-alleviation efforts. As the present degree of fluidity in intergovernmental relations is presumable transitory, it is an opportunity that should be seized.