Decentralization

This paper focuses on the pursuits of the decentralized French services in the field of disability policies. It explores the relationships at the local level between Éducation nationale, Ministry of National Éducation and Social Cohesion’s Departmental Services with the “Maisons Départementales des Personnes Handicapées” (Departmental House for Disabled Persons). It shows that the reforms implemented since the mid 2000-2010’s harmed these decentralized services’ institutional and human resources. However, strong differences between sectors are highlighted. Whereas the DDCS faces hurdles to action, the Ministry of National Éducation is much more involved in the MDPH daily running. Through an analysis of the resources and knowledge at the disposal of these both decentralized services, this paper eventually stresses the French State’s abilities.

The thesis explores potential challenges and opportunities for blockchains and International Relations (IR). The thesis also explores how IR can help understand blockchains as new conceptual phenomena. The thesis broadly questions: what do blockchains mean for IR? And, what does IR mean for blockchains? Institutions and power are taken to be significant for the exploration because they represent crucial IR concepts. Blockchains are explored as regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutions and as compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive power. Blockchains are argued to provide challenges and opportunities for discipline of IR and the practice of international relations. IR can understand blockchains through the concepts of institutions and power.

Blockchain has numerous benefits such as decentralisation, persistency, anonymity and auditability. There is a wide spectrum of blockchain applications ranging from cryptocurrency, financial services, risk management, internet of things (IoT) to public and social services. Although a number of studies focus on using the blockchain technology in various application aspects, there is no comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology in both technological and application perspectives. To fill this gap, we conduct a comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology. In particular, this paper gives the blockchain taxonomy, introduces typical blockchain consensus algorithms, reviews blockchain applications and discusses technical challenges as well as recent advances in tackling the challenges. Moreover, this paper also points out the future directions in the blockchain technology.

The research undertaken in the following paper bases its analysis on the model of the decentralized governance, offered in the case of blockchain technologies. The focus will be centered on some social elements of innovation introduced by the blockchain system, such as the Non-fungible tokens (NFT) and on the argument of their undeniable influence on a social, political and cultural levelinto forming a new model of governance. More specifically, it will be given an insight on the modes in which the compliance to the blockchain and NFT model, gives rise to new levels of relations between people, influencing their ways of living and socializing. Thus, NFTs are putting forward some novel aesthetics of interaction-exemplified by the case of a new perspective on art, and enhancing individual will and autonomy, through the circulation of cryptographic tokens within the digital space.

An unclouded look at territorial autonomy back and forward, 100 years after the establishment of the first "modern" territorial autonomy in a democratic constitutional state: the Åland Islands in Finland in 1921/22. Where has autonomy for the purpose of minority protection and self-government been successful, where has it failed, where is it in crisis, where is it aspired to? In which cases would autonomy be the optimal solution for open conflicts between states and regional communities, and in which cases of national emancipation is autonomy no longer sufficient? In 2021, after 100 years of experience with territorial autonomy in all parts of the world, this concept for settling sub-state conflicts and protecting ethnic minorities is still underestimated. Background information and assessments on the development to date and on the perspectives for territorial autonomy in various regions around the world by the author of the standard work "The World's Modern Autonomy Systems", enriched with interviews with nine outstanding personalities from politics and science in these regions and a foreword by the South Tyrolean politician and scientist Oskar Peterlini, former senator in Rome.

As we enter the 1990s, scholars and practitioners of development administration in the Third World share a deep concern with its disappointing performance. Looked to as the primary agent of modernization during the optimistic first days of independence, many now blame it for the development stagnation of much of the Third World over the past two decades. Reinforced by the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe, calls for privatization and radical cutbacks in the state are increasing. Indeed, while the causes of Third World development stagnation are undoubtedly multiple and diverse, it is difficult to refute the charge that the hierarchical, bureaucratic, centrally-led strategy has not achieved what was expected of it. The question which faces responsible and concerned scholars, practitioners and officials today, is what can and should be done about all this? This paper recommends avoiding grand and precipitous changes in organizational strategies: indiscriminate privatization and dismantling the state, it argues, would be just as much an error as the earlier whole-cloth commitment to centralist-bureaucratic organization. Instead it argues that theoretical and analytical tools effective in making more subtle and refined choices among institutional alternatives must be developed. It presents a preliminary analysis of one strategy which might offer this, and illustrates how it can be used to design organizations more likely successfully to deliver services and sustain investments in the Third World.

Depuis le 1er janvier 2015, la Métropole de Lyon, qui était une communauté urbaine (EPCI), est devenue une collectivité territoriale à statut particulier. Cette notice parue dans le Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la Décentralisation (Berger-Levrault, février 2017) en présente les fondements juridiques, les institutions et les compétences ainsi que son financement.

This article is an investigation of Derrida's deconstructive strategies on Yazmina's Reza's Art in which concepts such as floating signifier, différance, paradoxes, and decentralization have been applied. Here the question of aesthetic values of modern abstract art is raised. Reza confronts us with a miscommunication as a shortcoming of the language and therefore a rift in a longstanding friendship. The play is about a white painting, but each character in the play observes the painting in a different color. It seems that the color acts as a sign which is caught up in a chain of signifiers that never rest on a definite signified. In addition, the painting which is the centre of the play is decentred and replaced by one of the characters of the play. At the end, it is demonstrated that the text of this play is indeterminate without giving us any definite meaning.

تتجسد اللامركزية فى الإدارة المحلية، والتى تعد بدورها فرعاً من السلطة التنفيذية، وتقوم باختصاصاتها من خلال جناحين هما؛ المجالس التنفيذية التى تعينها السلطة التنفيذية، والمجالس المحلية التى تنتخب من المواطنين، وتنقسم إلى عدة وحدات لكل منها الشخصية الاعتبارية، هى؛ المحافظات والمراكز والمدن والأحياء والقرى، وتساهم فى تحقيق التنمية من خلال دورها فى تولى إنشاء وإدارة جميع المرافق العامة للدولة وتحسين الخدمات المحلية الواقعة فى نطاق دائرتها، هكذا تلعب الإدارة المحلية دورا فى إعمال المقومات الأساسية للمجتمع فى الدستور.
في هذا الصدد تثور على الصعيدين الحكومى والبرلمانى إشكالية المحافظات محدودة الموارد، بدون وضوح أى أفق لمناقشة مشروع قانون الإدارة المحلية فى سبيل التحول التدريجى نحو اللامركزية وفق المتطلبات الدستورية، وتحقيق العدالة الإقليمية ضمن أهداف التنمية المستدامة، وإرساء العدالة التمثلية عن طريق إجراء الانتخابات المحلية.
وبالرغم من التطورات الدستورية للإدارة المحلية، وما يتم الإعلان عنه برلمانيا وحكوميا من ضرورة تضافر الجهود المأمولة للنهوض بالإدارة المحلية لتفعيل دورها فى عملية التنمية، وقيام وزارة التنمية المحلية بتنفيذ بعض الخطوات لتطبيق اللامركزية فى المرحلة المقبلة، إلا أن التحول نحو اللامركزية فى مصر لم يتم أو يستكمل بعد، بل يواجه تراجع تارة، وتباطؤ تارة أخرى، وتجاهل تارة فتارة، وتعثر مرات عديدة، وذلك للتراجع عن توفير آليات اللامركزية ومتطلباتها، والتباطؤ فى تفعيل الاستحقاقات الدستورية، والارتكان إلى بقاء صيغة الدولة المركزية كما هو عليه، وكذلك غياب خطة تنفيذ التحول التدريجى، وانعدام المطالب المجتمعية إلا فيما يقتصر فقط على احتياجات التمثيل السياسى وعقد الانتخابات المحلية.
فى ضوء ذلك تتجه هذه الورقة البحثية لتحديد سياسة اللامركزية ماهيتها وأبرز برامجها فى الخبرة المصرية الحكومية، وتحليل سياسات اللامركزية التى تتبانها السلطة التنفيذية الراهنة عبر "رؤية مصر 2030" والبرنامجين الحكوميين التاليين على انتخاب رئيس الجمهورية وتشكيل مجلس النواب في ظل دستور 2014، من خلال تناول وتحليل دور الإدارة المحلية فى دعم التنمية المستدامة فى إطار كلا من؛ المحددات الدستورية وما تلتزم به الدولة ليس فقط من دعم اللامركزية الإدارية والمالية والاقتصادية بل وأيضا توفير ما تحتاجه الوحدات المحلية من معاونة علمية، وفنية، وإدارية، ومالية، هذا من ناحية، ومن ناحية ثانية؛ المحددات الإدارية فيما يرتبط بحدود اختصاصات الإدارة المحلية فيما يتعلق باللامركزية المالية الذى يتمثل فى خمسة برامج فقط داخل المحافظات، وأخيرا من ناحية ثالثة؛ استعراض وقراءة فى ما ذكر صراحة حول الإدارة المحلية فى "رؤية 2030"، وأبرز ما ورد حول اللامركزية أو الإدارة المحلية فى هذين البرنامجين فى إطار الفترتين الرئاستين المتتاليتين منذ صدور الدستور الحالى الذى ألزم أى حكومة بالحصول على ثقة البرلمان قبل بدء عملها، وكذلك وفى ضوء إتساق برامج عمل الحكومة مع "رؤية 2030"، ومن ثم تقديم تصور مقترح حول تطوير سياسات اللامركزية فى برامج الحكومة لتحقيق الأهداف المبتغاة للتنمية المستدامة فى مصر.

Biological processes and methods have been influencing science and technology for many decades. The ideas of feedback and control processes Norbert Wiener used in his cybernetics were based on observation of these phenomena in biological systems. Artificial intelligence and intelligent systems have been fundamentally interested in the phenomenology of living systems, namely perception, decision-making, action, and learning. Natural systems exhibit many properties that form fundamentals for a number of nature inspired applications – dynamics, flexibility, robustness, self-organisation, simplicity of basic elements, and decentralization. This paper reviews examples of nature inspired software applications focused on optimization problems, mostly drawing inspiration from collective behaviour of social colonies.

Las discusiones sobre la democratizacion de los medios de comunicacion se inician promediando el siglo xx y logran, decadas despues, el reconocimiento por parte de organismos internacionales que financiaron investigaciones y la produccion de documentos referidos al desequilibrio informativo existente entre los paises centrales y los de la periferia. De esos documentos se desprenden conceptos centrales como acceso, participacion y autogestion en la comunicacion. En la decada de 1980 Diego Portales C. analiza la democratizacion de los medios e incorpora nuevas dimensiones de analisis al referirse a “la capacidad nacional de comunicar”. El autor afirma que uno de los obstaculos en el proceso de democratizacion de las comunicaciones es la concentracion de los medios en pocos lugares del territorio de los paises. En el presente trabajo nos proponemos analizar el federalismo y la descentralizacion en los medios de comunicacion de Argentina; para ello nos adentramos en los abordajes teoric...

In the present report, after reviewing the allocation formulas of earmarked and block grants for decentralized institutions, five major problems of the system are identified:
• Underfunding of local governments in Macedonia (subsection 3.1). Shares of local revenues in terms of GDP are low compared to other Europeans countries, even those who like Slovenia did not entrust to municipalities the responsibility for paying teacher salaries.
• Decentralization is institutional, not functional (subsection 3.2). Back in 2005, Macedonia transferred to municipalities a large selection of public institutions, but the laws, and the financing instruments, indicate that the functions were not in fact transferred.
• Ineffective central control over employment levels (subsection 3.3). Macedonia maintains a strict and costly system of control over local employment, even in cases when an existing employee retires. The system hampers proper functioning of some of the decentralized institutions but allows employment expansion in other sectors.
• Very low local financial involvement in the financing of decentralized sectors (subsection 3.4). Most decentralized institutions, even preschools, are financed almost exclusively from grants from the national budget, with very little local contribution from own revenues. They are not seen as own institutions by most municipalities.
• Debts related to obligatory transport of students of secondary schools (subsection 3.5). For too long has Macedonia accepted without any intervention growing problem of blocked accounts of many secondary schools.

The paper formulates three strategies and several specific recommendations how to overcome weaknesses of Macedonia  system of local government finance and make it more transparent, predictable, and fair.

The focus of this exploratory research is how cultural networks are managed, what characterizes their management style - assumingly less hierarchical and more participatory, what values this style promotes and what is the motivation of managers to take part in it. As a case study, Cultural Innovators Network (CIN) is addressed, as an independent network existing since 2012 and operating in the Mediterranean region.

While researchers have noted that networks have become increasingly present in our societies thanks to process of globalization and technological developments, this work is focusing less on networks as social systems, rather as an organizational model. Furthermore, in literature concerning cultural networks, little has been said about why cultural managers decide to implement non-hierarchical types of management and foster various participatory approaches and values. Therefore, this research takes into account internal group dynamics - among the managers of CIN and between them and the network’s members, in understanding the underlying values, motivations, procedures, interactions, as well as mapping key challenges of running such a network. The idea is to ground management and participatory
ideals into a given context and understand better their implementation. In the case of CIN, it was also important to relate its foundation to a specific geopolitical context - the Arab Spring and cultural diplomacy activities of the Goethe-Institut in the Mediterranean region.

Among the main motivations for cultural managers to take part in the network’s operations were noted constructive and proactive approaches, professional growth, networking, and belief in a similar set of values such as cultural diversity, democracy, experiment and innovation. The use of non-hierarchical management and participatory approaches are seen as ways how to achieve these values and ideals. While the management in this setting becomes more decentralized and shared, focusing on tasks rather than hierarchies, wider participation of network members requires clear ground rules, self-motivation, and often more time for decision-making. Lastly, key challenges and observations are provided in order to offer a constructive feedback and discuss more efficient way of managing a cultural network in a more participatory manner.

El libro se centra en el análisis de la doctrina de los órganos consultivos autonómicos elaborada a raíz de las reformas estatutarias realizadas durante la VIII Legislatura. El estudio combina un análisis sincrónico, a manera de foto fija, y un análisis diacrónico, a lo largo de la vida de la propuesta de reforma, con la finalidad de descubrir la existencia de una doctrina general de los órganos consultivos sobre cada una de las materias tratadas, y la suerte que ha corrido esta doctrina a lo largo de la tramitación de la propuesta en cuestión. El trabajo resulta de gran importancia debido a que no disponemos de un control previo de inconstitucionalidad, con lo que el control consultivo sobre las reformas estatutarias cumple una función de garantía del respeto a los límites a los que está sometida la iniciativa autonómica de reforma.

https://web-deli.cortsvalencianes.es/cs/CatalogoPublicaciones/valenciano/html/files/cat_pubicaciones%202010%20val.pdf

As internet users become subjected to stricter and more developed means of surveillance and censorship, the developments towards a decentralised version of the network move forwards by providing functional and scalable alternatives. These blockchain inventions are definitely marvelous from the perspective of engineering and cryptography, but they raise important questions about legitimacy and governance. By employing qualitative data analysis and comparisons, this paper aims to present the current state of the internet, explain the origins and nature of the blockchain as the underlying source of immutable decentralisation, and ultimately ask the question " What are the possible solutions to create a truly decentralised internet which makes use of all the new technological advancements but is simultaneously accountable to national, transnational, and international polities? ". According to the findings, a framework of trust, collaboration and consensus must be established between those who govern and those who are governed, as new cryptographic innovations are led by autonomous " law is code " systems.

This project aims to answer the following question: Does fiscal decentralisation influence on economic and social development of the EU's constituent regions? For that reason, the first part will analyse the literature review regarding both political and fiscal decentralization. Secondly, the territorial organisation of the EU will be addressed in order to project the multilevel geographical structure of the territorial levels. Afterwards, the nomenclature of European regions and their territorial organisation will be analysed. After that, a quantitative analysis will be carried out through two statistical techniques using the data retrieved from the databases concerning the EU´s constituent regions (NUTS 2). The selected variables represent social indicators regarding to the first public policy objective "social and economic progress" of EU. The first analysis will address the research question, and the second one, will focus on grouping European regions based on their overall performance, paying special attention to Basque Country. In addition, an assessment of both the obtained results and the research question will be performed by different experts. To conclude, the most relevant aspects as well as the answer to the research question will be addressed.

El siguiente proyecto de investigación tiene como objetivo responder a la pregunta
¿Influye la descentralización fiscal en el desarrollo económico y social de las regiones conformantes de la Unión Europea? Para ello, en primer lugar, se realizará una revisión del Estado del Arte de la descentralización política y la descentralización fiscal. En segundo lugar, se abordará la organización territorial de la Unión Europea para poder proyectar la estructura multinivel geográfica de los niveles territoriales de la UE para posteriormente analizar la nomenclatura de las regiones europeas en base a su organización territorial. Más adelante, se realizará un análisis cuantitativo a través de dos técnicas estadísticas haciendo uso de los datos obtenidos de las bases de datos referentes a las regiones conformantes de la Unión Europea (NUTS 2). Las variables seleccionadas representan los indicadores sociales referentes al primer objetivo de las políticas públicas “progreso social y económico” que abarca la Unión Europea. El primer análisis abordará la pregunta de investigación, y el segundo análisis se centrará en agrupar las regiones europeas en base a sus resultados globales, poniendo el foco en Euskadi. Además, se realizará una valoración de los resultados obtenidos y de la cuestión a analizar por parte de diferentes expertos. Finalmente, se abordarán las conclusiones más relevantes, cuyo propósito es dar respuesta a la pregunta de investigación.

Mondialisation, construction europeenne, multiculturalisme... autant de phenomenes qui bousculent la conception nationale de la citoyennete heritee du modele republicain. Pourtant, elle constitue encore le fondement du vivre ensemble au sein d'une communaute nationale. Moyennant, toutefois, la reconnaissance d'autres echelles de citoyennete

This report focuses on the case study of the influence of political commitment on the integration of nutrition in national development priorities in Burkina Faso. It is part of a comparative cross-country of Francophone and Anglophone Africa. The study was commissioned and coordinated by a team of experts from the World Bank with the support of national experts to the country studies. This comparative research is based on the fact that some countries have taken advantage of the support received from donors to build over time of sustained political support for the problem of malnutrition. By contrast, others have not succeeded in creating such a dynamic, so that malnutrition is now a serious problem to solve. In the concept note of the present study, there are strong assumptions about the impact of political commitment on the mainstreaming of nutrition in development policies. This event is considered one of the factors causing a significant improvement of nutrition indicators in a c...

This research aims to (i) examine the effectiveness and the efficiency of primary education management with regards to the service user satisfaction within 29 primary schools in Thailand, subject under provincial administrative organization (PAO), and their counterparts, which are under the authority of the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC), (ii) to conduct a comparative study concerning the effectiveness and the efficiency generated from the selected schools by specifically handpicking, from each province, one school from the PAO and two from the OBEC, amounting to the total number of 3 schools representing each province. The selected samples can be categorized into those containing similar numbers of students and the ones with certain amounts of operating unit cost (OUC), which are essentially contributing to the sum of 87 schools. The data collection was carried out by drawing samples from the students, the parents, and the members of the concerned communities. Each...

Finding the appropriate balance between diversity and social cohesion is a common concern in constitutional design, particularly in societies divided along ethno-linguistic and religious lines. Constitution drafters have often addressed this quest through federalism: in fact, federal arrangements seek to facilitate a balance between unity and diversity to curb tensions typical of highly diverse societies.
Aside from designing the institutional architecture and power division within a state, constitutions are also repositories of shared values (...)

The first phase of the Scaling-up Action Research Project was undertaken to determine whether the current framework for community-driven development (CDD) projects can create the right conditions for such projects to evolve into programs that are sustained through normal resource transfer systems, so that poverty reduction activities are not forever dependent on government borrowing and NGOs. The concern with the donor/NGO approach is that it does not lead to sustainable change in how national poverty programs are implemented, and does nothing to promote the efficient use of public resources. CDD, by contrast, has been shown to be up to 40 percent more efficient in the use of public resources, while at the same time fostering community empowerment and building the social capital necessary for poor communities to take an active part in their own development. In this context, scaling up refers to the incorporation of CDD principles into national poverty programs, and to CDD activities being made sustainable through permanent resource transfer mechanisms. This synthesis paper compares the scaling up experiences of a total of 15 community-driven development projects in six countries in four regions—Benin, Uganda, and Zambia in the Africa Region; India in South Asia; Indonesia in East Asia and the Pacific; and Mexico in Latin America and the Caribbean. Weighing the strengths, weaknesses, and findings of each case was an inherently imperfect exercise, given the vastly different institutional, social, and political environment in which each CDD project was designed and carried out; and considering, as well, the newness of the analytical framework and assessment tools. One purpose of the research was, in fact, to test the usefulness of this framework and these tools for evaluating CDD – to determine whether the concepts, questions, and hypotheses that guided the reviewers' work were both precise enough and flexible enough to capture the complexities of scaling up in different cultural and institutional contexts, while providing a basis for comparability across all the studies. The questions at the heart of this exercise were whether: • the five basic principles that make up the CDD framework—community empowerment, local government empowerment, decentralization, accountability/transparency, and learning by doing—adequately define the necessary conditions for scaling up;

The concept of Self-managing schools involving local community members, teachers and parents with the formation of School management Committee is gaining ground in Nepal after the world conference WCEFA held in Jomtien, Thailand in the year 1990. Transferring the management of public schools in the hand of willing community and motivating them to reform education by their own ability are self-managed schools. As the government of Nepal has planned to gradually increase the number of self-managed schools throughout the country, a need was realized to assess the readiness of communities (willingness and ability) to resume the delegated responsibility, which was the main reflection of the research study.
The research on self-managed school reflects the community involvement and participation in school management in the line with SMCs to transform the school as self-managed school. Community willingness and ability were the focal points of this research for assessing the readiness of the community to take the responsibility of school management and transforming them into self-managed school. The theoretical framework that supports the research was based upon the critical perspective of Karl Marx conflict theory in education, McClelland’s need theory of motivation, and Deci and Ryan self determination theory, based on which the reflection of community willingness, and ability in self managing school were discussed.

The qualitative method was used for data collection and the sources of data were both primary and secondary in nature. Semi-structured interview was used as a research tools for primary data collection. The secondary data were collected from research department, Ministry of Education, The World Bank reports and educational web portal. The interviewed respondents were the members of the school management committee, which include parents, teachers, head teachers, chairpersons and local community people of three community managed school of Lalitpur district. Triangulation method and cross verification was used for reliability and validity.
The major findings of this research were that despite the community schools located in the poor geographical location, the SMC have become successful in involving the local people in decision-making process. The willingness of communities was found high in terms of participation and involvement in school management. Involvement of the community in school management resulted in high rates of students’ enrolment, improvement in quality of education and introduction of English subject and English speaking environment in the school premises.
The readiness of community was accentuating for resource generation by utilizing unutilized natural resources, for instance, water and forestry. Apart from being isolated from the perspective of financial capabilities, the local communities have the potentialities to develop school so that the local community people do not have to seek for the private school for their children education. In addition, the School Management Committees also demonstrated their skills in participating and involving the students in committee meetings aspiring them to bring healthy suggestion. The commitment of the local communities to manage school also have solved the problems of poor maintenances of school buildings and classroom facilities with the ability to maintain relationship with NGOs, INGOs, CBOs and other business

organization to support the school with necessity financial means. In summary, the community of self-managed schools demonstrated both capability and willingness (readiness) for managing schools in a decentralized context.