Decentralization and Citizens’ Participation: Some Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives

Abstract

Although the terms decentralization and citizens’ participation sound familiar to scholars and policy makers, their meanings, forms and scope are controversial in the current literature of local governance. The usage of these terms appears to be restricted to abstraction. For instance, the question of measurement has been highly contested in the literature such that any discussion concerning more power to the people and improvement of local governance is “often viewed by critics as no more than a theoretical exercise.”The critical question therefore is how to move these terms from their state of abstraction to a concrete reality. The purpose of this article is therefore to review some theoretical and conceptual issues on decentralization and citizens’ participation in order to question the oftenemphasized positive relationship attached to them and their empirical application.