Does decentralisation contribute to social and political stability or does it accentuate ethnic, political and geographic divisions? What types of decentralisation increase and decrease the likelihood of conflict and under what conditions is decentralisation most likely to be successful? This paper from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) presents cross-national analysis and case studies from Colombia, Ghana, the Philippines and Uganda to examine the relationship between decentralisation and intra-state conflict.
Decentralisation has highly differentiated effects on ethnic conflict. Decentralisation initiatives that support increased levels of local government expenditures, employment, and elected leaders have been less likely to succumb to ethnic conflict. Conversely, countries with higher levels of local government taxes or designated structures of regional autonomy have been more susceptible to ethnic conflict. Contexts with previous ethnic conflict, weak central government control over the security sector, and disproportionate access to natural resource revenues are particularly vulnerable.
The nature of the relationship between decentralisation and ethnic and civil conflict depends on the type of decentralisation, conflict and context:
- The effects of decentralisation on propensity to conflict are far more apparent for ethnic than civil conflict. Civil conflict has few stable explanatory factors, suggesting a greater degree of case specificity.
- Decentralisation involving greater legitimacy, capacity and control over expenditure seems to mitigate ethnic conflict. Greater levels of local taxes and legal provincial autonomy are linked with higher ethnic conflict levels.
- Where there are highly inequitable local revenue resources and lack of central government control over provincial security, decentralisation can contribute to higher levels of conflict.
- Further indicators of risk include large concentrations of minorities, history of ethnic conflict, high rates of corruption and ethnically or geographically divided political parties.
- Accountable, legitimate political structures increase the conflict mitigating potential of decentralisation strategies.
- On the whole, decentralisation within low-income countries is not subject to higher rates of civil or ethnic conflict than more centralised systems.
Decentralisation offers advantages to developing countries, but can exacerbate problems of group identification and political polarisation contributing to internal conflict, if carried out unconditionally. Decentralisation initiatives should only proceed with constraints – recognising the context and conflict risks and the need to strengthen ties between sub-national and national political structures. These findings have a number of implications for policy:
- Decentralisation should be accompanied by a comprehensive conflict risk analysis focusing on ethnic divisions and political polarisation and should include an assertive anti-corruption strategy.
- Policymakers should focus on enhancing local government control of expenditure rather than local control over tax revenues, which can increase societal divisions.
- Ensuring a central government monopoly over the use of force and efforts to enhance democratic accountability should precede decentralisation.
- To assist a multi-tiered democratisation strategy, different contexts should be recognised. These include relatively established, reforming and weak democratisers, pseudo-democratisers and autocracies.
- Decentralisation initiatives should include mechanisms to strengthen sub-national connections to the whole, including building multi-directional accountability and maintaining incentives for interregional cooperation.
