Pierre F. Landry: Decentralization and Regime Transformation
3
Economic and Political Decentralization
Measures of Decentralization
Cross-national indicators of economic decentralization are scarce. The dataset
constructed by the World Bank based on the Government Finance Statistics of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the most complete cross-national effort to date. A
country’s degree of fiscal decentralization is captured mainly by two distinct variables:
the sub-national share of revenue and the sub-national share expenditures, measured as
percentage of total government revenues (or expenditures). They are defined are defined
as:
2
•
Sub-national expenditures (% of total expenditures)
C.7.1.1
-
C.3.2
-
C.II
C.7.1.1
-
C.3.2
C.II
C.7.1.1
-
C.3.2
-
C.II
C.7.1.1
C.3.2
C.II
C.7.1.1
-
C.3.2
C.II
[Pro]
[Pro]
[Pro]
[Loc]
[Loc]
[Loc]
[Cen]
[Cen]
[Cen]
[Pro]
[Pro]
[Pro]
[Loc
[Loc
[Loc
+
+
+
•
Sub-national revenues (% of total revenues)
[Cen]
[Pro]
[Loc]
[Pro]
[Loc]
A.II
A.II
A.II
A.II
A.II
+
+
+
Where the parameters are:
A.II
Total revenue
B.I
Total expenditures (=C.II)
C.II
Total expenditures (=B.I)
C.3.2
Current transfers to other levels of national government
C.7.1.1 Capital transfers to other levels of national government
The bracketed subscripts indicate the level of government:
Cen:
Central Government
Pro:
State or Provincial Government
Loc:
Local Government
2
These definitions are listed in on the decentralization indicators website at
http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/decentralization/fiscalindicators.htm#Formulas
Convention