Decentralization and Development : Issues and Directions

Abstract

Concern with problems of decentralization and development has been now discussed among government and academic circles in this period of rising expectation for democratic participation after a quarter century of suspended local autonomy in Korea. However, little has been substantiated as to how decentralization process could be incorporated with development system at the national and local level. Throughout the world, decentralization has long been regarded a necessary condition of economic, socio and political development. The concept of decentralization has, however, been used extremely loosely defined, permitting many different kinds of institutional arrangements to be implied in its name. Decentralization involves the delegation of power to lower levels in a territorial hierarchy, whether hierarchy is one of governments within a nation or offices within a large organization. In this sense, decentralization may be different from the dispersal of population and establishments from a primate city or large cities to small-and-medium size cities. Dispersal may not be necessarily accompanied by the delegation of power or authority but often means' the spatial relocation of physical entities. It is also distinguished from delegation. Delegation usually means that a superior, whether it be an individual or an authority, entrusts a subordinate with some of the former's responsibilities.