Decentralisation: why the transfer of powers stalls

Decentralisation rests on a simple idea: bring decisions closer to citizens by entrusting certain powers to territorial entities with their own budgets and their own elected bodies. Local health, primary education, local roads, civil registration — all areas where central decision-making is structurally ill-informed.

The principle is settled in law. The difficulty lies elsewhere: a power transferred without matching resources remains a power in name only. The territorial entity carries political responsibility for the service without the means to deliver it, and citizens conclude that local government is incapable when the problem is budgetary.

The mechanism meant to solve this is the retrocession of a share of national revenue to territorial entities. How it actually works — amounts genuinely transferred, regularity of transfers, predictability year to year — is the real indicator of decentralisation. A local budget that cannot be anticipated supports no planning at all.

A question of human capacity sits alongside it. A local administration needs staff trained in public management, procurement and accounting. Where that capacity is missing, devolution mechanically produces irregularities, which are then used as an argument for recentralising.

Judging decentralisation therefore means looking at three things together: what the law assigns, what the finances follow, and what local administrations are able to do. Taken separately, each of the three gives a false picture.