POLITICAL DECENTRALIZATION AND PROMOTING PARTICIPATIVE CULTURE, SOLUTIONS IN COUNTERACTING THE FINANCIAL GLOBAL CRISIS
POLITICAL DECENTRALIZATION AND PROMOTING PARTICIPATIVE CULTURE, SOLUTIONS IN COUNTERACTING THE FINANCIAL GLOBAL CRISIS

Summary/Abstract: Decentralization in the field of providing public services reflects what federalism represents for the governing systems. It evolved in the United States in the 50’s and it is exemplified as the Tiebout Model: the local public administrations accomplish and implement the policies on its own; the individuals will be able to choose among them, which in turn will lead to higher competition and quality. A major difference exists, in situations where decentralization emerged as a result of a strategy, compared to the ones in which it represented the collapsing result of the state, due to the impossibility of the latter to sustain the public services. In certain states, such as the post-communist ones as well as the ones in Eastern Asia and Africa, decentralization emerged as a reaction against the authoritarian regimes and the states’ incapability of providing certain services. At that moment it represented the only feasible solution, not being the result of strategic planning. This type of “forced” decentralization determines certain application problems, in a sense that the transfer of power is accomplished in time. As a conclusion, decentralization represents the transfer of power which changes a subordinate type relation in to a coordinating type relation; it’s a relative concept, which is defined in rapport to other levels of institutional organization. The decentralization term can be applied to other organizations, except for the public sector, but in general it is used in providing public services by the administrative system. Before the neo-liberal speech, decentralization was marginal, in the speech regarding development based on a centralized state. In the 80’s, the neo-liberalism promoted by the Reagan administration in the United States and Thatcher in Great Britain considers decentralization as an essential policy for the minimal involvement of the state, by privatizing the public services. In the 90’s the acknowledgment of the state’s role in development as well as decentralization become key elements in the reform of public administration. The new path, the new public management, refers to the reform of the public system, following the private management guidelines. The new public management confers decentralization the main role in improving the provided services by the public administration, its objective being the transition from a single unit administration regarding the management of services, to a system that is based on a larger number of players which administer and implement these services. The Neo-liberalism implemented by Margaret Thatcher represented a model for reinventing the governing act (reinventing government), by adopting solutions from the markets mechanisms and reaffirming the government’s efficiency. The public’s problems cannot be solved by a single “actor”, such as the state, in a world that is in a full state of globalization, with insufficient national budg

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