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Purpose – This chapter reviews the approaches to the decentralization of services and the devolution of decision-making to local structures outlined by the New Labour government in the United Kingdom. The chapter draws upon earlier attempts by Town Halls in urban areas to introduce new forms of governance and decision-making as a way of providing a context to New Labour's plans.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter provides a detailed review and analysis of the literature and discusses the different models of governance and concepts of power and uses this analysis to identify 10 key lessons for policymakers.

Findings – The 10 key lessons for policymakers and practitioners that are identified and discussed include the role of local political leaders; the convergence of political and managerial leadership; defining the level and pace of community participation; and stressing the importance of continual training, learning, and evaluation.

Research implications – The chapter sets out a possible framework for review, research, and evaluation including cultural change, civil renewal, policy connectivity, and commitment and pace of change. The chapter defines these terms and the terms offer a way of looking at different initiatives and approaches at the level of City Hall.

Originality/Value of the chapter – The chapter sets the framework for a conceptual and empirical study of different approaches to double devolution within the United Kingdom and also outside of it.

How are we to make sense of the attitudes of Social Democratic parties towards decentralisation? What do they think about what is a legitimate territorial allocation of power? What factors shapes this view? And what makes Social Democratic parties change their minds? This article addresses these questions by way of competing ideological traditions, the external strategic incentives and internal constraints. Empirically, the article presents a comparative case-study analysis of Social Democratic parties in four countries (Belgium, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom). On the basis of this analysis, I argue that the positioning of Social Democratic parties on decentralisation is influenced by strategic incentives created by the structure of political competition, whereas the policy shifts are more often produced by factors that are internal to the party. A decentralist policy shift is always associated with the capacity of regionalist parties to set the agenda by exerting pressures on Social Democratic parties. In addition, Social Democratic parties tend to shift their policy while in opposition to distinguish themselves from their centralist mainstream rival in government. The dominant mechanism found across four countries was one in which regional branches persuade the central party leadership to adopt a pro-decentralist position. This chapter illustrates how Social Democratic parties have an instinct for ‘adaptation and control’ in the face of social-structural changes, and it demonstrates that the prevalence of different ideological traditions will vary according to external strategic incentives and, crucially, by the party's internal ability to follow those incentives.

Costa Rica is recognized as one of the two countries with the longest continuous democracy in Latin America. After a short civil war, the country dissolved its armed forces and adopted a new constitution that established the basis of a Welfare State and a meritocratic public administration. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the characteristics of the Costa Rican public administration since the end of the 1990s. We discuss the dilemmas presented by its high level of fragmentation and the actions that have been taken—based mainly on the neo-Weberian paradigm—to modernize the traditional public apparatus so that it becomes more efficient, transparent, and responsive to citizens.

National governments took responsibility for expanding their economies and providing public services during the 1950s and 1960s for many reasons. In North America and Western Europe the strength of central government bureaucracies grew from their crucial roles in mobilizing resources during World War II and, afterward, they took on expanded responsibilities for economic and social reconstruction. Strong central management in industrialized nations offered convenient models for new governments in developing countries. In the post-colonial period, many newly independent governments in Africa and Asia saw local jurisdictions as colonial institutions or as strongholds of ethnic or religious minorities that could be sources of political opposition. Weakening their powers and concentrating resources and authority in the central government was a crucial instrument for nation building.

This chapter examines the role and importance of leadership in public management reform through the experience of Hong Kong. It aims to identify the gap between leadership in public organizations and public management reform in both theory and research and to make recommendations on how the gap can be bridged, particularly under the Asian context. It is a major irony that while both leadership and public management reform have a common concern of fostering positive change in public organizations, these two streams of research are separated, incompatible, and even conflicting. While leadership study is influenced by disciplines such as the psychology and emphasizes a multifaceted approach, most public management reforms are based on the New Public Management (NPM) model which is economics-oriented and structure-driven. Through studying the role of leadership in the public management reform in Hong Kong, it is argued the hollowing-out of leadership in reform is often one of the leading causes for the failure to achieve the expected outcomes. This chapter will elaborate its argument in the following sequence. First, it will review the generic literature on leadership to highlight the importance and relevancy of leadership for public organizations. Second, it will point out the leadership crisis in public management reform caused by the dominance of the NPM model. Finally, it will discuss the negative impact of the hollowing-out of leadership on public management reform and how this problem should be tackled.

The Republic of Macedonia is a small country on the Balkan Peninsula, comprising 25,713 square kilometers and a population of two million. For 45 years it functioned as one of the six constituent republics of the Yugoslav Federation. It was declared an independent and sovereign state in 1991. The new Constitution established the Republic not only as independent and sovereign, but also as a civil and democratic nation-state. This guaranteed complete equality and coexistence of the Macedonian people with the Albanian, Turkish, Vlach, Romany and other minorities living in the country. It also initiated the process of recognition by other states throughout the world, as well as the establishment of diplomatic relations. Macedonia was accepted as a member of the United Nations in 1993 and is currently involved in a large number of European and International associations.

During the last decade, there has been a growing interest in decentralization among the governments of a number of Third World countries, especially, but not only, in Africa. Countries that have introduced significant organizational reforms described as, or having elements of, ‘decentralization’ – or are in the process of doing so – include Tanzania, Zambia, the Sudan, Nigeria and Ghana in Africa (Adamolckun & Rowlands, 1979; Conyers, 1981a; Mawhood & Davcy, 1980; Rondinelli, 1981; Tordoff, 1980), Sri Lanka (Craig, 1981) and a number of countries in the South Pacific, including Papua New Guinea (Conyers, 1981a, 1981b; Ghai, 1981; Tordoff, 1981). Several other countries in Africa and Asia are attempting to achieve some degree of decentralization within the existing organizational structure. In Latin America, government structures have generally remained more centralized and there appears to be little prospect of any major change in the near future; nevertheless, calls for decentralization recur periodically and there have been a few attempts, albeit generally of limited duration and success, to introduce some measure of decentralization (Graham, 1980).