LIST OF PANELS

This panel is mainly concerned with the process of recentralization of power and authority as a reaction to decentralization, and as a consequence its implication to the shifts of modes of multilevel governance. After decades of the popularity of decentralizing reforms across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, there are signs that central governments are embracing a recentralization of power and authority (Almeida 2005, Dickovick 2007, Faguet 2004). Under a broad conceptualization of recentralization as augmentation of coordination and monitoring role of the central government, the panel fosters discussions about the various trajectories and strategies of central governments to regain more leverage of power in the vertical intergovernmental relations.

OBJECTIVES

The general objectives of the panel are the following ones:

1. To theorize about multilevel dynamics that lead to the recentralization of power and authority;

2. To identify the institutional and contextual elements that triggers recentralization as a reaction against decentralization;

3. To comprehend how the coordination and monitoring powers of the central governments are exercised in practice;

4. To delve into the different modes of multilevel governance that contribute to recentralization;

5. To dissect the consequences of recentralization to the exercise of subnational autonomy; and

6. To comparatively distinguish different conditions and trajectories of recentralization.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The main research question that the panel aims to answer is: How did recentralization emerge and replace decentralization?

This overarching question can be broken down into five sub-questions.

1. How did recentralization become the reactive process to decentralization?

2. How did recentralization unfold in practice amid a multilevel governance context in which subnational government exercised some degree of policy and political autonomy?

3. Which institutions, actors and strategies were employed in the recentralization of power and authority?

4. What are the specific agenda-setting powers that the central governments use to exercise its coordination and monitoring powers?

5. What are the overall implications of recentralization to the notions of balance of power and hierarchy of authority implicit in a multilevel governance context?

CONTRIBUTIONS

The panel intends to contribute to the different debates related to multilevel governance in the following manner:

1. By offering an opportunity to examine the consequences of decentralization and post-decentralization context under the lenses of recentralization as a counter-reaction to decentralization;

2. By discussing the patterns of change through the shift from decentralization to recentralization, the panel will shed light into transformations in the hierarchy of authority, the directionality of power relations (top-down or bottom-up), and the disproportional relevance of different of groups of intergovernmental actors;

3. By broadening our interpretation of the relationship between decentralization and recentralization, which requires to move away from the dichotomy decentralization versus recentralization in order to embrace a via media by viewing recentralization as a different degree of intergovernmental power relations;

4. By comprehending the different elements behind the shifts of power relations in a context of multilevel governance with the hope of advancing a coherent framework of analysis to systematize patterns and dynamics behind processes that go from decentralization to recentralization.

Since the end of the heydays of decentralization in the 1980s and 1990s, when the downwards transfer of power and authority has become widespread across countries, pressures for recentralization of certain powers at the hands of central governments have been growing, especially during the past decade. Recentralization in this context has been characterized by the augmentation of coordination and monitoring authority of national governments over subnational governments and it entails imposition of limitations on the exercise of subnational autonomy.

The triggers of recentralization vary across countries, but they mainly include factors that under issues related to multilevel governance, namely, low capacity of subnational governments to meet local demands for service delivery, fragmentation of public services within countries, augmentation of center-subnational conflicts, juxtaposition of different policy regimes at different levels of government. There are different perspectives from which recentralization can be interpreted ranging from the incremental changes in the modes of multilevel governance to the default of central governments in keeping their decentralization promises.

While it has become increasingly evident the reasons for recentralization, less clear are the policy and institutional processes under which recentralization has been taking place. Focusing on the temporal patterns (e.g., reactive sequences), institutional dynamics and actors’ strategies, this panel seeks to discuss papers that elucidate the “how” question of the recentralization of countries.

By concentrating the discussion on how recentralization unfolded, the panel attempts to identify conditions and mechanisms that influenced recentralization in post-decentralized contexts. This panel is particularly interested in comparative case studies or comparative policy analysis that discuss the different processes of recentralization of power and authority. The panel welcomes different approaches and methodologies applied to the issue of changes in the mode of multilevel governance.