scholarly journals DECENTRALIZATION AS A STIMULATING FACTOR OF DEMOCRATIZATION OF EDUCATION

Author(s):  
Ivan Siladii

It is studied that decentralization as a multifaceted phenomenon that determines the centrifugal processes in the state, is both a principle and a method and a feature of public administration. It provides for the transfer of powers and responsibilities from the central government to the lower levels of government and to the private sector. In addition, decentralization presupposes the delegation of certain powers and responsibilities to subordinates, giving them greater freedom of will and, with it, greater responsibility. In the context of the transformation of social processes, the decentralization of management of Ukrainian society is an important factor in stimulating the democratization of education. Occasionally, foreign experience in decentralizing education management and improving its quality at various stages of the educational process should be used. The article emphasizes the possibility of using in Ukraine the following achievements of the Polish experience of decentralization of basic education management: at the national level – on approaches to funding at the local government level, public policy in the field of curricula, textbooks, teacher training, transparent mechanisms for quality control of education (inspection service, external evaluation, education quality monitoring system); at the level of local governments – on the financing of schools and the implementation of educational policy in accordance with local needs, community involvement in education, monitoring the quality of education at the local level; at the level of educational institutions – to involve the public in school development planning, conducting self-assessment of school work. It is determined that the decentralization of public administration, as evidenced by international experience, is a significant incentive for democratization of education, and thus better meet the educational needs of each person, effective use of local resources in education and socialization of education, which is reflected in the spread of new tools of public influence on the education system, increasing the autonomy of educational institutions and their role as public institutions.

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem

The article examines both civil society initiatives that seek to address the mass violence of 1965 and 1966 and the state's responses to them. Unlike other political-transition contexts in the world, a transitional justice approach is apparently a formula that state authorities have found difficult to implement nationally for this particular case. The central government has, through its institutions, sporadically responded to some of the calls from civil society groups and has even initiated policy reforms to support such initiatives. Nevertheless, these responses were not sustained and any suggested programmes have always failed to be completed or implemented. Simultaneously, however, NGOs and victims are also voicing their demands at the local level. Many of their initiatives involve not only communities but also local authorities, including in some cases the local governments. In some aspects, these “bottom-up” approaches are more successful than attempts to create change at the national level. Such approaches challenge what Kieran McEvoy refers to as an innate “seductive” quality of transitional justice, but at the same time these approaches do, in fact, aim to “seduce” the state to adopt measures for truth and justice.


European View ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-61
Author(s):  
Olgierd Geblewicz

Poland’s local governments, introduced into the public administration system in two stages in 1989 and 1999, have become important actors in the development policy conducted at the national and local levels. Setting up voivodeships—the third-level units of local government—was particularly significant for building strong foundations for a comprehensive regional policy in Poland. Voivodeships create the conditions needed for the long-term economic and social development of their territories. That is why voivodeships should be governed by visionaries rather than administrators. The direct responsibility for regional development planning and programming positions their leaders as the coordinators of development activities in the region and the wise investors of EU funds. Their role must be reflected in the appropriate coordination of development activities at the local level and the ability to offer territorially sensitive financial tools to local communities.


2019 ◽  
pp. 44-49
Author(s):  
Iryna Zastrozhnikova

The article considers the main aspects and problems of transforming an educational network in the current context of decentralization.  Reference is made tothe urgent need of restructuring the responsibilities in education management between the center and regions providing the latter with independence in finances, organization and management at the regional level. It is emphasized that extending powers of the local executional bodies in management of educational institutions is the primary purpose of decentralization process. There was examined a pattern of decentralizing the basic education in Poland, according to which it was recommended to oblige the local self-government bodies to implement the education politics according to the local needs, finding the school administration and continually appraise the quality of education. It has been observed that currently the essential functions of state in education are assigned to the regional state administrations, regional and local educational departments. The local authorities are burdened with responsibilities of financing and providing the social security for children, defining the network of training institutions, maintaining their records and performing control over their activities. The author points out that at present the local and regional authorities duplicate the functions of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, which is non-effective. The author believes that the local government officials are able to perform political management well up to the officials of educational departments and administrations. However, prior to assignment of new obligations, it is necessary to develop and implement an effective retraining program for personnel and staff of the municipal structures. There have been reviewed the results of the pilot project: «Decentralization: education reforms at the local level», which experts had been analyzed the consistency of educational network. It pointed to the major areas of concern for the education reforms in local communities, namely a significant expense side of budget for education financing, low level of education in rural students according to the data obtained from the independent external assessment, and lack of subject oriented teachers. The author makes a conclusion that the purpose of decentralization in education should be an overall improvement of educational services and be based upon the following basic principles: students’ right to have a free choice of educational institution, equal access to good-quality education services, decent conditions to develop their abilities, improving the quality and efficiency of the educational process, effective use of types of resources.


e-Finanse ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Adam Mateusz Suchecki

AbstractFollowing the completion of the process of decentralisation of public administration in Poland in 2003, a number of tasks implemented previously by the state authorities were transferred to the local level. One of the most significant changes to the financing and management methods of the local authorities was the transfer of tasks related to culture and national heritage to the set of tasks implemented by local governments. As a result of the decentralisation process, the local government units in Poland were given significant autonomy in determining the purposes of their budgetary expenditures on culture. At the same time, they were obliged to cover these expenses from their own revenues.This paper focuses on the analysis of expenditures on culture covered by the voivodship budgets, taking into consideration the structure of cultural institutions by their types, between 2003-2015. The location quotient (LQ) was applied to two selected years (2006 and 2015) to illustrate the diversity of expenditures on culture in individual voivodships.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-267
Author(s):  
E.D. Kusumawati ◽  
A.G. Hallo de Wolf ◽  
M.M.T.A. Brus

While the decentralised system adhered to by Indonesia has allowed the central government to delegate its affairs to local governments and has brought benefits for democracy, several issues are open for improvement. One of the areas allocated to local governments is housing and settlements. There are indications that in some cases the local governments fail to provide access to public housing for outsiders, who are also vulnerable to eviction and resettlement. This article discusses legal regulations and examples of housing policy at the national level. Moreover, it assesses general practices of four Indonesian local governments: Jakarta, Surabaya, Jogjakarta and Surakarta, concerning access to public housing for outsiders. The article investigates whether the four Indonesian local governments unintentionally facilitate indirect discrimination or legally limit the right to housing for the purpose of promoting the general welfare. The analysis is based on the prohibition of indirect discrimination related to the right to housing in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (icescr), General Comments and Concluding Observations.


Author(s):  
Ulaş Bayraktar

Turkish local governments have undergone a radical transformation since the 1980s. Accompanied by a rhetoric of decentralising and democratising reforms, related legal changes have been criticised in the light of either nationalist or democratic, participatory concerns. At the heart of such important waves of legal reforms lay the municipalities as the main service provider in urban settings. This chapter presents a general overview of the state of policy analysis in Turkish municipalities. It argues that municipalities governed by very strong executives, prioritise populist services delivered through subcontracts and controlled weakly by political and civil actors and arbitrarily by the central government. The classical public policy cycle approach will inform the discussion.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-376
Author(s):  
Jill L. Tao

The ability to regulate the flow of goods, capital and people across borders is one of the defining characteristics of nation-state political power. But there is not always agreement between the central government and local officials as to the desirability of immigration, where local governments may desire greater, or fewer, numbers of immigrants, depending on the local economy and labor needs. In South Korea, a unitary form of government offers an opportunity to examine the policy distance between the national government’s stance on immigration based on the politics of the ruling party, and the attitudes of local officials who work for metropolitan-level governments (those with a population of one million or more). I look at the impact of local economic market needs on local attitudes towards national immigration policy through the lens of intergovernmental relations and Lipsky’s concept of bureaucratic discretion. Comparing two cases drawn from local governments in South Korea with dissimilar economic bases but similar levels of local autonomy, I find that economic needs at the local level are addressed by local approaches to immigration policy. Contrary to expectations, the cases illustrate the relative importance of fiscal autonomy and a new understanding for political autonomy. These cases illustrate the need for caution when applying political and institutional theory within new contexts and offer new variables for future investigations of local autonomy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-167
Author(s):  
Harun Harun ◽  
David Carter ◽  
Abu Taher Mollik ◽  
Yi An

Purpose This paper aims to critically explore the forces and critical features relating to the adoption of a new reporting and budgeting system (RBS) in Indonesian local governments. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on an intensive analysis of document sources and interview scripts around the institutionalization of RBS by the Indonesian government and uses the adaption of Dillard et al. (2004) institutional model in informing its findings. Findings The authors find that at the national level, the key drivers in RBS adoption were a combination of exogenous economic and coercive pressures and the wish to mimic accounting reforms in developed nations. At the local government level, the internalization of RBS is a response to a legal obligation imposed by the central government. Despite the RBS adoption has strengthened the transparency of local authorities reports – it limits the roles of other members of citizens in determining how local government budgets are allocated. Research limitations/implications The results of the study should be understood in the historical and institutional contexts of organizations observed. Practical implications The authors reinforce the notion that accounting as a business language dominates narratives and conversations surrounding the nature of government reporting and budgeting systems and how resource allocation is formulated and practiced. This should remind policymakers in other developing nations that any implementation of a new accounting technology should consider institutional capacities of public sector organizations and how the new technology benefits the public. Social implications The authors argue that the dominant role of international financial authorities in the policymaking and implementation of RBS challenges the aim of autonomy policies, which grant greater roles for local authorities and citizens in determining the nature of the budgets and operation of local authorities. Originality/value This study extends institutional theory by adapting the Dillard et al. (2004) model in explaining the forces, actors and critical features of a new accounting system adoption by local governments.


Author(s):  
Mukaramah Harun ◽  
Ting Ding Hooi ◽  
Hussin Abdullah

In developed countries, urban growth has multiplied the demand for investment in basic infrastructure services such as water supply, waste removal, roads and mass transportation. At the same time, decentralization strategies have shifted the responsibility for much of these investments to the local governments. This decentralized investment requires the development of decentralized capital financing. No longer can a central government pay for local investment by raising national taxes or borrowings on international markets and using the funds simply to construct projects at the local level. The introduction of municipal bonds is one of the alternative source of funds to finance the escalating costs of financing local governments. This paper discusses the conditions underlying the development of municipal credit markets, which Malaysia can use to provide a vehicle to narrow the local government’s resource gap through debt funding.  


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 1022-1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
BLANCHE LE BIHAN ◽  
ALIS SOPADZHIYAN

ABSTRACTDue to a significant increase in the complexity of the care demands of older people having multiple care needs, the necessity for integrated care is increasingly acknowledged. Proposing a qualitative approach based on a secondary literature analysis and an empirical survey, this paper explores the integration policy of health and social care for older people having complex needs in two European countries – France and Sweden – where various policy measures aiming at developing and delivering integrated care can be identified: at the national level, through the supportive measures of organisational, institutional and/or professional integration from central government, and at the local level, with the implementation of concrete integrative initiatives. Using a comparative qualitative approach, the authors investigate both of these levels, as well as the interplay between them. They show the importance of this double – local and national – approach of the issue of integration and highlight the continuous negotiation process which underlies the integration activities. Local integration initiatives are in fact constantly reshaped by top-down and bottom-up dynamics which appear to be strongly interconnected.


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