Administrative Decentralization:A New Framework for Improved Governance,

Accountability, and Performance

John M. Cohen and Stephen B. Peterson

Abstract

Decision-makers and aid agency professionals in a number of transitional and developingcountries are increasingly turning to “administrative decentralization” as a strategy foraddressing a number of critical governmental needs. Foremost among these are improvedgovernance, increased transparency and accountability, and more effective and efficient production anddelivery of public goods and services. Unfortunately, currently available analytical frameworks andguidelines are not particularly helpful in assisting them to design strategies and reforms aimedat promoting these and other needs.

This paper summarizes a new Framework developed by the authors that can assist gov-ernments and aid agencies in transitional and developing countries to design and implementadministrative decentralization strategies and reforms. Labeled the “Administrative DesignFramework,” it emerges from a lengthy exercise carried out by the authors for the UnitedNations in 1995-96.

Annex I of the paper seeks to briefly review the problems and limitations of current frame-works and guidelines. In this regard, this paper should be read in conjunction with theauthors’ earlier HIID Development Discussion on methodological problems in thedecentralization literature, which is cited in the Annex. Importantly, the Annex also describesthe currently dominant “Type-Function Framework,” particularly because its definitionalclarity on the forms and types of decentralization are drawn upon by the authors in formulatingtheir new Framework.

A second Annex summarizes the issues involved in redefining the public sector. This An-nex reviews current debates about downsizing and reengineering the public sector. Such a re-view is central, for administrative decentralization is essentially a strategy for rationalizing thedistribution of public sector tasks held by the central government in most transitional and de-veloping countries.

John M. Cohen is an Institute Fellow at HIID.

Stephen B. Peterson is a Development Associate at HIID and currently Chief-of-Party for theHIID executed USAID “Decentralization Support Project” in Ethiopia.

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Administrative Decentralization: A New Framework forImproved Governance, Accountability, and Performance

Decision-makers and aid agency profession-als in many transitional and developingcountries are increasingly turning to“administrative decentralization” as a strategyfor addressing a number of critical govern-mental needs. Foremost among these arestrengthened governance, increased transparencyand accountability, and more effective and effi-cient production and delivery of public goods andservices. Unfortunately, currently availableanalytical frameworks and guidelines onadministrative decentralization are not veryhelpful in assisting them to design strategiesand reforms aimed at promoting these andother needs.

It is not the purpose of this paper to ana-lyze the problems and limitations of currentframeworks and guidelines. But Annex I doessummarizes the conceptual problems thathamper academic and professional discussionof advantages and strategies of administra-tive decentralization reforms.1 More impor-tantly, Annex I describes the Type-FunctionFramework, which is currently the mostwidely accepted Framework focused on ad-ministrative decentralization.2 To some ex-

1 An expanded view of methodological problemsin the analysis of decentralization is published inan earlier HIID Development Discussion Paper:John M. Cohen and Stephen B. Peterson,“Methodological Issues in the Analysis of Decentrali-zation (Cambridge: Harvard Institute for Interna-tional Development, Development DiscussionPaper No. 555, October 1996).2 The Type-Function Framework is based oninitial work in the early 1980s: G. Shabbir Cheemaand Dennis A. Rondinelli, eds., Decentralizationand Development: Policy Implementation inDeveloping Countries (Beverly Hills: SagePublications, 1983). The best summary of its form,

tend this is because its conceptual definitionsof forms and types of decentralization providethe basis of the analytical framework pro-posed by the authors is based.3 In this regard,it is essential to point out that the authorsaccept the dominant Framework’s assertionthat one must distinguish between variousforms and types and decentralization, such aspolitical, market, spatial, and administrative.Of these forms, the new Framework pre-sented here is focused on administration. TheAnnex is particularly important because itcontains basic definitions of the form of ad-ministrative decentralization and its threetypes of administrative decentralization: de-concentration, devolution, and delegation. Thesethree types provide a the linkage between thecurrently dominant Framework and the newFramework.

Nor is it the purpose of this paper to de-scribe the theoretical foundations for admin-istratively decentralizing the central govern-ments of transitional and developing coun-

type, and function focus are found in: Dennis A.Rondinelli, Decentralizing Urban DevelopmentPrograms: A Framework for Analyzing Policy(Washington, D.C., USAID, Office of Housing andUrban Programs, 1990), pp. 9-15; Jerry M.Silverman, Public Sector Decentralization: EconomicPolicy and Sector Investment Programs (Washington,D.C.: World Bank, African Technical Department,Technical Paper No. 188, 1992).3 John M. Cohen and Stephen B. Peterson,“Administrative Decentralization Strategies forthe 1990s and Beyond” (Research Study Preparedfor the Governance and Public AdministrationBranch, Division for Public Administration andManagement Development, Department for De-velopment Support and Management Services,United Nations Secretariat, November 1995).

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tries. However, it should be noted that thenew Framework is based on:• the growing trend to find ways to reinvent

or re-engineer the public sector likes at theheart of the new Framework presentedhere;

• principles drawn from the theoretical litera-ture on organizations, public choice, fiscalfederalism, and public finance; and

• promoting economic growth, addressingfinancial incapacity of the state, reducingthe spatial concentration of development,and promoting bureaucratic reform.

This being the case, a second Annexsummarizes these foundations. and reviewscurrent debates about redefining, downsiz-ing, and reengineering the public sector. Sucha summary is central for administrative de-centralization is essentially a strategy forrationalizing the distribution of public sectortasks held by the central government in manytransitional and developing countries.

The new Framework, labeled the“Administrative Design Framework,” seeks toassist decision-makers and aid agency pro-fessionals to:• strengthen local-level governance, increase

transparency and accountability, and im-prove governmental performance; and

• break the “monopoly of central control”and find innovative ways to allow local-level associations and firms to produce anddeliver public goods and services.

Administrative Design FrameworkDesign Strategies

The Administrative Design Frameworkexamines administrative design in terms ofthe concentration of organizational and insti-tutional roles that implement public sectortasks. The central principle underlying thisFramework is that providing allocative tasksthrough a pluralist, rather than a monopolist,administrative design promotes accountabil-ity, which in most transitional and develop-

ing countries is the most important principalof administrative design. Breaking the“monopoly of central design” and expandingthe options of administrative design is one ofthe major challenges facing administratorsand development assistance agencies usingdecentralized strategies to promote account-able delivery of public goods and services.

Viewed from the perspective of roles, theFramework identifies three administrativedesign strategies, which are defined by howconcentrated roles are:• Institutional Monopoly, or centralization, is

where roles are concentrated at the spatialcenter in an organization or institution;

• Distributed Institutional Monopoly, or admin-istrative decentralization to local-level gov-ernmental institutions or private sectorfirms and organization through deconcen-tration, devolution, and/or delegation, butwhere roles are distributed spatially andconcentrated in one organization or institu-tion; and

• Institutional Pluralism, or administrative de-centralization through deconcentration,devolution, and/or delegation, but whereroles are shared by two or more organiza-tions or institutions, which can be at thespatial center, distributed, or a combinationof both.

Components of Administrative DesignFramework

The Administrative Design Frameworkhas three components: principles of admini-stration, purpose of the public sector, andproperties of design.

The principles of design are the normativecriteria by which to judge the performance ofan administrative system. A hierarchy ofthree design principles is offered: accountabil-ity, efficiency, and effectiveness. Togetherevaluation of these three criteria help design-ers and/or reformers optimize the mobiliza-tion of public resources. Briefly, accountabilityis holding public servants responsible for

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outcome, efficiency is the positive relation-ship of resource outputs to inputs, and effec-tiveness is a measure of the appropriatenessof outputs. The most important principal ofadministrative design in most transitionaland developing countries is accountability.

The purpose of the public sector focuses onwhat is done. Public purpose has three levels,which are defined by the three objectives setout in the literature on public finance: stabili-zation, distribution, and allocation.4 These threeobjectives have usually implied an adminis-trative design. For example, typically, stabili-zation and distribution are centralized whileallocation is open to being decentralized.

The Framework further disaggregatesthese objectives into goals. For example stableexchange rates might be a goal for the stabili-zation objective. Goals are further disaggre-gated into tasks, such as money supply inter-vention. Tasks are the final level of publicpurpose and are the specific activities thatorganizations and institutions implementthrough roles.

Finally, the properties of administrative de-sign center on the roles and sequence of rolesthat together define an administrative strat-egy. Roles are a key category of this Frame-work for they are the specific actions (e.g.funding, accounting, auditing, and monitor-ing) that need to be implemented by an or-ganization/institution or array of organiza-tions/institutions to carry out a task. Role is acore concept in the Framework because itdisaggregates the actions needed to imple-ment a task and allows mapping of respon-sibility for implementing tasks (and thusgoals and purpose) from a single organiza-tion/institution to many. Roles can be sharedby two or more organizations or institutionsand they can be managed by one organiza-tion or institution. Role thus defines the ad-ministrative strategy as being one of eithermonopoly or pluralism.

4 Richard A. Musgrave, The Theory of PublicFinance (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959).

One value of using roles rather thanstructure as the principal instrument ofanalysis, which is the case with Annex I’sType-Function Framework, is that itidentifies, by task, which roles should not bedistributed and should remain the monopolyof either central or non-central governmentalunits. A second value of using roles is that itgives important insight into the level ofaccountability a given administrative strategycan be expected to generate. As noted earlier,from the perspective of most transitional anddeveloping countries, accountability is themost important principle of administrativedesign. All things being equal, for tasks thatshould be administratively decentralized,such as allocation, a strategy of InstitutionalPluralism, where tasks and roles are notmonopolized but are shared between centraland non-central public and private levels, isfar more likely to promote accountabilitythan strategies where roles are monopolized.Monopoly, be it public or private, deliversservices at high costs, less efficiency, and lessaccountability.

The Framework does not assume that In-stitutional Pluralism is a necessary and suffi-cient condition for democracy and civic par-ticipation in governance. For this reason, theFramework does not dwell on the utility oflocal planning groups, citizen advisorygroups, town meetings, local ombudsmen, orquality commissions. However, this does notmean linkages between administrative decen-tralization and democracy are ignored by theFramework. For example, it assumes Institu-tional Pluralism promotes administrativeaccountability through competition, which inturn can promote democratic processes to theextent that non-state institutions are involvedin public service provision.

While the book summarized in this paperreviews all three strategies of administrativedesign, it gives particular emphasis to elabo-rating the partnership of institutions and or-ganizations that is found under the strategyof Institutional Pluralism. But this emphasis

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does not mean that the established strategiesof Institutional Monopoly and DistributedInstitutional Monopoly should not be pro-moted by governments. Quite the contrary.

For the foreseeable future, most transi-tional and developing countries are going tocontinue to pursue the Distributed Institu-tional Monopoly strategy for administrativelydecentralizing public sector tasks. Given thecontrol orientation of most political centers,the limited capacity of non-central institu-tions and organizations, and the centraliza-tion of revenue sources that characterize thetask environments of most transitional anddeveloping countries, Distributed Institu-tional Monopoly in the form of deconcentra-tion or devolution may be the only realisticapproach most governments can follow whenattempting to administratively decentralizepublic sector tasks.

Still, it seems clear that the better strategyfor achieving the objectives of administrativedecentralization is that of Institutional Plural-ism. The promise this approach offers is thetrend toward urban local-level governmentsto delegate public tasks to private firms andorganizations. This trend suggests that forthe foreseeable future, the strategy of Institu-tional Pluralism will primarily be used indealing with the production and provision ofpublic sector goods and services in urbanareas. There is little doubt that the strategywill eventually be extended to smaller towns.Whether it is a strategy suitable for providinggoods and services in rural areas is unlikelyto be tested for some time to come.

There are major similarities between theearlier discussed Type-Function Framework(Annex I) and the Administrative DesignFramework proposed here. First, bothFrameworks can facilitate the analysis of casestudies. Second, both Frameworks are basedon the commonly agreed upon four forms ofdecentralization and three types of adminis-trative decentralization. Third, both Frame-works focus on institutional or organizationalstructures and functions.

It is in regard to the third similarity thatmajor differences between the two Frame-works are found. The central issue for theAdministrative Design Framework is not somuch the spatial relationship of structures, asis the case with the Type-Function Frame-work, but the role relationships among cen-tral governmental, non-central governmental,and private sector institutions and organiza-tions relative to a given public sector task. Forthe Administrative Design Framework, the“de” in decentralization is about limiting thestructural monopoly of roles and not the spa-tial distance between structures. The Type-Function Framework focuses on the spatialdimensions of centralization and decentrali-zation but does not address roles. The Ad-ministrative Design Framework augmentsthis view with a focus on one role dimension:institutional concentration, which can rangefrom monopoly to pluralism. While the spa-tial and the role dimensions are interrelated,the new Framework argues that focusing onroles leads to a more useful approach to un-derstanding and promoting decentralization.Roles make administrative design both con-crete and dynamic. It is concrete, for role di-rectly relates task and the organization or in-stitution. It is dynamic, because role canchange over time and be managed by differ-ent organizations/institutions or combina-tions of them.

Because of their differing perspectives,the two Frameworks vary in regard to theircapacity to offer options of administrativedesign. The reason for this is that reformsaimed at promoting extensive devolution anddelegation involve increased sharing of roles.Yet, the Type-Function Framework has diffi-culties in dealing with roles. Its focus onstructures, functions, and spatial relation-ships leads toward deconcentration and lim-ited devolution. That is, the Type-FunctionFramework recognizes delegation as an ad-ministrative design option, but in practice theFramework has largely been used to designand implement reforms and initiatives basedon spatial deconcentration and some devolu-

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tion in urban areas. As such, the Frameworkhas not been particularly good at providinggovernments and practitioners with adminis-trative options to address the problems oflimited administrative and financial capacityas well as low levels of accountability.

The first two strategies of the Adminis-trative Design Framework (InstitutionalMonopoly and Distributed InstitutionalMonopoly) share some of these limitationsbecause, to some extent, roles are allocated orheld in monopolistic ways by specific institu-tions located in differing geographic loca-tions. However, its third strategy allows for amix of central, non-central, and private sectorrelationships for implementing a given publicsector task. As such, it addresses major fail-ings of past decentralization efforts andmeets the new economic and politicalproblems of the 1990s and beyond. It doesthis by:• identifying and focusing on the roles re-

quired to effectively and efficiently carryout a particular public sector task;

• allocating those roles among an appropriateand changing mix of central, non-central,and private sector institutions and organi-zations so as to maximize the complemen-tarities among these levels, in most casesincreasing the amount of delegation andstrengthening trends toward devolution;

• recognizing that devolution, deconcentra-tion, and delegation can occur at the centeras well as in the periphery; and

• raising the level of accountability throughincreasing the number of actors operatingat similar and different levels and carryingout roles relative to the task. By focusing onroles as well as structures and spatial rela-tionships, Institutional Pluralism avoids themajor problems that are associated with theType-Function Framework’s tendency tohave low accountability and static views ofadministrative end-states.

Central Concepts Underlying theFramework’s Components

1. Accountability

Accountability is the most importantprinciple underlying the Framework becauseit promotes the efficient and effective mobili-zation and management of resources, Onereason why administrative systems are soweak, and resource driven aid agency assis-tance strategies have not succeeded, is pre-cisely because this principle is weak or ab-sent. Administrative systems in transitionaland developing countries frequently haveinefficient management at headquarters anddeconcentrated field-levels precisely becausethey do not have systems that promoteaccountability. Nor do they generally havepolitical leaders or senior decision-makerswho value accountability. Further, whileadministrative systems are often able to mo-bilize resources juridically, they frequentlyhave little legitimacy to promote resourcemobilization through the collection of userfees by deconcentrated field offices because ofinefficient management. Devolved adminis-trative systems face a different set of con-straints. Either the center highly circum-scribes local discretion and/or they have littleor no resources to act upon the discretion.Accountability manages discretion and dis-cretion is the essence of administrative decen-tralization.5

2. Objectives, Goals, and Tasks

The Framework recognizing three de-scending levels of specification: objectives,goals, and tasks. Identifying the purposes ofthe public sector and carefully consideringthese levels is the key to determining whichpublic activities should be administrativelycentralized or decentralized.

5 Robert Klitgaard, Adjusting to Reality: Beyond“State Versus Market” in Economic Development(San Francisco: International Center for EconomicGrowth, 1991), pp. 141-42.

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In defining purpose, the Framework be-gins with the assignment of government ob-jectives. As noted earlier these are:• stabilization and maintenance of high levels

of employment and output;• achievement of a desired distribution of

wealth and income; and• efficient allocation of resources.

Organizational and public finance theoryholds, for example, that while the stabiliza-tion and distribution objectives should becentralized the allocation objective can beadministratively decentralized. The stabiliza-tion objective should also remain centralizedbecause most local-level governmental unitslack the stabilization tool of monetaryauthority. As a result, they are not able to ex-ercise deficit financing policies that compen-sate for lack of economic demand. The distri-bution objective should properly remain cen-tralized because the mobility of recipients andthe potential tax base are high. There are,however, benefits to administratively decen-tralizing the allocation objective, specificallyto tailor the production and provision ofpublic sector goods and services to the pref-erences of individuals.

Theory guards against the tendency tooversimplify administrative design andassume that all public sector tasks can beadministratively decentralized. The literatureof public finance demonstrates that there isno unilinear trend toward administrative de-centralization or centralization. Rather, whatis emerging is a complex structure of inter-governmental actors that are inter-dependent,not autonomous.

The Framework disaggregates objectivesinto goals. that are related to aboveobjectives. Briefly these are:• solvency, openness, and competitiveness

(stabilization);• side-payments, political support, economic

growth, and equity (distribution); and• adequate human, fiscal, and political re-

sources (allocation).

Quite properly, most experts believe sta-bilization goals should be centralized in suchnational institutions as ministries of finance,central banks, and planning ministries. How-ever, distribution goals are less obvious andsubject to conflicting views over whether theycan be promoted by non-central governmen-tal institutions or private sector firms and or-ganizations. For example, side-payments,which are defined as resource transfers to anarrow group of supporters who are typicallymembers of the political and administrativeelite. are generally defined as bureaucraticrents or corruption. As a result, side-pay-ments are different than the second goal ofdistribution, which is political support. Thegoal of political support is broader than side-payments. While it may involve resourcetransfers to favored individuals, the base forthis goal is broader. Further, political supportcan be garnered through policies that do notprovide direct transfers to individuals but canprovide direct benefits they could enjoy. Anexample of this would be improved localservices. A third distribution goal is economicgrowth, whereby the government targets re-sources to areas where economic multipliersare the highest. Finally, the fourth distribu-tion goal is equity, which is the targeting ofresources to areas and individuals to com-pensate them for inequities in factor and skillendowments.

Aside from equity, the goals of the alloca-tion objective are closely related to the goalsof the distribution objective. But for thesegoals to be operationalized it is essential forthe public sector unit to have adequate hu-man, financial, and political resources.

Assessing how the objectives relate toeach other based on goals generates two cen-tral Framework propositions. These focus onstrategic changes needed to support the allo-cation objective and, thus, administrative de-centralization initiatives. The allocation ob-jective is best achieved when the goals ofstabilization and distribution are supportive.Increasingly, the stabilization objective is not

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problematic because of the demands of aglobal economy, which require conformity forcompetition. Effective, standardized sta-bilization is supportive of the allocation ob-jective and not problematic in terms of ad-ministrative design. So, it should be central-ized.

What is problematic is the distributiveobjective, which in many transitional and de-veloping countries is defined as the goal ofside-payments. The Framework makes theassumption that the effective delivery of theallocation objective using administrative de-centralization requires the support of the cen-ter, at least initially. That is, without supportand planning assistance from the center,autonomous local-level development cancarry out few tasks or promote development.From these assumptions a conclusion isdrawn that is central to the Framework: ef-fective administrative decentralization re-quires that all three objectives be supportiveand that distributive policies and their con-siderable resources be devoted to the dis-tributive goal of economic development, notside-payments. A strategic change needed tosupport administrative decentralization ini-tiatives is the redirection of distributive poli-cies from side-payments to the goals of politi-cal support, economic growth, and/or equity.Such a change may occur if it is viewed ascoincident with a goal of garnering politicalsupport.

In sum, the Framework leads to twopropositions:• effective administrative decentralization

requires that all three objectives be mutu-ally supportive; and

• distributive policies and their considerableresources must be devoted to the distribu-tive goal of economic development ratherthan to side-payments.

The Framework requires the objectivesand goals be operationalized by the specifi-cation of tasks. These are extraordinarily nu-merous and need not be specified here in de-tail. However, examples can be given:

• meeting the stabilization’s objectives andgoals requires the performance of suchtasks as debt, currency, and fiscal manage-ment;

• meeting the distribution objective’s goal ofeconomic growth such tasks as buildingand maintaining feeder roads need to beexecuted; and

• carrying out allocation objectives and goalsrequires the performance of such tasks asmanaging clinics, operating cattle dippingstations, or collecting urban refuse.

The significance of such tasks is that amajor source of accountability, as noted ear-lier, is the degree of specificity characterizinga task.

Administrative Strategies toAchieve Public Sector Objectives

Monopolies of Administrative Design:Institutional Monopoly and DistributedInstitutional Monopoly

Based on the three objectives describedabove, there are logically two administrativestrategies: centralization and decentralization. Acareful analysis of these two strategies revealsthere is greater similarity than difference be-tween them. The conventional view of bothadministratively centralized and decentral-ized strategies has been one of creating a mo-nopoly that is either held by central institu-tions or legally distributed to non-central in-stitutions, organizations, and firms. A majorweakness of the theory on administrative de-centralization has been its overemphasis onthe spatial relationships of institutions, or-ganizations, and firms rather than on howspecific task-related roles are shared by them,regardless of their spatial relationship. Insti-tutional Monopoly, be it held by a central gov-ernmental unit or distributed to non-centralor private levels, is an administrative strategythat does not promote accountability.

Administrative decentralization doeshave a spatial dimension. This occurs when

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public sector tasks are moved geographicallyaway from the administrative center. How-ever, the analytic dimension of decentraliza-tion argues for breaking the monopoly oftask-related roles held by a specific central ornon-central governmental institution. For ex-ample, having two or more institutions or or-ganizations share roles related to the financ-ing, regulation, and implementation of pri-mary education should increase administra-tive accountability. This role sharing mayoccur in the same geographic location so thatthere can be administrative decentralizationof roles without spatial decentralization oforganizational or institutional structures. Ex-tending the example, a devolvedmunicipality with jurisdiction over acountry’s capital city might be requiredunder its charter to provide facilities, staffing,and materials for primary school students inits jurisdiction while the ministry of finance isresponsible for funding the costs, theministry of education for setting educationalstandards and rules, a parent-teacherorganization for advising schools and thegovernment on locally-based educationissues, and an external NGO for helping thefinancially pressed municipality to obtain textbooks and audio visual equipment. In thissense, the “de” in decentralization is first andforemost about breaking administrativemonopolies over the range of roles requiredto carry out a specific public sector task. Thespatial relationships of the institutions andorganizations performing those roles are asecondary concern.

The conventional approach to adminis-trative decentralization in most transitionaland developing countries has been to createDistributed Institutional Monopolies. Thisapproach has been largely unsuccessful.6 The

6 See, for example: Dele Olowu, “The Failure ofCurrent Decentralization Programs in Africa,” inThe Future of the Centralized State: Institutions andSelf-Governance in Africa, edited by J. S. Wunschand D. Olowu (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990),pp. 74-90.

attempt to recreate administrative monopo-lies is often a crucial error in administrativedesign and a major reason why interventionscentered on administrative decentralizationoften fail or under-perform. Interventionsbased on the strategy of Distributed Institu-tional Monopoly are typically faulted becausethey have neither the legal basis nor thetechnical capacity of the center to sustain amonopoly and extract resources. Nor do theyhave legitimacy to leverage local private re-sources for public goods and services. A Dis-tributed Institutional Monopoly is at onceboth a dependent and a pariah institution,which limits its ability to mobilize resourcesfrom either the center or the locale. In termsof carrying out tasks related to the three ob-jectives, Distributed Institutional Monopoly isweak or fails on all three. In contrast, whenthere is an institutional monopoly the centeris usually effective at resource mobilization,precisely because of its significant juridicaland executive power. In sum, the major rea-sons given for the failure of Distributed Insti-tutional Monopoly strategies are the lack oflocal-level technical and managerial capacity,limited resources, and elite coaptation.

An additional explanation for the failureof Distributed Institutional Monopolies is thatin effect they are still an InstitutionalMonopoly and an alternative source of ad-ministrative power to the center. This isespecially the case if they have a monopolyover local-level revenues coupled with localpolitical influence or control. Administrativeautonomy and strength thus pose a potentialpolitical threat to the center. Little wonderwhy the center limits the revenue raisingroles of such local-level administrative insti-tutions and routinely starves them of fundsfrom the center. As a monopoly, decentral-ized administrative units have two majorflaws. First, they can threaten the center. Sec-ond, they are less capable of responding tolocal needs and mobilizing local resources.

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Pluralist Administrative Design:Institutional Pluralism

By focusing on how administrative sys-tems assign and organize roles required tocarry out public sector tasks, rather than juston the structural and spatial assignment ofsuch tasks and roles, it is possible to specify athird administrative strategy: InstitutionalPluralism. This strategy is central to theFramework’s argument on the need to breakthe “monopoly of central design.” It does thisin two ways. First, it offers an innovative wayof thinking about administrative decentrali-zation. This is because while it uses the typesof administrative decentralization common toDistributed Institutional Monopoly, it avoidsan excessive focus on spatial distribution andemphasizes the institutional and organiza-tional distribution of roles required to carryout tasks. Second, it departs from the con-ventional view of the public sector as that ofcontrolling resources administered by publicinstitutions monopolizing task-related rolesto establish a new view of leveraging publicresources with private resources that can begenerated by promoting role pluralismamong task-related actors.7

It is tempting to label this third adminis-trative strategy “Institutional Partnership.”This is because Institutional Pluralism doesnot view administrative decentralization as azero-sum relationship. Rather it envisions aprogressive network of central, non-central,and private organizations and institutionsthat share roles and tasks relative to the pro-duction and provision of public goods andservices. Further, it implies a plurality of co-

7 Even the World Bank’s 1992 elaboration of com-binations of Distributed Institutional Monopolies,which is sensitive to but not explicit about theneed to break the monopoly of central designthrough transferring task-related roles privatesector firms and organizations, does not deal withthe opportunities offered by Institutional Plural-ism. Silverman, Public Sector Decentralization.

operative forms of networks that can providesuch goods and services.

Instead of advocating a model of govern-mental monopoly, be it central or local, over agiven public sector task’s roles, InstitutionalPluralism argues for using public institutionsas brokers that network with an array of cen-tral, non-central, and (increasingly) privatesector institutions and organizations perform-ing roles required to carry out a given publicsector task. By increasing the number and di-versity of institutions and organizations in-volved in brokering, as well as providingservices, accountability is increased, risk isreduced, and service delivery is better man-aged and tailored to local needs. InstitutionalPluralism involves creating a market for themanagement and provision of public goodsand services that includes but extendsbeyond the central and non-central publicsectors. In doing so, it breaks monopoliesover the delivery of public goods and servicesand promotes accountability. There isremarkable support for the argument that thegoal of government should be to become anentrepreneur that can “structure themarketplace to fulfill a public purpose.”8 Thismakes sense provided the government is alsoan actor in the market.9 While a givengovernment’s role may shift to increasedbrokering services, it will most likely retainthe revenue role and provide some servicesthat require economies of scale and are notsuitable for a private firm to supply.

8 David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, ReinventingGovernment: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Trans-forming the Public Sector (New York: Plume Press,1993), p. 281.9 The concept of “market” must not be too nar-rowly construed. It appears narrow because isdrawn from the economics literature. An ex-panded view is held here. On debates related tothis point see: Paul Smoke, “Local GovernmentFiscal Reforms in Developing countries: LessonsFrom Kenya,” World Development, XXI, 6 (1993),pp. 901-23.

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For indebted governments withmoribund administrative systems, hardpressed to meet rapidly rising demands forlocal services, Institutional Pluralism mayoffer hope because it utilizes and promotesgreater responsibility on the part of devolvedlocal governments and delegated privatesector’s firms, civil organizations, or NGOs.Unlike the other two monopolistic-basedadministrative strategies, InstitutionalPluralism promotes all three principles ofadministrative design, especiallyaccountability. The Institutional Pluralismstrategy may be the only administrative strat-egy by which transitional and developingcountries can bridge the fiscal gap and in-crease accountability.

In contrast with the other two adminis-trative strategies, it allows designers and im-plementers of administrative decentralizationreforms to break the monopoly of central de-sign and promote a partnership of centralgovernmental, non-central governmental,and private sector institutions and organiza-tions forged to accountably and efficientlycarry out public sector tasks. InstitutionalPluralism is a strategy that allows public sec-tor institutions, whether at the center or thenon-center, to break up monopolies overtask-related roles and serve as brokers for anarray of private and non-governmentalorganizations in ways that allow publicresources to leverage private sector resourcesfor public objectives.

For several reasons, such as incapacity,insolvency, lack of accountability, and ethnic,religious, or regional-based factionalism,public sector institutions in transitional anddeveloping countries are unable to meet thedemand for public goods and services. In-effective public institutions disaffect citizens,who in turn withhold support and resourcesfrom the public sector. To break this cycle ofineffective management and uncertain ordwindling financial support of public sectortasks, some public institutions are introduc-ing innovative, non-monopolistic approaches

to leverage foreign and domestic private re-sources to produce and provide public sectorgoods and services. Innovative central ornon-central public agencies are using incen-tives and providing seed capital to partnerwith private and non-governmental firmsand organizations to deliver public goodsand services. Here, the objective is to urgeboth central and local public sectors tobecome entrepreneurs that can restructurethe marketplace and civil society to fulfill apublic purpose.

The distinctive feature of this third ad-ministrative strategy is, of course, pluralismrather than monopoly as the principle ofadministrative design. A pluralist adminis-trative strategy has a higher probability ofpromoting efficiency and accountability thandoes a strategy based on monopoly. This isbecause it can promote efficiency by usingprivate firms, NGOs, and community asso-ciations to carry out roles related to the deliv-ery of specific public goods and services,wherever it makes sense. But it is essentialthat firms, NGOs, and civil associations areable to carry out their assigned roles. It ismore likely that they will be able to playthese roles if they have direct contact withindividual users and their communities.Accountability is promoted by this strategythrough the empowerment of local citizengroups to more directly participate in centraland non-central governmental operations.That is, the more the state’s monopoly ontask-related roles can be reduced, the higherthe likelihood of increased accountability andefficiency in the production and provision ofpublic sector tasks. This is because it is as-sumed that citizens will consume more goodsand services when they are more efficientlydelivered, a finding that is empirically sup-ported.

Institutional Pluralism is rooted in a con-ception of the public sector and grounded onthe allocation of task-related roles. As such, itis a strategy that is not analytically generatedby the Type-Function Framework. Specifi-

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cally, the traditional conception of the publicsector was that of control of resources admin-istered by monopolistic central or non-centralpublic institutions. The new conception thatis the basis of Institutional Pluralism is“leveraging public sector resources with pri-vate sector resources through central or non-central government institutions that brokerfor an array of private and non-governmentalfirms and organizations.”

While this strategy of governmentplaying an entrepreneurial role may requireless staff and smaller physical facilities thanunder a strategy based on a monopolisticrole, it is a far more complex and challengingstrategy than the traditional bureaucraticapproach of administering resources whollycontrolled by central or non-centralbureaucracies. Though the physical scale ofpublic institutions may decrease, the impactof government institutions can dramaticallyincrease because of the multiple resourcesthey can influence through a strategy ofleveraged development as distinct from theearlier strategy of controlled development.Economic historians have long argued thatthe state will play a greater, but different rolein late capitalist development. InstitutionalPluralism personifies both a greater and adifferent role for the state as it seeks tobroadly influence economic development bybrokering rather than controlling resources.In sum, the administrative strategy ofInstitutional Pluralism indicates that the roleof the public sector in countries marked bylow economic development should be greaterand more sophisticated. The state shouldmanage the process of delivering goods andservices but not be as involved in their directprovision.

Based on historical evidence about therole of unitary or federal states in promotingsuccessful growth while maintaining a realis-tic assessment of their limited fiscal capacity,a new view of the public sector’s role in de-velopment is emerging. Under this view, cen-tral or non-central governmental institutions

should perform a critical but sharply limitedset of roles in the carrying out of tasks essen-tial to public sector allocation objectives. Thisview is based largely on the grounds of fi-nancial constraints. Under this administrativestrategy, governmental institutions do lessand facilitate more, by structuring the marketwith incentives and targeted but limited allo-cations of seed capital that induce privatefirms and non-governmental organizations tobecome involved in the production and pro-vision of public sector goods and services.

This emerging view of public sector insti-tutions as either delegating all aspects ofspecific tasks or playing a reduced range ofroles in regard to their execution has been es-pecially endorsed by neo-classical economistsin such aid agencies as the World Bank andthe International Monetary Fund. The thrustof their position is that the objectives of thepublic sector should be transformed fromproducing and providing all aspects of col-lective goods and services to more limitedobjectives such as: (1) carrying out only themost essential public sector tasks; (2) leverag-ing private sector firms and organizations tocarry out role components of non essentialtasks; and (3) protecting the public by moni-toring the performance by private sectorfirms and organizations charged with carry-ing out all aspects of a particular public sectortask or particular roles related to a given task.In poorer developing countries this prescrip-tion is increasingly being given teeth throughconditions in structural adjustmentprograms. Interest in this prescription is alsoincreasing in countries where demands forregional autonomy are reaching a level wherepluralism, rather than monopoly, is the onlyanswer.

Guidelines in AdministrativeDesign

The final component of the Framework isthe properties of administrative design. Theseproperties guide those charged with design-

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ing administrative systems. The most impor-tant properties are: roles and the sequence ofroles.

The primary administrative design prin-ciple related to administrative decentraliza-tion of a particular public sector task is to es-tablish the appropriate level of accountabilityrequired. A major objective for doing this isto promote greater effective and efficient exe-cution, recognizing that accountable systemsare not always efficient. Accountability man-ages discretion and discretion is defined asthe latitude allowed in the exercise of author-ity, and administrative decentralization in-volves delegating such authority.

Absent or limited accountability has beenone of the principal constraints hamperingthe implementation of administrative decen-tralization reforms and programs over thepast few decades. Additional constraintsfound at both the center and local-level arelimited fiscal resources and skilled personnel,and managerial and technical capacity to de-liver specific goods and services. Adequatelydesignated and supported accountabilitywould greatly help in assisting to removesuch constraints. The proposed administra-tive strategy of Institutional Pluralism has agreater probability of ensuring adequate lev-els of accountability than the widely usedadministrative decentralization strategybased on Distributed Institutional Monopoly.

The specificity of the task affects the degreeof accountability. As the specificity of a giventask decreases, the need for accountabilityincreases. Significantly, this suggests thatmore means and actors are required if ac-countability is to be achieved. Many of themost important tasks performed by publicsector institutions in transitional and devel-oping countries are not specific. Examples ofgeneralized tasks include the constructionand maintenance of basic infrastructure, theformulation of basic education programs, andthe provision of primary health care facilities.These tasks demand high levels of account-ability to ensure adequate delivery, and

hence major investments in means andactors. The task environment in manytransitional and developing countries ischaracterized by inadequate fiscal resourcesand limited capacity in terms of means andactors. As such, it is extremely difficult todesign a decentralization intervention forgovernment that can achieve the desiredaccountability. Under such conditions, theAdministrative Design Framework suggeststhat Institutional Pluralism is a better strategythan the more traditional approach ofDistributed Institutional Monopoly. This isbecause it offers the greatest probability ofmaximizing the means and the actorsrequired to promote the accountabilityneeded for the production and provision ofselected public sector tasks.

The four most important resources of pro-moting accountability in administrative sys-tems are political oversight, laws, competition,and administrative mechanisms. Among themost important administrative mechanisms are:professionalism, incentives, and monitoring sys-tems.

In sum, the level of accountability re-quired is a major factor in determiningwhether the administrative strategy selectedwill be based on monopoly, pluralism, or acombination of the two. The level of account-ability is determined by: (1) the degree ofspecificity of the task; and (2) the level of re-sources, in terms of means, that characterizethe task environment. In terms of adminis-trative decentralization, these variables de-termine whether the design should be basedon Distributed Institutional Monopoly or In-stitutional Pluralism.

Promoting Accountability: TaskEnvironment

As noted earlier, accountability is pro-moted by the task environment resources interms of means. The key means forpromoting accountability are: political andlegal oversight, institutional competition, andadministrative mechanisms. Significantly,

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these means vary in robustness. The mostrobust and important sources ofaccountability are external, particularlypolitical oversight and laws. Effectiveadministrative systems, whetheradministratively centralized or decentralized,require capable and committed politicalleadership. Likewise they require enablinglegislation and regulatory law that make clearthe tasks to be carried out and requirementsand rules that implementors must meet andoperate under.

Institutional competition is less robustthan political and legal oversight but morerobust than administrative mechanisms. Thisis because it is not a management intensivemeans and it does not require the kinds oftraining, communication, information, andsupervision investments that the administra-tive mechanism requires.

Administrative mechanisms includemonitoring systems, incentives, and profes-sionalism. They are the least robust means ofpromoting accountability. This is becausethey are relatively complex and managerialintensive. Meeting such criteria and dealingwith such complexity is often difficult forcentral and non-central government institu-tions in transitional and developing coun-tries. Incentive systems are also managementintensive and require extensive informationas well as evaluation criteria. Again, limitedadministrative and financial resources makeit difficult for many transitional and develop-ing country governments to establish andmaintain effective incentive systems.

Such governments also have substantialdifficulty building professionalism amongtheir public servants, which involves the in-ternalization of standards. Professionalismcan be particularly important to implement-ing administratively decentralized activitiesin remote areas with poor communication,where it is difficult to place qualified peopleor supervise field staff. The drawback withthis means of accountability is that it requiresconsiderable public investment in building an

elite administrative cadre that is committed toreinforcing professionalism. In sum, theprincipal drawbacks of administrative meansof promoting accountability are that they aremanagement intensive.

The principal-agent-client model is usefulin explaining the array of actors involved inan administrative strategy. This model can bevisualized spatially as the principal being anadministrative agency at the center, whichdelegates, through legislation or contract, to alocal-level governmental or private sector in-stitution or organization (the agent) theauthority to deliver health care to the citizenbeneficiaries (client). However, as the admin-istrative strategy of Institutional Pluralismclearly demonstrates, it should not be as-sumed that these actors are spatially distrib-uted. It is common for the principal, agentand client to all reside in the same geographiclocation. For example, a ministry of health(principal) may, through devolution andbudgetary allocations, transfer responsibilityfor providing primary health services to amunicipality (agent) in the capital city, withcitizens (clients) paying user fees to the mu-nicipal health department (agent), whichtransfers them to the ministry of finance(principal) and provides services according tostandards and rules set by the ministry ofhealth (principal).

Principals, agents, and clients provide ac-countability in two major ways. First, andmost obviously, they implement the meansoutlined above for promoting accountability.For example, principals and clients can makeagents accountable through such administra-tive mechanisms as compliance with servicerules, professionalism, or competition. Thesecond way accountability tends to be pro-moted is through a multiplicity of actors, anapproach which increases the redundancy ofmeans. For example, agents providing goodsor services can be monitored by both theprincipal and the clients. Or agents can moni-tor each other by such simultaneous means ascompetition and the administrative mecha-

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nisms of regulation and beneficiary voting. Amunicipality operating under a devolvedcharter can sell off its wholly owned bus sys-tem and delegate the provision of bus trans-port in its jurisdiction to one or more licensedcompanies, which must comply with publicsafety regulations and tariffs set by municipalgovernment officials and which competeamong themselves for riders through theprovision of reliable service.

If the objective of administrative decen-tralization is to increase accountability, thenthis can be done by both increasing the num-ber of means and of actors that promote ac-countability. In this regard, the strategy ofInstitutional Pluralism is especially attractivebecause it increases the actors and means in-volved.

Under the Institutional Monopoly strat-egy there are only principles and clients. Cli-ents have very limited information withwhich to hold the principal accountable andfew incentives to offer. The principal also hasvery few incentives to critically evaluate itsperformance. In short, InstitutionalMonopoly or centralization offers few sourcesof accountability. Administrativemechanisms, such as information andincentives, are weak to non-existent andcompetition is not available. The principalsources of accountability are the specificity ofthe task and the professionalism of the staff.

The Distributed Institutional Monopolystrategy increases the level of accountabilityover Institutional Monopolies by introducinganother actor: the agent. In effect, agents canbe monitored by principals and clients,thereby providing an administrative mecha-nism for promoting accountability throughincreased information and incentives. Underthis strategy, task specificity becomes espe-cially important because it facilitates the useof administrative mechanisms. However,when the expansion in numbers of the civilservice cadre is coupled with the distancefrom the center, which is very common in re-gard to deconcentrated field agents and char-

tered municipalities and towns, it becomesmore difficult to rely on professionalism as ameans of promoting accountability.

In sum, Institutional Pluralism raises thelevel of accountability over that of the Dis-tributed Institutional Monopoly because itinvolves all three actors in monitoring tasksand a range of different means of accountabil-ity: administrative, professional, and com-petitive. As a result, public sector tasks arelikely to be carried out more accountability,efficiently, and effectively (assuming ade-quate resources) under this strategy. Whatdistinguishes Institutional Pluralism from theother two strategies and makes it a betterway of promoting the accountability requiredis that it relies on more robust means, ratherthan more tenuous administrative mecha-nisms.

Promoting Accountability:Task Specificity

Evidence on institutional performance indevelopment suggest that the specificity ofthe task limits discretion and creates effectsthat generate positive and negative incentivesthat promote performance.10 Specific effectsinduce high performance. Diffuse tasks, incontrast, such as the promotion of rural pri-mary education and provision of agriculturalextension will not limit discretion and willhave diffuse effects that limit, if not eliminate,incentives. In terms of the AdministrativeDesign Framework, the degree of specificityof the task promotes accountability. The morespecific the task, the more specific the rolesthat implement it, and the easier it is to definedetermine performance.

10 For example, the work of: Arturo Israel, Institu-tional Development: Incentives to Performance(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1987), pp. 52-7.

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Level of Accountability andAdministrative Strategy

The elaboration of task environment re-sources and task specificity can facilitateanalytical efforts to link the level of account-ability required to one of the three adminis-trative strategies. When task specificity ishigh the level of accountability in the taskenvironment should be high. This level of ac-countability suggests two possible adminis-trative strategies: (1) a centralization strategybased on Institutional Monopoly; or (2) anadministrative decentralization based on Dis-tributed Institutional Monopoly. Under con-ditions of high accountability, it is inefficientto have a variety of actors competing for theprovision of public services.

In most transitional and developing coun-tries high task specificity and resource sup-port are the rare exception rather than therule. An example of a task with high specific-ity and accountability would be one where atechnician in a ministry of transport ischarged with setting weight limits on lorriesbeing licensed by owners paying for theevaluation services provided.

Another situation is where task specificityis high but the number of actors that can helpcarry it out are limited and the financialresources of these few actors is heavily con-strained. In this situation, accountability islikely to be low and a strategy of DistributedInstitutional Monopoly based on standarddeconcentration or devolution makes sense.An example of this situation is where thecollection of specific income and sales taxes inprovincial capitals and small towns is lowbecause central ministry of finance personnellack the information, field agents, and mobil-ity required to prevent tax evasion by localbusinessmen. The deconcentration of re-sponsibility for such collection to district offi-cers of the ministry of interior or field agentsof the ministry of finance is likely to be amore effective strategy. So too, the devolutionof tax collection responsibility to administra-

tors employed by chartered urban centers asagents might also raise collection levels.

Most of the difficult administrative decen-tralization strategy issues are in the case justdescribed. This is because most developmenttasks are highly generalized and typical taskenvironments lack the resources (actors andmeans) to promote the accountability re-quired for accountable and efficient admini-stration. For example, it is exceedingly diffi-cult to promote “improved rural health care”in countries marked by weak health minis-tries, few trained doctors and nurses in thefield, inadequate recurrent budget resourcesfor transport and medical supplies, and pas-sive, frequently poor and unempowered ruraland urban populations. Under such adverseconditions, government decision-makers andaid agency professionals should consider theadministrative strategy of Institutional Plural-ism, largely because it provides innovativeways to maximize the actors and means re-quired to generate accountability.

Properties of Design

The Administrative Design Frameworkemphasizes a focus on roles connected to theperformance of public sector tasks and theirappropriate sequencing. Actors in assignedroles are essential to carrying out requiredtasks. Several roles and relationships betweenthem may be involved in performing a par-ticular task. Some of the most generic of suchroles are leadership, planning, policy innova-tion, financial management, resource mobili-zation, operational management, regulation,and oversight. In the course of an adminis-trative reform, these roles may be located inthe central and non-central public sector, theprivate sector, and even foreign institutionsand organizations.

Implementation of each public sector taskgenerated by the three public objectives andtheir goals requires that a range of roles beperformed by actors, be they in governmentinstitutions or private sector firms and or-ganizations. General administrative theory

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identifies three types of relationships amongthese actors: principal, agent, and client.When analyzing roles and tasks it is essentialto be specific about the relationships amongactors.

The Framework gives particular attentionto two types of roles:• macro-level roles carried out by govern-

ments designing and implementing anoverall strategy of administrative design ingeneral and in regard to administrative de-centralization in particular; and

• task-related roles required to effectivelycarry out a public sector task that is beingwholly or partially administratively decen-tralized through deconcentration, devolu-tion, or delegation.

However, from the perspective of concep-tual clarity and terminological specification,both types of roles should have the same la-bels: leadership, strategy and policy formula-tion, planning, oversight, financial mobiliza-tion and auditing, need identification andplanning, operational implementation andmanagement, brokerage, evaluation and re-vision, and so on.

Institutional and Distributed InstitutionalMonopolies retain all roles in central or non-central governmental institutions. Under In-stitutional Pluralism, it is likely that macrodesign roles should be oriented toward re-inforcing the difficult transition from mo-nopoly to pluralism, while public sector task-related roles are likely to be shared amonggovernmental institutions and private sectorfirms and organizations.

Identifying, assigning, and sequencing de-sign and task-related roles to institutions andorganizations are some of the most difficultissues addressed by designers of administra-tive systems. The Administrative DesignFramework provides guidance for resolvingthese tough design issues. This is done bygiving attention to:• the means for achieving accountability and

efficiency;

• analysis of issues related to task specificityand task environment resources; and

• how characteristics of a particular task af-fect role identification, assignment, and se-quencing.

Further the Framework emphasizes theconcept of sequences of roles. Over time, rolesmay be performed by different institutionsand organizations. The three role sequencesdescribed are: 1initiation, expansion, and ma-turity. With the concepts of task, role, and se-quence, designers of administrative systemscan formulate and map an appropriate ad-ministrative strategy. They can also avoid theType-Function Framework’s tendency to fo-cus on rigid end-states that cannot respondwell to the dynamic processes and implemen-tation stages that mark administrative decen-tralization reforms and programs.

Roles related to an administrative designstrategy or a particular public sector task canbe assigned to different institutions or or-ganizations over time as experience is gained,expansion required, maturity achieved, andinnovation tested. This is particularly the casefor allocative tasks. Under Institutional Mo-nopoly strategies, all roles related to a par-ticular task are held by central agencies. As agovernment administratively decentralizesunder the strategy of Distributed InstitutionalMonopoly, some of these roles are trans-ferred, either through deconcentration ordevolution, to local-level institutions. Theymay also be delegated to private sector firmsor organizations. If a strategy of InstitutionalPluralism is pursued, a given task’s roles aredistributed among governmental institutionsand possibly shared with private sector firmsand organizations in constantly changing pat-terns, depending on the stage of experiencerelative to the task, the patterns of actor andmeans resources that mark the task environ-ment, and the overall strategy of the govern-ment.

A typical example of the gradual shiftingof roles would be where the ministry of pub-lic works retains financing responsibility for

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ensuring that solid waste disposal is carriedout in large urban areas until such time that itcan devolve responsibility for refuse collec-tion to chartered municipalities, which maycontractually delegate the task to private sec-tor firms. In most cases, the center plays agreater role in financing the costs of carryingout a public sector task in the early stages of adecentralization reform compared to the laterstages. Eventually, the costs of refuse pick-upand disposal may be administratively decen-tralized from the ministry of finance to userswho pay fees to either a department in themunicipality or to the firm itself.

There are three stages in the evaluation ofa task-related role: initiation, expansion, andmaturity. Over time different roles related to aspecific task will pass through these stages atdifferent rates. Roles that should be central-ized throughout, such as regulation andoversight, may be expanded and become wellestablished. However, they are unlikely to beadministratively decentralized. On the otherhand, operational management and resourcemobilization roles may well be centralized inthe early stage but eventually decentralizedas administrative systems are established,tested, and strengthened. In turn, they can bedeconcentrated to field agents of the initiatingministry, devolved to local-level governmen-tal units, or delegated to private sector firmsand organizations. For example, a ministry ofhealth may initiate a family planning pro-gram, test its methodology and contraceptiontechnology through its field offices at the lo-cal-level, and eventually delegate operationalresponsibility for carrying out the program atthe grassroots level to NGOs. Meanwhile itcan continue to fund the contraceptive de-vices being provided to the public andmonitor the performance of the NGOs.

Caveats and Observations AboutAdministrative Design

The authors spend considerable time intheir United Nations monograph and forth-

coming book considering caveats and otherobservations that might or should affect thedesign of reform. Because of the number andlength of these considerations, they will onlysome of these will be summarized here. Cen-tral among these are:• Monopoly is not always bad and should

not be rejected by governments simply topromote Institutional Pluralism. Clearly,some tasks must be centralized because toadministratively decentralize them wouldintroduce inefficiencies in their delivery.For example, there are a number oftechnical reasons why the collection ofparticular types of taxes should becentralized.

• Institutional Pluralism is not always effi-cient and should not be promoted just be-cause it resonates with many of the currentproposed “people-oriented” solutions to in-adequate public sector performance. Thereare conditions where the strategy of Insti-tutional Pluralism is not as desirable as In-stitutional Monopoly or Distributed Insti-tutional Monopoly. For example, when ac-countability is high, especially due to taskspecificity, administrative monopolies canbe more efficient and thus socially optimal.

• Administrative design is eclectic and theadministration of some public sector tasksmay well involve a mix of all three adminis-trative strategies as well as all three types ofadministrative decentralization. As the firsttwo caveats suggest, there are cases for In-stitutional Monopoly even in countriescommitted to administrative decentraliza-tion of important governmental tasks. De-signing an overall administrative strategyfor a country should first focus on an as-sessment of tasks, giving particular atten-tion to the specificity required and the levelof accountability available. Such analysiswill lead to different approaches for differ-ent tasks.

• Do not neglect the complexity of existinginstitutions and cultural norms during thedesign phase. Most task environments in

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transitional and developing countries arecharacterized by a number of different ad-ministratively centralized and decentralizedadministrative systems. Just as important,the central, non-central, or private sector in-stitutions and organizations carrying outsuch interventions are deeply attuned tocultural values and norms particular to thecountry or its regions. Culture often con-strains central and non-central governmen-tal institutions and may be the principal ob-stacle to implementing any given adminis-trative design.

• Currently most transitional and developingcountries are highly centralized, followingthe strategy of Institutional Monopoly inregard to most public sector tasks. Mostalso have some minimal level of adminis-trative decentralization, through the strat-egy of Distributed Institutional Monopoly.This is largely characterized by mixed pat-terns of extensive line ministry deconcen-tration and limited local-level devolution,most typically to a few chartered munici-palities. Delegation is minimal in systemsdominated by Institutional Monopoly andDistributed Institutional Monopoly.

• Whatever the political, managerial, and fi-nancial constraints, administrative decen-tralization in the 1990s and beyond requiresa move toward more extensive devolutionand delegation, through the strategy of Dis-tributed Institutional Monopoly, coupledwith increased experimentation with thestrategies of Institutional Pluralism. This isbecause the combined strategy of centralcontrol and deconcentrated administrativedecentralization have failed or under-per-formed in most situations. As a result, ex-perimentation with a greater mix of allthree strategies of administrative designand the strategy of Institutional Pluralism iscalled for.

• The strategy of Institutional Pluralism isbased on expanding the array of local-levelgovernment and private sector institutionaland organizational role players to which

the center can divest some of itsresponsibilities for the production andprovision of a particular public sector task.But this is not the same as delegation,because it seeks to expand the number ofinstitutions and organizations providingthe goods and services. As such, it is adifferent perspective than that found in aidagency arguments for delegation to privatefirms and organizations, the neo-classiceconomic notion of downsizing the statethrough extensive privatization, or naive“power to the people” strategies. Rather, itis a strategy that starts from the notion ofbreaking the monopoly of central designand focuses on expanding an array ofinstitutional and organizational role playersrequired to carry out a specific public sectortask. The logic of the Institutional Pluralismstrategy is not only to increaseaccountability by promoting multipleactors, but to progressively transfer publictasks to the private sector. In sum, Institu-tional Pluralism is an evolving strategy ofredefining the boundaries of the public andprivate sectors.

• The transition toward Institutional Plural-ism is going to be gradual. Many centralministries will not willingly supportdownsizing through extensive devolutionto highly autonomous local-level units withtheir own employees or delegation of task-related roles to the private sector. To a largeextent this is because national-level publicsector employment is so important in tran-sitional and developing countries. It is alsoimportant to recognize national-level poli-ticians tend to be control-oriented. Such re-sistance will continue, even in the face ofpressures for public sector reform and ar-guments that the new orthodoxy is to trans-fer part or all of some public sector tasks toprivate sector institutions and organizationsin order to achieve greater efficiencies andsustainability.

• Unconventional approaches to administra-tive change are essential in many transi-

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tional and developing countries character-ized by moribund structures that stifleinitiative. Under some conditions the firststep toward modernizing pre-bureaucraticmonoliths is to simply by-pass public sectorinstitutions, building alternative buteffective networks. For example, in someAfrican countries research on building in-formation systems in line ministries hasshown that unconventional networks canbe established and nurtured among effec-tive members of staff that by-pass ineffec-tive staff and bureaucratic procedures andpromote productivity.

• There are strong arguments for the centerto be responsible for the objectives ofstabilization and distribution. Nearly alltransitional and developing countries,whatever their regime type, do this. But theimplementation of allocative objectives canbe administratively decentralized if govern-ments favor doing so. Insecure govern-ments such as those led by a dictatorialpresident or a military junta are unlikely toconsider this.

• The focus on roles, actors, means, and taskspecificity requires that careful attention begiven to human, institutional, and financialcapacities. This is particularly the case inregard to public sector reforms focused onbreaking the monopoly of central design,downsizing the public sector, reengineeringgovernment, and/or turning to private sec-tor firms and organizations when possible.Further, decisions about decentralizingtasks to quasi-public institutions, NGOs,and private firms must calculate the admin-istrative, professional, technical, and finan-cial capacities of the transferee to carry outspecified tasks, as well as the competence ofpublic sector role players to ensure execu-tion through oversight and support.

• Administrative decentralization’s expan-sion of the array of public, quasi-public,and private institutions and organizationsproviding collective goods and services atthe lowest possible cost and risk. As a

result, it demands that in designing andimplementing interventions, attention begiven to the fact that expansion creates anumber of intra- and inter-organizationcoordination and linkage problems thatmust be addressed.

• There are strong arguments for the centerto be responsible for the objectives ofstabilization and distribution. Nearly alltransitional and developing countries,whatever their regime type, do this. But theimplementation of allocative objectives canbe administratively decentralized if govern-ments favor doing so. Some governmentsdo not consider this. This is particularlylikely for insecure governments such asthose led by a dictatorial president or amilitary junta.

• Highly centralized states find it difficult todo more than pursue carefully controlledand centrally dominated deconcentration.For this reason, Distributive InstitutionalMonopoly is the dominant strategy foundin most transitional and developing coun-tries for allocative public sector tasks. De-concentration aimed at maintaining law,order, and tax collection occurs in all suchstates, frequently accompanied by lineministry control down to the field-level.

• In the transitional and developing worlddevolution occurs primarily in regard tourban areas, where chartered municipalitiesand towns exist. This devolution is oftenclosely controlled. It is likely to be the majorform of devolution for some time despitearguments to the contrary.

• Aside from state-owned enterprises dele-gation by central or non-central govern-mental units is not common. Promotion ofdelegation strategies is most likely to workin urban areas lacking the administrative orfinancial capacity to perform their assignedpublic sector services.

• Administrative strategies that promote mo-nopolies may not always work for controloriented states. This is most likely to be thecase where multi-party democracy is being

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promoted and parties have regional bases.It also occurs when states are threatened byregions using ethnicity or religion as thebasis for struggling for greater autonomy orsecession. Such demands may underminestrategies of Institutional Monopoly,forcing political leaders to considerextensive administrative decentralizationreforms. Under such conditions, the leadersof countries so threatened may find thestrategy of devolution through DistributedInstitutional Monopoly useful for meetingthe demands of groups or regions seekingto build political power through increasedlocal control or, in an increasing number ofcountries, to break free of the unitary stateand its monopolies of control.

• It Institutional Pluralism when resource-limited governments look the other wayand allow NGOs and community-based as-sociations take over public sector tasks thatare not being performed.

Synthesis and SummaryFor most transitional and developing

countries, the administrative challenge is tosimultaneously improve the delivery of pub-lic goods and services and substantiallydownsize the public sector, primarily throughincreased devolution and delegation. Risingto this challenge will be particularly difficultfor the many countries with weak centers andlimited personnel and financial resources.The task is further compounded for thosecountries fragmented by ethnic, religious,and nationalist demands for greater localautonomy. Meeting such challenges willrequire new analytical frameworks that canassist government decision-makers and pro-fessionals in designing and implementinginnovative administrative reforms and inter-ventions. The question addressed in thispaper is whether the Administrative DesignFramework can be useful to them.

This concluding section has two mainobjectives. First it reviews the design of ad-

ministrative systems defined as task relatedroles and structures. A matrix is used to dem-onstrate the three administrative design op-tions based on the two dimensions: role andtask. Second, it seeks to demonstrate severalkey roles that administrative systemsperform when making a transition from onestrategy of administrative design to anotheror when carrying out specific public sectortasks. The roles discussed here areidentification and planning, policyinnovation, strategy, political leadership,financial mobilization, task management, andadministration. Additional roles that are notcovered here would include operationalimplementation and management,performance oversight and auditing, andevaluation, and redesign.

From Framework to Application

The Administrative Design Frameworkfocuses on designs that emphasize administra-tive roles required to carry out specific publicsector tasks. The focus on tasks and roles isimportant because they are dynamic, particu-larly as a country’s strategy of administrativedesign moves from exclusive monopoly ordeconcentrated forms of Distributed Institu-tional Monopoly toward devolution and ex-panded administrative pluralism. It is sub-mitted that the new Framework facilitatesunderstanding how roles related to adminis-trative design strategies and specific publicsector tasks can be recombined with spatiallycentralized or decentralized structures topromote accountable, efficient and effectiveadministration. The Framework also setsadministrative decentralization within awider framework of administrative designthat recognizes that some public sector tasksand some task related roles probably should,under most conditions, be centralized. Hence,the Framework explicitly allows designersand implementors to consider administrativepossibilities for centralization as well as de-centralization.

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The key to breaking the monopoly of centraldesign lies in the sharing of roles related to theexecution of specific public sector tasks, suchas the construction and maintenance of infra-structure or the provision of refuse collectionand disposal in urban areas. It is the sharingof roles at central and non-central levels thatis the hallmark of a transition toward themore devolutionary forms of Distributed In-stitutional Monopoly and Institutional Plural-ism.

Further, the Framework emphasizes thedegree of role monopoly or pluralism becauseof its assertion that, all other things beingequal, role pluralism promotes accountableadministrative systems, which, the authorsassert, manage resources more efficiently andeffectively. As such, they are better able tomobilize resources than administrative sys-tems that are highly monopolistic and largelyunaccountable.

Again, the most typical administrativedesign approaches found in transitional anddeveloping countries are InstitutionalMonopoly and Distributed InstitutionalMonopoly, where roles are monopolized andstructure is either centralized or decentral-ized. These two administrative designs willpredominate for the foreseeable future. WhileInstitutional Pluralism offers a strategy thathas a high probability of making the publicsector more accountable, efficient, and effec-tive, governments are most likely to confinethis strategies to efforts to carry out publicsector tasks in large urban areas.

Design of Administrative Systems

The Framework presents three objectivesof administrative design: accountability ofperformance, efficiency of management, andeffectiveness in mobilizing and using re-sources. It assumes that accountability is theforemost objective and that efficient man-agement and effective resource mobilizationstem from accountability. Further, theFramework assumes that accountability ismaximized by having two or more public sec-

tor institutions and/or private sector firmsand organizations share in the performanceof the roles needed to promote administrativedesign changes or carry out a particular ad-ministratively decentralized public sectortask. In particular, it argues that pluralistdelivery of roles through the strategies of Dis-tributed Institutional Monopoly’s devolu-tionary form or through Institutional Plural-ism promotes accountability and good man-agement and that government decision-makers and professionals should seek waysto promote a transition in their public sectoradministration from monopoly toward ex-panded devolution and more extensive plu-ralism.

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One of the major flaws in the conven-tional Type-Function Framework is its as-sumption that spatial distribution of author-ity will increase accountability and makemanagement efficient and effective. But spa-tial administrative decentralization does notmake systems more accountable because taskrelated roles are monopolized and notshared. Thus the Framework stresses theanalytic dimension of the concentration ofadministrative roles. Importantly, this doesnot mean that it precludes consideration ofthe structural/spatial dimension. Rather, itextends the spatial to the analytical. This isillustrated in Figure 1, demonstrating the

analytic and spatial dimensions ofadministrative design.

In Figure 1, Quadrant I is the conven-tional approach of centralization or what isdefined here as Institutional Monopoly. Rolesare not shared. Instead they are monopolizedwithin one central public sector institution.Quadrant III represents the most conven-tional approach to administrative decentrali-zation, or what has been defined as Distrib-uted Institutional Monopoly, for the roles arenot shared but the responsibility for the rolesis spatially distributed. Included withinQuadrant III are both the deconcentrated and

ANALYTICAL(Role)

CENTRALISATION DECENTRALISATION(Monopoly) (Pluralism)

CENTER

SPATIAL(Structural)

I II

LOCAL-LEVEL III IV

Figure 1: Analytical and Structural Design Dimensions of Administrative Systems

devolved types of Distributed InstitutionalMonopoly. Quadrants II and IV are examplesof the third administrative strategy, Institu-tional Pluralism, where roles related to aspecific task are shared by two or more gov-ernmental institutions and/or private sectorfirms or community organizations. Institu-tional Pluralism can be spatially centralizedor decentralized.

The administrative system in most coun-tries is comprised of a mix of these strategies.However, particular strategies dominate. Inmost transitional and developing countries,the strategies being implemented are largely

located in Quadrants I and III. In part, thisbecause there are strong theoretical and po-litical reasons for centralizing stabilizationand distribution objectives (Quadrant I). Plu-ralism does occur in some transitional anddeveloping countries in regard to these ob-jectives when some roles related to stabiliza-tion and distribution tasks are delegated tostate controlled enterprises and authorities(Quadrant II). However, this strategy is notcommon. It is far more likely that the thirdobjective, allocation, will be spatially decen-tralized, either through deconcentration and

23

devolution (Quadrant III) or delegation(Quadrant IV).

By focusing on the task-related rolesadministrative systems perform, the Admin-istrative Design Framework demonstratesthat administrative systems are not mono-lithic. A spatially centralized governmentalinstitution can have a monopoly over someroles while sharing other roles with spatiallycentralized or decentralized governmentalinstitutions. Over time dynamic combinationsin role performance are possible.

Figure 1 also illustrates two design guide-lines that can be useful to governments seek-ing to formulate a strategy of administrativedecentralization. First, there are a variety ofoptions in designing an administrative systemrelative to public sector tasks and the rolesrequired for them to be performed. For ex-ample, the financing role for local-level roadconstruction could be wholly done by a localgovernmental institution (Quadrant III),shared between such an institution and thecentral government (Quadrants I and III), ordone by a local governmental institution, anaid agency, international private bank, andthe central government (Quadrants IV and I,or III and II, or II and IV).

Further, it is possible to have two or moreadministrative designs (quadrants) for thedelivery of roles related to the execution of aspecific public sector task. As many studieshave demonstrated, spatial administrativedecentralization requires complementarystrength among central and non-central gov-ernmental institutions. The Framework’s em-phasis on the importance of administrativeand financial capacity, and the difficulties offield administration that face most poor coun-tries, suggest that complementary strength isdifficult to find in transitional and developingcountries. The delivery of a task-related role,such as financing, may require not onlycomplementary institutions but also comple-mentary roles. For example, establishing afinancing role at the local-level for a particu-lar public sector task may require a prior im-

provement in the central government’s regu-latory role of governing capital markets. Insuch a situation, the performance of the fi-nancing role, which can be delivered by sev-eral administrative options, also requires thata complementary role (regulation) be pro-vided prior to and along with the financingrole. There are also a variety of administrativedesign options in providing these comple-mentary roles.

Sequence Options in AdministrativeDesign

The second design guideline underlyingthe Framework is that options in thesequence of administrative design must becarefully considered. Because the Frameworkis not static, there are a variety of sequencesthat can occur in the transition of anadministrative system’s strategy for theexecution of a specific public sector task andthe roles related to such a task. Four differentsequences of spatial (structural) andanalytical (role) centralization anddecentralization can be illustrated throughreference to Figure 1. These are:

Sequence 1: Quadrant I to Quadrant III:From centralized role andstructure to spatiallydecentralized structure(deconcentrated or devolved)but centralized role.

Sequence 2: Quadrant I to Quadrant II, Fromcentralized role and structure todecentralized role and central-ized structure.

Sequence 3: Quadrant III to Quadrant IV:From centralized role and decen-tralized structure(deconcentrated or devolved) todelegated role and structure(pluralism).

Sequence 4: Quadrant I to Quadrant IV:From centralized role and struc-ture to delegated role and struc-ture (pluralism).

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The most common view of administrativedesign is Sequence 1, which is to spatially de-centralize a formerly centralized task-relatedrole while retaining monopoly or central con-trol. This sequence and its problems are wellillustrated in case studies of countries pursu-ing deconcentration (sometimes dressed inclaims of devolution).11 Sequence 2 adminis-tratively decentralizes the specific task relatedroles without spatially decentralizing. Ex-amples of this are found where countrieshave devolved or delegated specific roles re-lated to particular stabilization and distribu-tion tasks to other central institutions. Typi-cally, this occurs when a central bank de-volves or delegates some of its task-relatedroles to specialized banks and financial insti-tutions located in the capital city and that areeither controlled or closely regulated by thecentralized government. Sequence 3 illus-trates the situation when specific roles relatedto spatially decentralized tasks are adminis-tratively delegated to private sector firms orcommunity organizations. This sequence ismost commonly found in large, financiallydistressed urban areas. Sequence 4 adminis-tratively decentralizes both the role and thespatial structure of a centralized administra-tive system. Narrowly controlled examples ofthis sequence are, however, not hard to find.For example, roles and structures of centrallycontrolled medical, veterinary, or agriculturalresearch can be contracted out to private sec-tor firms, a strategy aid agencies are pressinga number of financially weak governments toconsider. There are several other sequencesthat are logically possible.

Providing governments with guidelinesfor designing administrative systems that in-clude designs that administratively decentral-ize structures and roles involves two tasks.The first is to outline the options for deliver-ing roles. The second is to suggest sequences 11 For example: Joel D. Barkan and MichaelChege, “Decentralising the State: District Focusand Politics of Reallocation in Kenya,” Journal ofModern African Studies, XXVII, 3 (1989), p. 446.

in administrative design. Again, Figure 1provides insights into such tasks.

The major roles presented earlier are:policy innovation, leadership, planning, fi-nancing, management, and task administra-tion. In the discussion that follows, theseroles will be discussed primarily in regard tothe administrative strategies set forth in Fig-ure 1 and to the sequencing of such strategyroles outlined above.

Leadership is arguably the most centralrole in a reform related to a administrativedecentralization. National-level leadership isessential to carrying out administrative re-form. Without strong political commitment,reforms or programs aimed at decentralizingpublic sector tasks and related roles are un-likely to succeed. In the early stages of anadministrative decentralization reform, whenthe benefits of reform are not widely valuedand are viewed by many as threatening, na-tional-level leadership is critical. Leadershipalso has to lay the groundwork for other,more task-related roles such as strategy, fi-nancing and regulation.

Closely related to the role of leadership inan administrative decentralization interven-tion, is the role of strategy formulation. A strat-egy is a vision of a preferred outcome cou-pled with practical steps to achieve thatvision. It is typical for the role of strategyformulation to be developed and promotedby the center, for they benefit the center(Quadrant I).

In most administrative decentralizationstrategies, the role of regulation is often doneby the center and not shared or delegatedspatially to non-central governmental institu-tions or analytically through assigning someaspects of the regulation role to local gov-ernmental institutions. Thus, this role oftenremains within Quadrant I. If a governmentdecides to move its administrative design foradministrative decentralization toward Insti-tutional Pluralism and engage in brokeringroles (Quadrant IV), rules are needed to en-sure that the distributed administrative sys-

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tems promote linkages with non-public insti-tutions and organizations. For the allocationobjective, the role of the spatial center thenincreasingly becomes one of a regulator thatensures that the playing field is not onlylevel, but that it exists at all. The role ofregulation is not efficiently executed whenmultiple actors are involved, as is the case inQuadrant II, for there needs to be a unity ofpolicy.

The oversight role is frequently shared be-tween spatially centralized and decentralizedstructures (Quadrants I and III or IV). Over-sight’s effectiveness depends on the relativecapacity and authority at different levels. It isespecially hard to develop technical capacityand credible authority at the non-central gov-ernmental or private sector levels. As long aspublic sector tasks are funded by centralrevenues through national budgets, oversightwill continue to be done from the center.

There are many options in the adminis-trative design of the finance role. It can beshared relatively equally by the center, thelocal government, and local private investors(a strategy of Quadrant I and IV). Or a coun-try can adopt a pluralist local financing strat-egy (Quadrant IV) rather than the typicalstrategy of entirely publicly funded local fi-nancing (Quadrants I and III). The majority ofcountry experiences with administrative de-centralization show financing either beingcompletely funded through the center or withthe center dominating revenue. Hence, re-defining the financing role from the conven-tional design pair of Quadrant I and III to apluralist approach as suggested by QuadrantIV, illustrates the argument that pluralismwill improve the mobilization of capital andmake its use more efficient and accountable.A pluralist approach to the finance role pro-motes such creative solutions as debt financ-ing of infrastructure and concessionary in-vestment. A variety of approaches are avail-able for transitional and developing countries

to consider, including BOO (build-own-oper-ate) and BOT (build-own-transfer) schemes.12

The planning role is often shared from theinception of an administrative reform. In-deed, pluralist planning process appear to becritical to the success of administrative decen-tralization reforms. Typically, in the initialstages a central ministry takes the lead in de-fining the new planning techniques to beused and in training local planners in theirapplication. These local planners can be fieldofficers of national ministries or employees ofthe urban local governmental units. Success-ful reforms appear to be designed in bothQuadrant I and Quadrant III, with the role oflocal planners increasing. As central financingis phased out and replaced by local sources,the role of local planning will increase. A keyissue in the evolution of institutionalpluralism is how the planning role evolvesfrom the sole domain of central or non-centralgovernmental institutions to be increasinglyshared by private sector firms andorganizations. In this regard, considerablethinking needs to be given to the extent towhich the planning role can be delegated tonon-public actors.

The brokerage role is a major defining fea-ture of the Institutional Pluralism strategy.The brokerage role is where both central anddevolved local-level governmental institu-tions attempt to harness both the market andcivil society organizations by delegating rolesrelated to the provision of collective goodsand services to there is no brokerage role be-cause the central Government has neverplanned on devolving strong powers to local-level governmental units or allowing thetransfer of public sector tasks or roles relatedto such tasks to private sector firms or or-ganizations. However, increasingly such cen-

12 For suggestions on alternative financing strate-gies see: David Gisselquist, “How to EncourageGovernment Decentralization: Interesting Ideasfor Redirecting Lending,” Transitions, V, 7 (1994),pp. 7-8.

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tral governments look the other way whensuch firms and organizations take on activi-ties governmental units lack the resources orcommitment to carry out. This is to be ex-pected, for meaningful devolution and dele-gation is the exception under Institutional orDistributed Institutional Monopoly strategies.

In contrast, in urban areas experimentingwith delegation brokerage occurs when local-level units begin to work with private inves-tors to fund such tasks as the provision oflow-income housing, maintaining and ex-tending water systems, or building andmaintaining waste treatment plants. Thereare several features of the brokerage role.First, it involves considerable complemen-tarities amongst other the other key roles ofpolitical leadership, financial mobilization,task management, and administration. Sec-ond, a brokerage role need not rest at thelocal level (Quadrant IV), but can also be ex-ercised at the center (Quadrants I and II).

Basic Analytical Guidelines forAdministrative Decentralization

The key roles that administrative systemsneed to effectively perform to execute publicsector tasks have now been reviewed, and thedesign options and the sequence of designshave been briefly summarized. Here thepaper concludes by briefly reviewing a fewguidelines generated by comparing theFramework to a range of case studies foundin the literature.• A strong center is a prerequisite to mean-

ingful and effective administrative decen-tralization. While the allocation objectivesmay be administratively decentralized, asprescribed in the theory of public finance,an enabling environment provided at thecenter is needed for their effective delivery.

• A strong center is needed for role decen-tralization.

• There are considerable obstacles in the wayof reforms aimed at promoting InstitutionalPluralism. Managing task-related roles

either within a hierarchy (Distributed Insti-tutional Monopoly) or between hierarchiesor devolved governmental units, markets,and civil society organizations (InstitutionalPluralism) involves coordination costs. Onecannot assume a priori that InstitutionalPluralism has higher coordination costs, butit is possible. Another obstacle that Institu-tional Pluralism confronts when it attemptsto harness the market through delegation isthat in emerging economies there may beconsiderable imperfections. Market solu-tions may offer a worse solution than pro-viding services through governmental insti-tutions.13 So too, devolved local governmen-tal units and civil society organizations maylack the personnel and financial resourcesrequired to carry out task-related roles as-signed under a strategy of Institutional Plu-ralism.

Final Questions about the Framework

Finally a few questions are in order.These are generated by the fact that theFramework presented here has not beenextensively tested. However, cases arebeginning to appear in experiments bytransitional and developing countries thatpursue greater involvement of actors in theexecution of decentralized public sectortasks.14 Still, more work is required ingrounding the Framework, especially inaddressing three difficult questions:• As spatially centralized roles are devolved

and delegated (a transition from QuadrantIII to IV, what complementary roles need to

13 Vladmir Benacek, Market Failure versus Govern-ment Failure: The Ways of the Emerging MarketEconomies, (Prague: Charles University, Center forEconomic Research and Graduate Education,Working Paper No. 5, 1992).14 For example: Judith Tendler and SaraFredheim, “Trust in a Rent-seeking World: Healthand Government Transformed in NortheastBrazil,” World Development, XXII, 12 (1994), pp.1171-91.

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be strengthened at the center, either concur-rently or as a precondition?

• How are central roles devolved and dele-gated during the transition from Quadrant Ito IV?

• How do governments move from conven-tional administrative structures, whereroles are monopolized, to new structureswhere roles are shared through devolutionand delegation?

This third question is at the very heart ofcurrent debates on administrative reform. Atissue are the three principles of administra-tive design: accountability, efficiency, and ef-fectiveness, as well as their effect on resourcemobilization. While Institutional Pluralismmay not be the dominant design in the futurefor administrative systems in transitional anddeveloping countries, some governments areanxious to incorporate, if only partially, thefeatures of this design to promote account-able, efficient, and effective administrativesystems. Administrative end states are easyto prescribe. The far harder task is to developworkable strategies for introducing changewithin existing administrative systems thatcombine different design guidelines yetchange outcomes and, eventually, behavior.Designing and managing transitional admin-istrative systems mixed design guidelines isvery difficult. The challenge of administrativedesign in the 1990s and beyond is to developanalytical tools that can assist governmentdecision-makers in transitional and develop-ing countries to initiate and sustain the tran-sition from monopolistic to pluralistic admin-istrative systems.

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Annex I: Conceptual Debates and the Type-FunctionFramework

Since the 1950s, a large body of academic,professional, and conference generated litera-ture has emerged that seeks to address thevarious forms. types, and strategies of devel-opmental decentralization. Written primarily inEnglish, French, and Spanish, these materialsare comprised of theoretical models, analyti-cal principles, comparative studies of selectedcases, individual country studies, focused in-quiries into particular aspects of the inter-vention, teaching materials, and governmentor aid agency design and implementationmanuals. Unfortunately, many of those con-tributing to this literature have shown out-right indifference to building agreed-upon,comparative frameworks and concepts.1 As aresult, both written publications and confer-ence discussions on decentralization aremarred by conflicting conceptual definitions,careless application of principles, and unsys-tematic presentations.

Conception and TerminologicalConfusion

One of the most widely acknowledgedexperts on decentralization , Diana Conyers,argues:

...the language used in developmentstudies...is plagued by ambiguities andinconsistencies, which lead to confu-

1 An extensive review of these issues in set forthin: John M. Cohen and Stephen B. Peterson,“Methodological Issues in the Analysis of Decentrali-zation (Cambridge: Harvard Institute for Interna-tional Development, Development DiscussionPaper No. 555, October 1996).

sion, misunderstanding, and conflict indiscourse.2

She then argues this is serious problem istypified by the failure of development spe-cialists to define and agree upon the meaningand complex dimensions of “decentraliza-tion.” In this regard, she argues that it willnot be possible to carry out meaningful, com-parative, and empirical studies on decentrali-zation, much less formulate effective reformstrategies and guidelines for promoting de-centralization until there is more widespreadagreement among international developmentprofessionals, academics, and senior govern-ment decision-makers on the definition of theconcept.

Overview of the Type-FunctionFramework

Development studies should not beplagued by this problem. This is becauseconsiderable conceptual elaboration occurredduring the early 1980s, largely based on thework of G. Shabbir Cheema, John R. Nellis,and Dennis A. Rondinelli.3 Today there is

2 Diana Conyers, “Future Directions in Develop-ment Studies: the Case of Decentralization,”World Development, XIV, 4 (1986), p. 594; and her“Decentralization and Development: a Review ofthe Literature,” Public Administration and Develop-ment, IV, 2 (1984), pp 187-07.3 G. Shabbir Cheema and Dennis A. Rondinelli,eds., Decentralization and Development: Policy Im-plementation in Developing Countries (Beverly Hills:Sage Publications, 1983); Dennis A. Rondinelli,John R. Nellis, and G. Shabbir Cheema, Decentrali-zation in Developing Countries: A Review of Recent

29

growing agreement in the English-based lit-erature on the conceptual definitions thatemerged from their efforts. Yet, there are stillacademics, aid agency professionals, andsenior government decision-makers who areeither unaware of or indifferent to the prog-ress that has been made in defining decen-tralization terms. As a result, even the currentliterature is marked by careless use of terms.So to, debates about decentralization reformswithin governments and at development-related conferences and workshops are fre-quently clouded by terminological confusion,with parties often talking past each other.This is particularly the case at internationalworkshops or among members of interna-tional research and design teams.

The Cheema, Nellis, and Rondinelli ap-proach is based on the analytical classificationof decentralization by form and type. Briefly,forms of decentralization are classified on thebasis of objectives: political, spatial, market, andadministrative. Each form is then divided intotypes. The most elaborated approach to typesis found in regard to “administrative decen-tralization,” namely: deconcentration, devolu-tion, and delegation.4

Briefly, “political” forms of decentraliza-tion are typically used by political scientistsinterested in democratisation and civil socie-ties to identify the transfer of decision-mak-ing power to lower-level governmental unitsor to citizens or their elected representatives.“Spatial” decentralization is a term used byregional planners and geographers involved

Experience (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, StaffWorking Paper No. 581, 1984); Jerry M.Silverman, Public Sector Decentralization: EconomicPolicy and Sector Investment Programs (Washington,D.C.: World Bank, African Technical Department,Technical Paper No. 188, 1992).4 Distinctions between these forms and types ofdecentralization are well made in: Dennis A.Rondinelli, Decentralizing Urban Development Pro-grams: A Framework for Analyzing Policy(Washington, D.C., USAID, Office of Housing andUrban Programs, 1990), pp. 9-15.

in formulating policies and programs thataim at reducing excessive urban concentra-tion in a few large cities by promoting re-gional growth poles that have potential tobecome centers of manufacturing and agricul-tural marketing. “Market” forms of decen-tralization are generally used by economiststo analyze and promote action that facilitatesthe creation of conditions allowing goods andservices to be produced and provided bymarket mechanisms sensitive to the revealedpreferences of individuals. This form of de-centralization has become more prevalentdue to recent trends toward economic liber-alization, privatisation, and the demise ofcommand economies. Under it, public goodsand services are produced and provided bysmall and large firms, community groups,cooperatives, private voluntary associations,and Non Governmental Organizations(NGOs). Finally, “administrative” decentrali-zation is the focus of lawyers and public ad-ministration professionals seeking to describeor reform hierarchical and functional distri-bution of powers and functions between cen-tral and non-central governmental units.

Much of the literature on decentralizationis focused on only one of these four forms ofdecentralization: administrative. This is ac-ceptable to the authors because this is the fo-cus of the work. Again, briefly, there isgrowing agreement that this form is charac-terized by three types. “Deconcentration” isthe transfer of authority over specified deci-sion-making, financial, and managementfunctions by administrative means to differ-ent levels under the jurisdictional authority ofthe central government. This is the least ex-tensive type of administrative decentraliza-tion and the most common found in transi-tional and developing countries. “Devolu-tion” occurs when authority is transferred bycentral governments to local-level govern-mental units holding corporate status grantedunder state legislation. Federal states are bydefinition devolved, though the extent oflegally defined and shared powers devolvedby the federal government to lower-level

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governmental units can be quite limited.Devolution, such as the establishment ofchartered municipal authorities is not com-mon in unitary states, largely because manytransitional and developing countries arecharacterized by weak central governmentsweary of losing political or administrativecontrol to local governmental units.“Delegation” refers to the transfer of gov-ernment decision-making and administrativeauthority and/or responsibility for carefullyspelled out tasks to institutions and organi-zations that are either under its indirect con-trol or independent. Most typically, delega-tion is by the central government to semi-autonomous organizations not wholly con-trolled by the government but legally ac-countable to it, such as state owned enter-prises and urban or regional developmentcorporations. Increasingly, central and local-level governmental units are delegating tasks,such as refuse collection and road repair, bycontract to private firms.

The Cheema, Nellis, and Rondinelli ap-proach, which it is asserted is the mostwidely accepted analytical framework isgenerally known as the Type-FunctionFramework. This Framework is summarizedin Figure 2. As illustrated, it has substantialutility for analysis, design, andimplementation purposes, largely because itis sensitive to both the types ofadministrative decentralization governmentscan consider and the central functions thatare essential to the provision of public tasksby central, non-central, or private sectorinstitutions and organizations. Also theFramework can be used to look at the admin-istrative decentralization of specific activities,sectoral activities, or large-scale. government-wide activities.

Problems with the Type-FunctionFramework

This description of the dominant Type-Function Framework is all well and good.

However, it is plagued with a number ofproblems. Only a few of the more importantones will be presented here.

First it is generally agreed that there arefour forms of decentralization: political, ad-ministrative, spatial, and market. Becausethere is a close correlation between theseforms of decentralization and standard socialscience fields, decentralization studies areoften coded in the terminology of disciplines.For example, economists. planners, and pub-lic finance specialists tend to focus on“market” and “spatial” forms of decentrali-zation for which this Framework is only inpart designed to serve. Further, some of itsbasic principles, which have not been elabo-rated in this paper, are replace of other gener-ated by the sub-fields of those disciplines inways create conceptual and terminologicalinvolution that makes communication amongacademics, aid agency professionals, andsenior decision-makers difficult..

Second, those reading academic publica-tions or discussing issues at conferences gen-erally fail to recognize that those whose firstlanguage is French or Spanish often ignore orotherwise revise the conceptual and termino-logical definitions that mark the dominantEnglish language-based Framework. For ex-ample, a number of French specialists use theword “decentralization” only to mean “devo-lution.” This was the case in with a discussedpaper written in English by a French expertfor the World Bank.5 Clearly, careless transla-tion or acceptance of the French notion that“decentralization equals devolution” under-mines the conceptual clarity required to for-

5 Rémy Prud’homme, On the Dangers of Decentrali-zation (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, Transpor-tation, Water, and Urban Development Depart-ment, Policy Research Working Paper No. 1252,1994) ignores the English literature and arguesthat: “Decentralization is an ambiguous concept,its borders not well defined...decentralization iscommonly used to refer to what is describedabove as devolution. This paper follows thatusage.”

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mulate useful analytical frameworks andguidelines. Or, for example, in Spanish

the

TASK FUNCTIONS

TYPES OF ADMINISTRATIVEDECENTRALIZATION

Deconcentration Devolution Delegation

Planning

Fiscal Policy andRevenue Generation

Budgeting and Expendi-ture Management

Staffing

Programme and ProjectImplementation

InformationManagement

Operation andMaintenance

Figure 2: Standard Matrix-Based Framework Comparing Types of Decentralization to MajorGovernment FunctionsAdapted from: Jerry M. Silverman, Public Sector Decentralization: Economic Policy and SectorInvestment Programs (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, African Technical Department, TechnicalPaper No. 188, 1992), pp. 62-7.

term “municipio” is used in regard to local-level governance in Latin America. In manyLatin countries a municipio can be an urbanarea, a zone within an urban area, a mixedurban-rural area, or an entirely rural area.Yet, linguistic problems often leave Englishspeakers understanding the term as meaninga “municipality” and treating this govern-mental unit from the perspective of Britishlocal government. Finally, there is even con-fusion in a single language. For example, inEnglish public administrators tend to sue theterm “local government” to refer to all threetypes of the deconcentrated, devolved, or

delegated local-level units while financialspecialists tend to confine to term only tocover devolved, administratively chartedtowns and municipalities.

Third, despite the dominance of the Type-Function Framework there exists a widerange of terms to describe lower-level hier-archies of governance. For example, it is pos-sible to find within a single study a wide va-riety of terms describing these units, such as“regional government,” “district govern-ment,” “field administration,” “rural gov-ernment,” “urban government,” “municipalgovernment,” and “local authority govern-

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ment.” In the past, the terms used dependedon the preferences and objectives of authors.For example, in their 1974 ground-breakingmonograph on the effect of decentralizationand local organizations on Asian develop-ment, Two American specialists in decen-tralization used the term “localgovernment,”6 even though the term wasviewed by many other specialists as beingconfined to classical British local governmentauthorities or chartered municipalities, asworked out by Lord Rippon in the 19thcentury.7 Alternatively, in a comparativestudy of a wide range of transitional anddeveloping countries other specialists usedthe term “decentralized government.”8 Bothsets of authors were talking about the samekinds of lower-level governmental units.

Fourth, during the 1990s it became in-creasingly clear that the Type-FunctionFramework failed to fully address importantreform design issues. Several of its shortcom-ings will be briefly summarized. First, theFramework leads analysts to consider thetypes of administrative decentralization asend-states and to give inadequate attention toprocess. This is important because the decen-tralization of any public sector task involves anumber of actors operating in conditions thatare dynamic and constantly changing. Sec-ond, related to the focus on end-states, theFramework fails to emphasize the fact thatdevolution and delegation, in particular,must draw upon an array of institutions andorganizations that can carry out roles relatedto the public sector task being decentralized

6 Norman T. Uphoff and Milton J. Esman, LocalOrganization for Rural Development: Analysis ofAsian Experience (Ithaca: Rural DevelopmentCommittee, Cornell University, Rural Local Gov-ernment Publication No. 19, 1974).7 Philip Mawhood, “Decentralisation and theThird World in the 1980s,” Planning and Admini-stration, XIV, 1 (1987), pp. 12-13.8 Rondinelli, Nellis, and Cheema, Decentralizationin Developing Countries.

and that such reforms can only be achievedthrough a long process that involves recom-bining governmental and non-governmentalinstitutions and organizations in ways thatcarry out roles efficiently, effectively, and ac-countably. A third and related point is thatthe Framework does not help its users rec-ognize that pre-determined outcomes are dif-ficult to reach, that many opportunities andconstraints cannot be anticipated ahead oftime, and that there is great need for flexibil-ity in implementation and beyond. Forth, andimportantly, the Framework has not provedto by particularly sensitive to distinctions orvariations in the managerial, technical, andfinancial capacity of institutions and organi-zations to which public sector tasks can bedeconcentrated, devolved, or delegated. As aresult heroic assumptions are often made bysome analysts about the personnel and fi-nancial capacity of non-central and privatesector institutions and organizations. Fifth,the Framework generally fails to stimulatesufficient attention to the fact that a majorobjective of deconcentration, devolution, anddelegation should be to expand the array ofcentral, non-central, and private sector insti-tutions and organizations carrying out rolesrelative to public sector tasks. This leads to asixth problem with the Framework: this arrayor institutions and organizations creates anumber of intra- and inter-institutional andorganizational coordination and linkageproblems that must be addressed as part ofany decentralization strategy. Because of thestatic nature of the Framework, as well as thetendency to view administrative decentrali-zation in spatial terms, institutional and or-ganizational linkages and collaboration islargely neglected as a major issue in adminis-trative decentralization reforms. Seventh,while the Framework recognizes that somefunctional role responsibilities probably haveto remain in central hands, it does not devotemuch attention to this possibility nor to theadvantages of such role responsibilities beingshared by a range of institutional and organ-izational role players.

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Finally, the adoption and application ofthe Type-Function Framework has beenhampered by the growing tendency of“naive” decentralization specialists to arguethat far more important than conceptual andterminology clarity is the need to link conceptof decentralization to the forces of local con-trol, popular participation, and democratisa-tion. To a large extent such specialists rejectthe statist view and have little confidence inthe capacity of central ministries to effectivelyand efficiently promote development objec-tives. Hence, they ignore issues of central-local administrative organization and focuson the increasing the involvement of localcommunities, NGOs, and local private or-ganizations to perform typically governmen-tal functions at the local level.9 In effect, thesespecialists “lets throw out the bureaucratsand get on with the job.”

In sum, despite the analytical advancesthe Framework generates it suffers from sev-eral major problems; namely, disciplinary

9 Basic thinking on this development strategy isfound is such studies as: David C. Korten andRudi Klauss, eds., People Centered Development:Contributions Toward Theory and Planning Frame-works (West Hartford: Kumarian Press, 1984); GuyGran, Development By People: Citizen Constructionof a Just World (New York: Praeger, 1983); DavidC. Korten, Getting to the 21st Century: VoluntaryAction and the Global Agenda (West Hartford:Kumarian Press, 1990).

and linguistic preferences that hamper itscomparative utility, failure to stimulate a fo-cus on roles, linkages, coordination, and re-sources, and insistence on freighting the de-centralization with ideological concerns.These and other problems hamper theFramework’s utility to those seeking tostimulate comparative discussion ofstrategies or to generate guidelines forpromoting reforms. One way to address theseconstraints is to design a new framework, onethat is based on concepts and terms that aremore neutral across disciplines and languagegroups, that address the recognized limits ofthe Framework, and that are not freightedwith four decades of experience and carelessuse of concepts and terms. This is thepurpose of the next section.

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Annex II: Issues in Redefining the Public Sector

The authors’ Framework is largely based onprinciples drawn from the theoretical litera-ture on organizations, public choice, fiscalfederalism, and public finance. It is primarilyfocused on four issues:• economic growth;• financial incapacity of the state;• spatial concentration of development; and• bureaucratic reform.

The design of the Framework begins aredefinition of the role of the public sector inproducing and providing collective goodsand services. It rethinks the ways in whichthe state can ensure the accountable, effective,and efficient execution of public sector tasksthrough increased devolution or delegation ofthe full range of task-related roles. The resultof efforts to rethink these ways has led theauthors to a design a Framework that in-cludes a mix of centralized and decentralizedstrategies. At the heart of this new approachare three approaches to administrative de-sign: Institutional Monopoly, Distributed Insti-tutional Monopoly, and Institutional Pluralism.Of these three types the most innovative isInstitutional Pluralism.

Role of the State in EconomicGrowth

The 1980s has seen a reassessment of theprocess of economic development and therole of the state in that process. Tasks onceconsidered to be the exclusive domain of thestate are being privatized. This is because the“publicness” of tasks is consistently andcreatively being redefined. The broader therange of tasks and the roles required to carrythem out, the larger the array of private

sector firms and organizations that canperform task-related roles or the tasksthemselves.

Recent historical reviews of economicgrowth in successful transitional and devel-oping countries, such as Asia’s Tigers, sug-gests that the state’s key functions are toprovide infrastructure and promote humancapital and financial markets. It is not topromote winners and losers in terms of pref-erential treatment of firms and organizations.1

Further this research suggests that for suc-cessful growth the state should be viewed asa critical and essential partner in the devel-opment process that has to be as efficient asits country’s firms. Public infrastructure iscritical to an efficient market and firms willdemand efficient operation of this infrastruc-ture.

Spatial Concentration ofDevelopment

The geography of centralism is thegeography of underdevelopment. Using sta-tistics on growth, it can he argued that by theend of the century the world’s ten largest cit-ies will all be in poor countries and their in-habitants will be inadequately served bymunicipal authorities with limited adminis-trative and fiscal capacities. The authors 1 Robert Wade, Governing the Market: EconomicTheory and the Role of Government in East Asian In-dustrialization (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1990); David L. Lindauer and MichaelRoemer, Eds. Africa and Asia: Legacies and Oppor-tunities in Development (San Francisco: ICS Pressfor Harvard Institute for International Develop-ment and the International Center for EconomicGrowth, 1994).

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assert that it is unlikely that governmentsfollowing either Institutional or DistributedInstitutional Monopoly will be able to pro-vide basic needs to burgeoning urban popu-lations, much less support a productive infra-structure that can promote economic growthand social welfare. The crisis of centralizedgrowth requires: (1) administratively decen-tralized development strategies that are morecreative than currently can be formulated un-der the spatial and structural limitations ofDistributed Institutional Monopoly strategies;and (2) Institutional Pluralism strategies thatallow non-central and private sector institu-tions and firms to carry out task related rolesmore accountability, effectively, and effi-ciently than governmental institutions hold-ing monopolies over public sector tasks.

Financial Limitations of the StateThe primary factor driving the redefini-

tion of the public sector is many states’ lim-ited financial capacity to provide publicgoods and services.2 This is demonstrated byfiscal stress in the West, the virtual collapse ofthe public sector in many NewlyIndependent States and Eastern Europe, andthe near-bankruptcy of many countries inAfrica, Latin America, the Middle East, andAsia. As a result of these and other financialpressures, de facto administrativedecentralization of central tasks to privatesector actors is occurring, because the statesimply cannot afford to carry out all of itstraditional tasks.

Bureaucratic ReformThere is growing global demand for pub-

lic sector reform. It is generated by debates onhow public bureaucracies perform or fail toperform. The debate on bureaucratic reformgoes right to heart of administrative design, 2 Gerald Caiden, Administrative Reform Comes ofAge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 266-7.

for it questions whether the current bureau-cratic model is appropriate. Among thechanges it argues for are deregulating gov-ernment, reinventing government, and aim-ing at a minimalist state.3 The authors’ reviewof these suggested reforms has led them toconclude that their central tenants are largelyrelevant to sophisticated, long-establishedWestern bureaucracies. Still, discussion of theutility of such reforms supports the authors’view that one of the central foundations forsuch a new Framework of administrative de-sign is the recognition of the need to redefinethe public sector.

It must be recognized that there are sev-eral important reasons why such redefinitioncan not go as far in transitional and develop-ing states as in the West. First, while thestate’s role can diminish as more creative de-centralization solutions are adopted, such asprivatisation of tax collection, the role of thestate as the principal provider of goods andservices will still continue. To a large extent,this is because public sector employment inmany transitional and developing countries islarge and politically powerful. Reduction ofthe state’s role in carrying out public sectortasks is viewed as a threat to civil servantsholding jobs at both central and local-levels ofgovernment. This is one of the major reasonswhy World Bank efforts to reduce the size ofthe public sector have made so little progressover the past decade.4 In addition, because of

3 These approaches are summed up in: Melvin J.Dubnick, “A Coup Against King Bureaucracy,” inDeregulating the Public Service: Can Government BeImproved?, edited by John J. Dilulio, Jr.(Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution,1994), p. 251.4 Louis de Merode, Civil Service Pay and Employ-ment in Africa: Selected Implementation Experiences(Report Prepared for International Bank for Re-construction and Development, Washington,D.C., 1991). An example of the difficulties isfound in: John M. Cohen, “Importance of PublicService Reform: the Case of Kenya,” Journal ofModern African Studies, XXXI, 3 (1993), pp. 449-76.

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ideological perspectives, many political lead-ers and their supporters distrust the privatesector and Non-Governmental Organization(NGO) community. In this regard, the statistperspective, so dominant in the years afterindependence, is still very strong in manytransitional and developing countries, not-withstanding the momentous changes thathave taken place in formerly state dominatedcommand economies.

The second problem with redefining thepublic sector relative to the provision ofgoods and services is that while not asadministratively demanding as producingthem, it is still an administratively intensivetask requiring management, financial, andtechnical resources that are difficult to buildand sustain. One could argue that the role ofproviding resources is more susceptible topolitical manipulation compared to the pro-duction of goods and services, where the dis-tribution issues are already settled. In such asituation, extensive oversight, if not controlfrom the center, is required.

Increased Administrative CapacityIn addition to redefining the public sector,

the second force militating toward the con-sideration of administrative decentralizationstrategies based on Institutional Pluralism isthe dramatic improvement in administrativecapacity now made possible by new man-agement techniques and the application ofinformation technology. Because of these im-provements, public agencies can now domuch more with less.

Reengineering has arguably become thedominant management trend of the 1990s inadvanced transitional and developing coun-tries. It is being adopted by both the publicand private sector.5 Only in the past fewyears has the concept been discussed in

5 Thomas H. Davenport, Process Innovation:Reengineering Work through Information Technology(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1993).

transitional and developing countries, andthere are few cases describing its use inadministrative decentralization.6

There is growing evidence that informa-tion technology helps public institutions atboth the center and non-center in transitionaland developing countries do more with less.7

Recent studies of government and the privatesector indicate that information technologycan greatly reduce the hierarchy and thus thesize of institutions and organizations. Muchof what middle-level managers do is to bro-ker information from lower-levels to higher-levels. Information technology allows institu-tions and organizations to reduce those mid-dle-level layers and improve the ability ofremaining managers to better manage infor-mation flows. While information technologycan reduce hierarchy, it may well not reducecosts. Information technology can, however,help government ministries and agenciesavoid future costs for more work to be donewith a relatively constant work force.8

Reengineering is in its infancy in manytransitional and developing countries becausethe strategic value of information technologyhas only recently been recognized.9 However,the trend is clear. It is a trend that will allow

6 For example, Emery M. Roe, “More than thePolitics of Decentralization: Local GovernmentReform, District Development and Public Ad-ministration in Zimbabwe.” World Development,XXIII, 5 (1995), p. 833.7 Mohan Kaul, Nitin R. Patel and Khalid Shams,Searching for a Paddle: Trends in IT Applications inAsian Government Systems, 2 vols. (Kuala Lumpur:Asian and Pacific Development Centre, 1987);Mukul Sanwal, Microcomputers in DevelopmentAdministration (New Delhi: Tata McGraw-HillPublishing Company Ltd, 1987).8 Stephen B. Peterson, “From Processing to Ana-lyzing: Intensifying the Use of Microcomputers inDeveloping Bureaucracies,” Public Administrationand Development, XI, 5 (1991).9 Stephen R. Roth and Charles K. Mann,Microcomputers in Development: A Public PolicyPerspective (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987).

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public sector institutions to do more withless, which facilitates administrative down-sizing. This results in the reduction in thenumber of personnel and the recurrent costsassociated with their support. Since salaries,emoluments, and maintenance costs oftenconsume a large share of most transitionaland developing government budgets, down-sizing is a strategy to contain, if not reduce,costs. The word “contain” is used because itis not always the case that administrativedownsizing leads to lower overall govern-ment costs. Administrative downsizing is of-ten accompanied by organization reengineer-ing that introduces information technology,which can actually increase a public sectorinstitution’s cost structure.

Administrative downsizing of the state isgenerally carried out by governmentsbecause of structural adjustment agreementswith aid agencies. But there are also caseswhere national political leaders and decision-makers have had the wisdom to seekefficiency gains. Pressures to move in thisdirection come from fiscal stress, whichencourages the deficit-consciousgovernments to trim their payrolls throughcivil service reforms. Administrativedownsizing can promote productivity andnot just retrenchment if the state uses the re-form opportunity to introduce measurespromoting efficiency and effectiveness.

Caveats About InstitutionalPluralism

The growing move to redefine the role ofthe state from a producer to a provider ofpublic goods and services reinforces the trendtoward finding ways to use the administra-tive strategy of Institutional Pluralism. This isbecause it further focuses attention on theneed to break the monopoly of central design.As the trend toward expanding the use ofadministrative decentralization continues togain in strength, governments will increas-ingly be concerned more with the marketing,

negotiation, management and funding ofcontracts by private firms and non-governmental organizations than with thedirect production of goods and services.

But it is essential to be realistic about theprospect of Institutional Pluralism. It is un-likely that the public sectors of transitionaland developing countries will easily reducetheir role as a producer and simply becomeproviders of public goods and services. Be-cause of vested interests, established systems,and bureaucratic inertia, for the foreseeablefuture decentralization initiatives in transi-tional and developing countries are likely tocontinue to be based on the strategy of Dis-tributed Institutional Monopoly. Never-theless, the financial realities of the 1990s andbeyond, as well as the pressures of aid agen-cies for expanded market solutions to gov-ernment performance problems, suggest thatsignificant administrative downsizing, crea-tive reengineering, deepened devolution, andincreased delegation will occur in most tran-sitional and developing countries. Recentmanagement innovations coupled with thegrowing use of information technology in thepublic sector should accelerate this trend andallow public sector administrative systems toperform more with less.

It is also important to remember that In-stitutional Pluralism will be confined to Mus-grave’s allocation objectives of the state andwill have no relevance to the stabilizationobjective. Distribution and stabilization ob-jectives will still be performed through insti-tutional monopolies, most likely at the center.Most careful studies of administrative decen-tralization conclude that a strong center is aprecondition for meaningful reforms. Hence,a strategy of Institutional Pluralism willhinge upon the effective delivery ofstabilization and distribution policies fromcentralized institutions.

A transitional or developing country willmost likely pursue all three administrativestrategies simultaneously. The Musgravianframework suggests that states simultane-

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ously pursue the three public purposes withstabilization being centralized, distributioncentralized (though administratively decen-tralized approaches are emerging) and allo-cation administratively decentralized.

The reinventing government approach,with its emphasis on incentives, strengthensthe role of central administration. To“structure the market for public purposes,”as is advocated by the reinventingperspective, suggests an even greater role forgovernment institutions at the center sincesuch “structuring” should be done market-wide to avoid imperfections, while disparitiesfrom the incentives should be compensatedthrough centrally delivered distribution poli-cies. For example, changing if a reform re-quires a change in the way urban centers useland may require a revision of the constitu-tion. While local monitoring might be neededto ensure that the change in the law was en-forced, the decisive act was done at the cen-ter.

The comparative advantage of central in-stitutions in mobilizing finance will continueand local-level governmental units will stillremain dependent on them. A commontheme in the decentralization literature is theadvocacy of autonomy by local-level authori-ties.1 Using the example of fiscal decentrali-zation, Kenneth Davey sums up the error ofthis argument:

1 For example, Kenneth Davey, Financing RegionalGovernment: International Practices and Their Rele-vance to the Third World (Chichester: John Wileyand Sons, 1983), pp. 164-70.

The choice is often between (a) a widemeasure of functional responsibilitycombined with a heavy dependenceupon central allocations, and (b) a nar-row range of duties combined with ahigh degree of self-sufficiency. Thequest for autonomy may really boildown to freedom to do very little.2

Decentralization reforms and programsprovide the public objective of allocation. Theadministrative strategy of Institutional Plural-ism involves a partnership with central insti-tutions, especially in the early stages of im-plementation. Without this partnership, thereis little capacity at the local level. The part-nership will change over time, which is whya subsequent section examines the roles of in-stitutions and organizations needed to per-form a public task in terms of the sequencesof implementation.

While the trend toward Institutional Plu-ralism as a strategy of decentralizing publicsector allocation tasks is discernable globally,this does not mean that the public sector intransitional and developing countries is goingto wither away. Changing, yes. downsizing,yes. Withering away, no.

2 Ibid., p. 168.