Decentralisation has been in the development agenda for a couple of decades now. It is well placed in the clique of words like good governance, anti-corruption, transparency, accountability, participation and gender that throng the development lexicon. After gathering limelight in the discussions on Structural Adjustment Programmes sponsored by international banks in the late 1980s and 1990s, the decentralisation discourse has shifted focus to identifying innovations and good practices and replicating them. Asia, particularly the east and the south, has its own story of decentralisation to tell. This article discusses some of the lesser-known innovations from Asian countries and challenges that they still grapple with.

 

First, a large number of Asian countries have managed to initiate decentralisation, irrespective of their political set up. For instance, China, a socialist single-party state has a history of decentralisation dating back to 1956, when Mao Zedong called for more powers to local authorities in his speech ‘On the Ten Major Relationships’.  Cambodia and Bhutan, both kingdoms, have respectively enacted the Organic Law on Administrative Management of Capital, Provinces, Municipalities, Districts and Khans in 2008 and the Local Government Act in 2009. Centralising forces still remain strong, but bringing governance closer to people has been a compelling agenda that countries have been unable to avoid.

 

 

Second, Asian local governments have boldly experimented with a number of innovations to improve public service delivery, increase transparency and accountability and promote learning. Mongolia is scaling up its One-Stop Shops that provide multiple public services under one roof, and Citizens Halls that gather public opinion to inform policymaking. Vietnam annually conducts a survey of 13,000 to 14,000 people to construct the Public Administration and Performance Index (PAPI) using indicators like participation at local level, transparency, local accountability, controlling corruption, public administration procedures and quality of public service delivery. The Philippines experimented with a Child-Sensitive Local Governance Audit in 2014 to assess the performance of local governments against indicators like reduction in under-five mortality and violence against children, among others. Bangladesh, meanwhile, is promoting peer-to-peer learning between village councils through the Horizontal Learning Programme (HLP) that facilitates identification and scale up of best practices without any central mediation.

 

 

Third, Asian countries are increasingly opening up to learning from one another rather than following models imposed by donor agencies. For example, in 2013, the Government of Myanmar organised a national workshop of local governance resource persons from countries like Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, among other Asian countries, to learn from their experiences. Afghanistan’s Independent Directorate of Local Governance, the government department in charge of decentralisation, meanwhile, is receiving training in financial management from Indian officials. Cambodia is approaching Indonesia and the Philippines to learn how functions should be assigned to different levels of the government.

 

 

The Asian decentralisation story, however, is not all hunky-dory. Poverty, a malaise that Asia still grapples with, is far from being eradicated. Local governments play a significant role in delivering social services aimed at reducing poverty. For instance, old age pensions in Nepal are largely administered by local governments – a rare case. However, although absolute poverty has come down, Asia could be poorer than what estimates suggest. Decentralisation per se need not reduce poverty unless local governments are given the sufficient means – funds, functions and functionaries – for the same within nationally set standards. 

 

This brings us to the issue of fiscal decentralisation, an arena that has received lesser attention compared to political and administrative decentralisation. Although the share of provincial revenues as part of national revenues is as high as 45.8% in China and 42% in India, most local governments remain dependent on central or provincial funds to carry out their functions. Property tax remains one of the few own-source revenues of local bodies. A few countries, such as Lao PDR, are experimenting with direct fund transfers to local bodies, but local governments largely remain the extended arms of provincial governments. While allowing local governments to borrow can open up a new source of revenue, it can also lead to unregulated borrowing. China is currently dealing with its mounting local government debts, totalling to as much as 40% of GDP.

 

Making local governance efficient is especially problematic in conflict settings, where institutions are weak and client-patron relationships are entrenched. For instance, Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Programme, launched in 2003, sought to improve local service delivery and increase women’s participation in local decision making. Though there have been short term gains, the local term efficiency of institutions has been limited.

 

In fact, service delivery, one of the fundamental functions of local governments, is still a fraught issue. Of late, a number of informal actors are receiving researchers’ attention. Kacker and Joshi, for instance, map the ‘unusual suspects’ and intermediaries involved in water supply provision in an unauthorised settlement in New Delhi – from illegal bore-well owners, chains of operators and residents welfare associations to influential residents, apart from local elected representatives and other politicians. The implication of the role played by such actors for local governance needs further scrutiny.

 

The new Sustainable Development Goals would soon percolate down to projects and programmes, many of which would land on the shoulders of local governments. Asian local governments would do well to build on the strengths and take note of the challenges early on to achieve smooth fulfilment of these upcoming tasks.