Decentralization of crisis, weakness and responsibility

A. Libman
Additional contact information
A. Libman: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany

Journal of the New Economic Association, 2020, vol. 46, issue 2, 181-187

Abstract: Crises frequently weaken subnational governments but in some cases they lead to greater decentralization. Does this decentralization, however, support the search for optimal crisis response strategies? Generally speaking there are several arguments, which suggest that decentralized systems will manage crises better than centralized ones. This article, however, considers two scenarios (decentralization of weakness and decentralization of responsibility) where the apparently increasing autonomy of subnational governments leads to important problems. Decentralization of weakness emerges when the central government for certain reasons refuses to actively implement an anti-crisis policy. Under these conditions, regional measures, while to some extent compensating the inactivity of the central government, create a number of other problems - that of external effects, possible ideologization of politics and insufficient use of expert knowledge. Decentralization of responsibility emerges when regions accept responsibility for implementing anti-crisis measures, but the center keeps control over resources - thus, regions have to focus on competing for central financing. For the modern Russia, the risks of these two scenarios are substantial.

Keywords: decentralization; crisis; local knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econorus.org/repec/journl/2020-46-181-187r.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nea:journl:y:2020:i:46:p:181-187

DOI: 10.31737/2221-2264-2020-46-2-10

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the New Economic Association is currently edited by Victor Polterovich and Aleksandr Rubinshtein

More articles in Journal of the New Economic Association from New Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alexey Tcharykov ().