Access how governments have used decentralization to make public services more responsive - Essay Example

re which must be taken into account while assessing the significance and incidence of decentralization is that whether the proposed decentralization is in the favor of the public interest or not. The intellectual discussion regarding the success and failure of decentralization of public institutions largely focus on this main issue. Viewed in that perspective it is then decided whether public services would be more responsive to the decentralization or whether they should be centralized. Further, the decentralization and centralization of any government and public sector services is done based on two perspective i.e. Efficiency values and Government values.

“Efficiency Values comprise the public choice justification for decentralization, where efficiency is understood as the maximization of social welfare whereas the Governance values comprises of (i) responsiveness and accountability, (ii) diversity, and (iii) political participation.”(Wolman, 1990). Assessing within these two perspectives, we will now attempt to analyze the decentralization that took place in UK. Starting with the industrial relations, it has been largely argued that the decentralization of industrial relations would not yield results without providing a due thought to the local contexts within which these processes take place.

Decentralization especially within the context of industrial relation has been largely viewed as an attempt to weaken the workers unions. Unions are often seen as protectors of the labor rights and decentralization of the collective bargaining power of the unions have further dented the morale of the public sector employees. It is probably because of this reason that despite initiating decentralization, UK is considered as a strong bureaucracy with strong administrative lacunas to hinder the smooth operations of the public sector services.

(Katz, 1993). The shift in the locus of power within the public services therefore created strong administrative problems and