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One of the common definitional stances adopted in the now sizable literature on
decentralization is to distinguish between reforms that merely deconcentrate power and
reforms that actually devolve power. Deconcentration refers to changes that empower the
subnational offices of national government ministries, dispersing central agents throughout
the country and endowing them with greater resources and responsibilities (Rondinelli 1989,
Parker 1995). In contrast, devolution refers to the transfer of resources and responsibilities
to subnational authorities who are “largely or wholly independent of higher levels of
government” (Manor 1999).
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In order for devolution to occur, scholars generally agree that
subnational elections are a necessary but not sufficient condition (Heller 2001, Hutchcroft
2001, Manor 1999). As this simple distinction makes clear, the politics surrounding these
two forms of decentralization are likely to be quite distinct. Whereas deconcentration often
appeals to central state actors seeking to penetrate interior regions more completely (Migdal
1988, O’Donnell 1999), devolution poses a more direct challenge to the power capabilities of
the very policy makers at the center who control the decision to devolve. Some of the most
fascinating recent work on decentralization has sought to resolve this puzzling quality of
devolution by exploring why national politicians have agreed to changes that effectively
increase the authority and stature of separately elected subnational officials (Grindle 2000;
O’Neill 2003; Willis, Garman and Haggard 1999).
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The distinction between deconcentration and devolution helps clarify why the delegation models that are
appropriate to settings with principles and agents are inappropriate for the study of devolution. Because
deconcentration involves the intra-organizational transfer of responsibilities to officials in bureaus located in
subnational jurisdictions but controlled by national bureaucrats, this transfer can be modeled as the delegation
of authority from a principal to an agent. In contrast, devolution involves the transfer of authority from one
principle, the national government, to another principle, subnational governments, who do not operate as
agents of the national government.
Convention