Decentralization is widely mooted as a device to improve the democratic process of governance and the equity and/or efficiency of resource allocation. While the objectives and the key principles of decentralization, such as subsidiarity, are well known, attempts to implement them have not always been successful. Selected case studies of experiences in the Asia Pacific region, reviewed for their positive and negative aspects, suggest that the paths for successful decentralization need to reflect the geography, culture and institutions of the country concerned, as well as the various functions of governance, bureaucracy, markets and information and their interrelationships. Decentralization can embrace geographic hierarchies, as well as joint federal-regional, inter-regional or local government collectives, and other arrangements that do not conform to normal geographic hierarchies of governance. However, the preparatory demands are high in all forms and suggest that phasing implementation is desirable. The lessons learned from the case studies provide a basis for charting future paths and avoiding pitfalls in implementing decentralization for sustainable forest management.
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Ferguson et al. (2012) studied this question.