Thread: Explaining decentralization in parliamentary democracies

Could someone please explain decentralization process in parliamentary democracy?

For example if the country has 10 Provinces and each province has 30-40 districts, How power and responsibilities should be shared between Center, Provinces and districts?

How to reduce corruption, government spending, and Inflation with decentralization process by giving more rights to Provinces and districts?

Is it a good idea to have a smaller center government and larger provincial government? If yes, how many members National Assembly (lower house) and Senate (upper house) should be for 10 Provinces?

Federal/Center Government Ministries? How the responsibilities should be shared between central and province? for example, defense, finance, income tax revenues, trade, and the government budget?

Should the Province have Governor and chief minister? How Provincial government structure should look like?

How to reduce corruption, government spending, and Inflation with decentralization process by giving more rights to Provinces and districts?

Depends on the supporting society. More levels of government in a society already riddled with corruption means more opportunities for bribes and other corrupt dealings.

You could have a look at say Australia and Canada, with specified roles and responsibilities for federal and state/province levels as well as local/regional bodies of government then compare with Britain and New Zealand with one central government and then local governments only. No formal states or provinces with their own elected representatives in Britain or New Zealand.

Introducing more levels of government does not, cannot, automatically reduce total government spending. And there's no good reason why it should. More local eyes on local issues means that governments might have to make more decisions and more, or at least different, allocations of funds. But the mere consideration of a topic costs money even if there's a decision not to allocate funds for a particular project - so it's not a panacea.

There is some waste if there is some overlap or even more if there are competing interests between the different levels of government. But once more, that's about a society and its culture. If citizens insist that they need national, state/province, city, local and other small region government - because they can't bring themselves to trust any level of government - that's the problem, the lack of trust. If they do it because it works best that way, that's a good aspect of their society and they should make the most of it.

[QUOTE=adelady;422639]

You could have a look at say Australia and Canada, with specified roles and responsibilities for federal and state/province levels as well as local/regional bodies of government then compare with Britain and New Zealand with one central government and then local governments only. No formal states or provinces with their own elected representatives in Britain or New Zealand.

In recent years much more decentralization, of power, has been introduced in the UK.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own governments with different powers. The Scottish Parliament/government in Edinburgh, for example, has more powers than the Welsh Assembly/government in Cardiff.
These three "regional" bodies are subordinate to the central UK government in London.