| Abstract: | Decentralized government institutions are doing more of the work of government than ever before, but there is little agreement about 1) what decentralization means, or 2) how it should be measured. To overcome this confusion, this article builds on standard definitions of decentralization that include three core dimensions: fiscal, administrative, and political. The article offers an empirical test of that definition using factor analysis of data from 1996 for sixty-eight countries. Factor analysis confirms these three core dimensions and generates a score for each case in each dimension, allowing countries to be measured according to their type and degree of decentralization. In future work, these scores can be used for hypothesis testing about the causes and effects of decentralization on important social outcomes. This exercise demonstrates that conceptual confusion need not hamper research when empirical tests can help verify conceptual categories. Aaron Schneider is a political scientist at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. His research interests include comparative politics, public finance, and methodology. His current research projects include studies of federalism, decentralization, party systems, budgeting, and taxation. He has conducted research in Brazil and India, and plans to apply the measures derived in this article to study the impact of decentralization. Tel:+44 (0)1273 678270; fax: +44 (0)1273 621202; email: a.schneider@ids.ac.uk. For valuable comments and suggestions, the author would like to thank Mick Moore, Arnab Acharya, Marcus Kurtz, Benjamin Goldfrank, and anonymous reviewers from Studies in Comparative International Development. Financial support was provided by the Department for International Development. All errors or omissions are the author’s own. |
