Fiscal Decentralization:
Governing for Results
Allen Schick
Special Course on Impact Evaluation and
Results-Based Planning and Budgeting
Kunming, China
18-21 June 2012
Countries Differ in
Key Characteristics of Decentralization
 Some give significant political/administrative autonomy to subnational
governments: Others transfer money, but little power
 Some have intermediate levels between central and local governments:
Others have only two levels
 In some, SNGs raise a significant portion of their own revenue: In most,
they receive almost all revenue from the central government
 In some, the central government retains responsibility for key national
programs (such as health and education): In many these are devolved to
SNGs
 Some SNGs have robust administrative and accountability institutions:
Many do not
 In some, decentralization reduces financial disparities among SNGs: In
many, it has little impact on fiscal equality
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The Logic of Fiscal Decentralization:
Developed Countries
 The argument for decentralizing public finances initially emerged in
developed countries, then migrated to developing countries
 Early fiscal decentralization was justified by the problem of how to
allocate public resources when the population is diverse and citizens
have differing preferences for public services
 The solution was to enable citizens to “vote with their feet” by opting to
live in communities that match their preferences for services and taxes
 In this model, inequality in incomes and services is a virtue because it
provides citizens with a wide range of choices
 This model depends on local jurisdictions having sufficient autonomy
and resources to satisfy citizen preferences
 The model does not fit the many developing countries that have low
geographic mobility or offer citizens a narrow range of choices
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The Logic of Fiscal Decentralization:
Developing Countries
 The key rationale for fiscal decentralization in developing
countries is to empower citizens by shifting resources and fiscal
autonomy from remote, unresponsive central governments to
local governments
 This concept of decentralization goes beyond the distribution of
revenue and spending assignments between CG and SNGs to
the distribution of political power and administrative discretion
 In this model, the benefits of fiscal decentralization – in particular
improved public services and social outcomes – depend on
having efficient and accountable subnational governments
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The Logic of Fiscal Decentralization:
Developing Countries, continued
 In many developing countries, however, fiscal decentralization
has preceded the establishment of effective local institutions.
Countries do not realize the gains expected from decentralization
unless they succeed in strengthening local governance
 A few countries combine fiscal decentralization with new forms of
participation (such as participatory budgeting) that give citizens a
direct voice in spending decisions that affect their wellbeing
 Rather than reinforcing diversity, decentralization in developing
countries aims to reduce inequality through transfer policies that
favor low-income communities
 In practice, however, fiscal decentralization sometimes preserves
or even reinforces inequality
4
Effective Decentralization Requires Strong Central Capacity to
Establish Uniform Procedures and Monitor Local Performance
 Effective decentralization does not weaken the central government; it
transforms what the center does and how it carries out responsibilities
 The CG is the strategic center for the country, assessing the implications
of trends and projections, and planning major policy initiatives
 The CG establishes uniform policies and standards for nationallyimportant services, such as health and education carried out by SNGs
 It also prescribes a uniform system of accounts, audit rules, and
financial reporting requirements
 In some countries, it consolidates SNG financial reports together with its
own finances into a whole of government financial statement
 Often, during the early period of decentralization, the CG provides
technical assistance to local governments that lack sufficient capacity to
manage their own finances
 The CG also imposes and enforces a strict constraint on local debt and
deficits to protect the country’s macro-economic position
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The Central Government Retains Powerful
Instruments to Influence Local Actions
 In a decentralized mode, the Central Government still has effective
means of influencing what SNGs do and how they spend public money
 It may provide conditional grants that induce SNGs to implement
national policies
 These grants earmark funds for particular purposes, and are sometimes
conditioned on achieving targeted results
 SNGs may have to compete for these grants by promising to carry out
certain activities or produce specified results
 Unfunded mandates are similar to conditional grants, but with the
important exceptions that they take away local discretion and do not
provide financial support
 Both grants and mandates typically have reporting requirements. An
unintended effect of these requirements is to shift the focus of SNGs
away from substantive results to the process for filing reports
6
Information is the Critical Link Between the Central
Government and Empowered Subnational Governments
 In an ideal world, guidelines and policies would flow downward from the CG
to SNGs and information would flow upward from SNGs to the CG
 Things rarely work out this way, whether in a central bureaucratic structure
or in intergovernmental relations
 One problem in newly-decentralized countries is that SNGs lack timely and
accurate information on finances
 This problem may be especially serious in forecasting economic conditions,
revenues and cash flows
 Another problem is the relationship between SNGs that have information
and the CG that needs that information. In this relationship, SNGs have both
incentive and means to withhold or distort information
 The problem can be partly ameliorated through extensive training that
equips SNG staff with essential financial management skills and impresses
on them the need for probity and accuracy in public finance
 In some situations, it may be necessary for the CG to intervene by
withdrawing discretion and responsibility from fragile SNGs, or by operating
their financial reports and IT systems
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Revenue and Expenditure Assignments
Often are Misaligned
 In a perfect decentralization system, revenue responsibilities of local
governments would match their expenditure responsibilities
 If local governments incur 30% of public expenditures, they would
have, either through self-generated taxes and transfers, 30% of
public revenues
 The same parity should apply to each subnational government that
has expenditure responsibilities
 In practice, however, there often is wide disparity between SNG
revenue and expenditure shares
 Central governments have much greater incentive to issue
expenditure mandates than to transfer revenue
 The resulting misalignment occurs both in countries when the CG
collects almost all the revenue and in countries where local
governments have significant revenue authority
 Misaligning revenues and expenditures weakens the link between
resources and results
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Budgeting for Results in a Decentralized System
 In decentralized countries, significant portions of the national budget are
spent by SNGs
 In these countries, SNGs are vital for the delivery of nationally-important
services, especially health and education
 The interdependence of different levels of government complicates
efforts to link resources and results
 Problems arise because of asymmetries in information, different time
perspectives, and clashing interests
 One level of government has the money; another delivers the services
financed by that money
 One level has the information needed for effective policies; another level
depends on that information to make effective policies
 One level wants certainty as to the funds that will be available; another
wants flexibility in distributing that money
 These problems may be mitigated by introducing budgeting for results
tools into the inter-governmental system
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Budgeting for Results: Focusing on Services
 Citizens know government through the services they receive (or fail to
receive) from government
 The absence of government is a common feature of less developed
communities
 Improving public services is the primary means by which the CG can
use decentralization to reduce poverty
 To combat poverty, the central government needs timely and accurate
information on services
 Performance-based grants are sometimes used to motivate local
governments
 These can be difficult to monitor, and may distort priorities if the wrong
indicators are targeted
 It may be preferable to provide service-based grants
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Budgeting for Results in a Decentralized System:
Time Frames
 The central government’s MTEF and budget include transfers to
SNGs, but they generally do not include SNG expenditures or
services
 Transfers and grants are decided and distributed annually
(sometimes within shorter time-frames). The flexibility retained by
the CG spawns uncertainty about the funds that SNGs will
receive
 It is difficult for SNGs to plan or budget for the medium-term, and
to undertake service improvements that spread over several
years
 To spur development, CGs should incorporate SNG finances into
medium-term plans and budgets
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Budgeting for Results in a Decentralized System:
Data
 Many CGs have weak capacity to monitor local expenditures and
services
 Surveys by Public Expenditure Tracking Systems (PETS) and
other monitoring systems often disclose significant discrepancies
between intended and actual uses of centrally-provided funds
 The CG cannot rely soley on local reports to determine how funds
are spent
 It is important for CGs to develop independent capacity to monitor
expenditures and services
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Fiscal Decentralization is Effective
When it Improves Public Services
 Fiscal decentralization often is evaluated in terms of the percent of total
revenues or expenditures accounted for by subnational governments
 In many countries, the subnational share has not been significantly
increased by decentralization
 A better measure is the effect of decentralization on the volume, quality,
accessibility, and impact of key public services, especially in previously
under-served communities
 Key indicators in each major sector can be used to assess the
effectiveness of decentralization: for example, in health services,
vaccination rates, distance to the nearest clinic, prenatal visits, infant
mortality
 It should also be feasible to link service indicators to changes in
government policy and administrative actions due to decentralization
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The Benefits of Decentralization Increase When SNGs
Generate a Large Portion of Their Total Revenue
 One of the major arguments for decentralization is that accountability is
strengthened when a significant proportion of local services are financed
by local taxes
 In this way, voters can hold elected officials accountable for the quality
and cost of services
 Not all revenue sources are good candidates for local taxation. Perhaps
the most important characteristic of a good local tax is that the burden
cannot be shifted outside the jurisdiction.
 Good local sources of revenue include property taxes and taxes on
motor vehicles, include fuels, licenses and tolls
 Income taxes can be a source of local revenue when the central
government sets the tax base and the national rate, and local
governments add a surcharge
 In decentralized countries, local taxation must be supplemented by
transfers from the CG to counter significant inequality in the revenueraising capacity of local governments
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The Transfer System has a Strong Effect on Fiscal
Disparities among Subnational Governments
 Decentralizing public finances risks enlarging inequality among SNGs
because rich local governments can generate more tax revenue than
poor governments
 The transfer system (distribution of tax revenue and grants) can either
widen or narrow these disparities
 Tax rebates (or revenue sharing) return more to affluent communities
with strong tax bases, and therefore have counter-equalizing effects: a
formula based system (with the amount transferred inverse to per capita
income) has the potential to narrow fiscal differences among SNGs.
 Grants also have the potential to expand or reduce inequality. Grants
that match local expenditures tend to be de-equalizing, those that
compensate SNGs for low income have the opposite effect
 It is important for CG to periodically review the total transfer and grant
system to assess whether it has the intended effects on equality
15
Stability and Certainty are Essential Elements of Sound
Inter-Governmental Financial Relations
 In a decentralized system, the central governments make the rules and can
change the rules
 It establishes formulas and schedules for transfers to SNGs, as well as
expenditure responsibilities
 In many countries, these rules have been subject to frequent, unilateral revision,
leading to uncertainty and to mismatches between revenues and expenditures
 During periods of fiscal stress, the Central Government often seeks to ease its
own predicament by reducing payments to SNGs or by transferring expenditure
responsibility to them
 Uncertainty shortens a government’s time horizon and spurs it to make policy
and management choices that enable it to muddle through
 Planning, objectives, and results are disregarded by local governments beset
with high levels of uncertainty
 Some advanced countries have established formal mechanisms for periodic
consultations between the CG and SNGs to discuss intergovernmental
arrangements, including revenue allocations, expenditure assignments, and
management rules
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Inter-Governmental Finance Must Reckon with
Risks to Macro-Economic Stability
 In most countries, the debt incurred by the central government (CG) is
vastly larger than the aggregate debt of subnational governments
(SNGs).
 Nevertheless, giving SNGs fiscal autonomy may open the door to
destabilizing expenditure increases and deficit spending
 One option for warding off fiscal instability is to establish a budget
constraint that requires SNGs to balance their budgets without deficitclosing assistance from the CG
 Operationalizing this rule depends on SNGs having a high degree of
certainty as to the transfers and grants that will be forthcoming during
the year
 Some countries have fiscal responsibility laws that span all levels of
government within a comprehensive budget constraint
 This arrangement depends on uniform within-year financial reports from
all SNGs to the central finance ministry
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Should SNGs Debt-Finance Local Activities?
 This question does not have a universal answer for all decentralized systems
 Three important factors are the soundness of the SNGs financial management
system, its fiscal position, and the purposes for which funds are borrowed
 It may be imprudent to allow borrowing by SNGs that have untimely financial
reports, qualified audits, loose personnel practices, weak internal control
systems, and are reputed to have elevated levels of corruption
 Caution should be taken in permitting local borrowing that can put the country’s
macroeconomic position at risk, especially when local debt has an explicit or
implicit CG guarantee
 Borrowed funds should be used to finance the acquisition of capital assets, not
to pay operating expenses
 When they borrow, local governments should have separate current, investment
budgets, along with segregated accounts
 Developing countries generally have limited access to long-term debt. Borrowing
short term requires them to roll over debt frequently, and makes them highly
vulnerable to adverse shifts in fiscal conditions and interest rates
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