DECENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION.

 DECENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION.

1.The fiscal illusion is an adaptation of the concept of the “Tragedy of the Commons.” In his original piece, Hardin imagined a pasture open to all herdsmen, who, motivated by self-interest, try to keep as many cattle as possible. To maximize individual utility on the shared commons, a rational herdsman will seek to add another animal to his herd. Since the resources of the commons are limited, adding together the component of partial utilities of all rational herdsmen, leads to tragedy for all. To evade such a tragedy, Hardin recommended the adoption of either coercive laws to limit exploitation of the shared commons or the creation of tax devices that communicate the cost of maintaining the shared commons. These recommendations have been adopted in the fiscal decentralization literature to connote the benefit-taxation principle. In the Kenyan perspective, the tragedy of the commons may be evident given the CDF’s current operational structure, which blurs the total cost of development projects as a result of the independent local decisions that put pressure on the center’s general fund. The problem of the commons arises when some government programs that concentrate benefits to certain areas are financed from the general fund mainly through transfers and whose collective outcome is fiscal deficits. The theory of fiscal federalism conceives the organization of the public sector in a more or less federal way so that different levels of government provide public services and have some scope for de facto decision-making authority irrespective of the formal constitution within a nation-state. From a normative perspective, fiscal federalism identifies three roles for the public sector: macroeconomic stabilization, income redistribution, and resource allocation in the presence of market failure. The macroeconomic stabilization and income redistribution functions are assigned to the central government, while the resource allocation function is assigned to sub-national governments (World Bank Report ). The main benefit associated with a federal fiscal structure is economic efficiency, which rests on two assumptions. First, it assumes that a group of individuals who reside in a community or region possess tastes and preference patterns that are homogenous and that these tastes and preferences differ from those of individuals who live in other communities or regions.

And second, it assumes that individuals within a region have a better knowledge of the costs and benefits of public services of their region. Thus, resources devoted to public purposes should be left to the local people to enhance their preferences for public expenditure that optimizes costs. A federal fiscal structure, however, is not without problems. Once created, it produces a new category of interest groups that are geographically located and lobby for greater transfers to enable them to provide more votes generating expenditures to their constituents at no additional direct tax cost. Additionally, a federal fiscal structure financed by transfers from the central government encourages local jurisdictions to ignore the tax collection burdens for financing their expenditures while at the same time increasing public expenditure obligations. The use and adequacy of transfers, however, hinges on the goals that the national government seeks to advance. If the national goal is to improve the populations’ welfare, then whether transfers export tax burdens to the national government is less important. If, however, the goal of the transfers is to free local jurisdictions from the center’s dictates and make them sustainable, then transfers that lack a benefit-taxation principle might be detrimental. A possible remedy for the above problems seems to be the need for clarity in defining a jurisdiction’s fiscal responsibilities and the financial instruments needed to support the delivery of the needed public services. Fiscal decentralization in Kenya through CDF in this project is conceived as a delegated form of decentralization because constituencies enjoy some form of discretion in expenditure decision making. However, they have to follow the central government’s directions and requests. For instance, constituencies use CDF funds to build clinics but expect the central government to bring such clinics into operation by employing new nurses, supplying drugs, and incurring regular maintenance costs. The costs of running two or three clinics in one constituency may not appear to be much, but collectively such costs across the entire country may be monstrous for the Ministry of Health (MOH). Thus, a failure to grasp the ‘true’ cost of running such projects creates fiscal illusions on recipients of such services to view public services as ‘free.’ Fiscal illusions as a result of independent constituency-level decisions are likely to exhaust the common pool resources and, thus, aggravate the problem of the commons. These issues call for attention to address the budgetary implications of fiscal decentralization.

 

2. 156 African Studies Review

Keywords: Decentralization; devolution; governance; local development; patronage;

2 Political decentralization presupposes the transfer of functions or authority from intermediate levels of government to sub-national institutions based on local political representation. This means that locally elected representatives must govern the local institution to which tasks are devolved. This type of decentralization is sometimes referred to as devolution. Administrative decentralization means the delegation of tasks or transfer of authority from central government to local ‘branches’ of central government (i.e., the local institutions to which tasks are delegated are not based on any local political representation controlled from below). This type of decentralization is frequently referred to as deconcentration. The difference between a unitary and a federal state is not that one is more decentralized than the other but that the former can be decentralized through legislation, whereas the constitution decentralizes the latter. In a federation, certain matters are constitutionally devolved to local units, and the central government cannot unilaterally revoke decentralized powers, unlike in a unitary state where the power to recentralize is vested in the central government. A constitutional change affecting responsibilities and rights requires the consent of both levels of government. Thus, federations automatically imply a codified and written constitution, often accompanied at the federal level by a supreme court. Governments of unitary states have the authority to delegate powers downward to regional and local institutions through legislation, but the regions have no right to any of these powers. A unitary state can be highly centralized, or it can be decentralized with a substantial degree of autonomy for provinces or communes. Regardless of the degree of decentralization, it remains a unitary state. The powers held by local and regional organs have been received from above. They can, in principle, be withdrawn through new central legislation, without any need for consent from the districts or provinces concerned. In practice, however, it may not be straightforward to recentralize a decentralized, unitary state. Since the general principle says nothing about how much power each level enjoys, regions in federations may enjoy less de facto power than those in decentralized unitary states. Moreover, the level of decentralization to lower governmental units within each governmental unit may also have implications for the national integration of states. In terms of conflict management, groups that claim more cultural autonomy or the right to secession may pose the same challenges to unitary states as to multicultural3 federal states. In both cases, the central government needs to compromise between centrifugal and uniting forces to achieve national integration. Political inclusion of new groups Decentralization may allow participation by minority groups, often excluded from power at the national level, in political processes in their immediate environment, thereby potentially reducing conflicts. Where the governing party controls national institutions, and where the opposition party captures several sub-national units, a structural stalemate may ensue. Such stalemates may be resolved through security-enhancing coalitions between formerly irreconcilable opponents. The decentralization program helped motivate the rebels to accept defeat in the first-ever national elections, with the implicit promises that power-sharing could take place within new democratic institutions at the local level. Deepening of democracy as a means of national integration The World Bank points out that decentralization can serve as an institutional mechanism to bring sub-national groups into a formal bargaining process with the government.it argues that governments use decentralization to increase national cohesion and central control in three situations. First, decentralization can be a means of attracting back regions or ethnic groups that are threatening to form independent state This was the case in most one-party states that implemented decentralization reforms decentralization is motivated by such pressures, explaining that countries prone to decentralize are those ready to respond to “claims for local autonomy to manage political conflict.” State legitimation Politically, decentralization can be used for state legitimation. States set out to garner popular support and to meet the needs of individual political actors who are allowed to form a support base locally and to go on to lead ministries argues that in post-independence the demands on the state were that it should establish a socialist regime; promote land reform; provide equitable access to social services; and facilitate greater political participation. Given the high cost of social services and an impending fiscal crisis, “policies to strengthen regional planning through decentralization are seen to ‘kill two birds with one stone.

 

3. Ethnic and cultural pluralism has become the hallmark of today’s world. It is so clear that the nation-state, which intellectuals and politicians have always spoken of as the ideal type of political societies, has rarely been realized on the ground. According to reliable scientific studies, homogeneous countries do not exceed 9% of the world’s countries. But what is important here is that ethnic and cultural pluralism led to severe ethnic and racial conflicts. These conflicts prevail in most countries of the world at different economic, social, and political levels. Therefore, these phenomena are not concerning only the Third World countries but also located in the most advanced countries like France, Belgium, Spain, and Canada. The problem was also found in the former Soviet Union and the United States of America.Ethnic and cultural pluralism is not a problem in itself. Still, this type of conflict is often related to how the ruling authorities deal with this diversity. According to the government policies in this regard, cultural pluralism can be a source of cultural power and enrichment, or a source of disunity, weakness, and fragmentation. As a result of bad policies, ethnic conflicts have led to the death of millions of people all over the world, the destruction and disintegration of many countries, the collapse of infrastructure, the waste of resources, the flight of millions of their homes, the deteriorating health conditions, malnutrition and the spread of crimes and social and psychological problems. This paper aims to identify ethnic conflicts, their causes, and consequences, and to study models of ethnic conflicts throughout the world, to demonstrate the universality of the phenomenon, and to examine various models and methods used by political leaders to deal with these conflicts. The study was divided into three main axes as follows: The first axis: the concept of ethnic conflict. The second axis: models of ethnic conflicts. The third axis: methods of settling ethnic disputes: a study and evaluation. Firstly: The concept of ethnic conflict: The definition of ethnic conflict requires defining the concepts of “conflict” and “ethnicity,” which ultimately leads to the definition of “ethnic conflict.” In the following pages, the researcher will attempt to clarify these concepts, despite the wide differences between scholars and thinkers in this regard. The Concept of Conflict: As previously noted, scholars and thinkers did not agree on the meaning of the conflict. For example, some see the conflict as “a violent and armed confrontation between groups and between the state, or between two or more states, and where some of those involved in this confrontation are injured or killed.” According to this definition, the conflict refers to an (armed) confrontation between two or more parties that leads to (killing or injuring) some parties. Other definitions did not mention armed confrontation but focused on competition between the parties to the conflict. For example, Peter Wallenstein defines the conflict as “a social situation in which at least two parties struggle to acquire the limited available resources. In this regard, Ahmed Fouad Raslan says that the word “conflict” reflects the circumstances under which a specific human group enters into conscious opposition to one or more identifiable human groups because the objectives and interests of these groups are not compatible with its objectives and interests. This definition also focuses on conflict arising from the contradiction of interest without specifying the form, scope, and tools used in this conflict. Others see the conflict as a “behavior” or “action,” such as a trade union strike to force the employer to raise wages, reduce hours of work, or improve its conditions, or when the employer closes his work to pressure workers to accept his conditions. But this definition was criticized because if it is true that only the actions constitute the conflict, the conflict ends with the end of the behavior. Still, the conflict ends only when the parties move towards the issues in the conflict and agree on certain solutions. The definitions we have mentioned are mere samples of the definitions of conflict. Still, conflicts differ in many respects: violent and non-violent conflicts, apparent conflicts and hidden conflicts, and (under control) conflicts and (out of control) conflicts. The concept of ethnicity: The term “Ethnicity” is derived from the Latin word “Ethnos,” which corresponds to the word “Nation.” For example, Morris defines it as “a specific group whose culture differs from that of the larger society in which they live, and whose members believe to be associated with ethnic, national, or cultural ties. While some define it as ” A human group whose members share certain physical elements (as race), or cultural (such as language, religion, history, or other cultural components. There is a great difference between these two definitions. The first definition requires that ethnic groups should be in a larger society. In contrast, the second definition called any group that has an association of ethnic, religious, cultural, or religious origin “ethnic group.” Perhaps the second definition is more appropriate because the talk here is about an ethnic group, not an ethnic minority, where a larger community is required to live alongside the ethnic minority. In contrast, this is not required in the ethnic group, because we do not usually talk about this group concerning other groups in society. Still, we are talking about the form of links between its members According to the above definition of conflict and ethnicity, ethnic conflict can be defined as conflict between different ethnic groups within a single state, where each group seeks to impose its culture, language, and religion on the other groups, especially when the ethnic group is strong, and able to impose its visions on the other groups. At the same time, the vulnerable groups often do not give up but defend their cultural peculiarities. Despite their weakness, they do not recognize the legitimacy of the ruling majority. On the contrary, they consider government decisions as an attempt by the ruling majority to impose their vision and cultural model. Sometimes, the ruling groups persecute other groups, leading them to rebel. In turn, the authority uses excessive force to counter it, which could lead to a civil war in the state, or at least lead to a state of instability in the state, which is reflected negatively on the legitimacy of the political system as a whole.