A close examination of decentralisation process in developing countries comes about as a result of ‘declining legitimacy’ and the reduced participation of citizens in government. (Escobar-lemmon, 2006). Escobar’s study reveals that the push for decentralisation is geared towards winning more support from citizens and assuring them that decentralisation will bring more opportunities. However this view is being challenged where shifting the responsibilities from central to sub national bodies without financial resources to meet those responsibilities, can lead to not only local underdevelopment but the tendency for central government to exert more control. (Falleti G, 2005. p. 343)
Many scholars have made series of attempt in the conceptualisation of decentralisation under an administrative and political context. This reflects the variation of interpretations of the concept though they generally point to the assumption that it transfers legal and political authority from central government to sub-national, local and regional organisations and agencies. (Ng’ethe, 1998, p. 5).
As it becomes a buzz word of development practitioners, various actors, social and political, and both politicians and policy makers, international finance institutions and academics have generally tended to argue that decentralisation can also lead to high degree of participation and political accountability, fiscal and administrative efficiency. (Borja et al. 1989; Cabrero Mendoza 1998; Calderon and Dos Santos 1991; FIEL 1993; Garcia del Castillo 1999 and Wiesner Duran 1992).
One can deduce from the above arguments of decentralization, that the challenge of decentralization is accountability which is assumed that centralization of governance has done very little to be accountable to majority of its citizens either directly (as in democratic or political decentralization) or indirectly (Via the central government, as in administrative decentralization or deconcentration). But the question is why this being has so? The Musgravian approach in mainstream economics indicate some of the arguments for and against centralized system of government. This approach seeks to answer the question of what levels of government that is best suited to deal with the three primary economic problems of public finance such as equitable distribution of income, the maintenance of a stable economy and the allocation of resources in an efficient manner. (<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Roy</st1:city></st1:place>. R, (year unknown) p.1).
The Musgravian approach put forward two proposition. Firstly, “that the state intervention to resolve externalities (including scale economies) and other such market failures require a unitary governmental framework. The lower the externalities of public good provisioning, the lower the incentive for centralization.” The second is “that lower levels of government are more sensitive to the individual preferences for public good provisioning than are higher levels. If externalities are held constant then decentralized provisioning is preferable, a result that would expect from the neo-classical paradigm where the aggregate of individual economic choices with the complete market is utopian, as it is Pareto efficient and Pareto Optimal”. (ibid. p. 2)
A development-induced decentralization springing from the process of local community-driven development is assumed to be more sustainable to the extent possible that it is allowed to go through a certain process of metamorphosis.