“Decentralization is used to denote the transfer of responsibility from central government bodies and its agencies to field units of the central government, and semi-autonomous private or voluntary organizations. This definition is obviously too broad and loose. In this paper, decentralization refers to the transfer of power and/or authority to plan, make decisions, raise and allocate resources, and/or manage public functions from a higher level of government to lower ones. This will limit our attention to changes in the territorial distribution of power within government, thus excluding reforms which involve no more than changes in the location of government activity as well as multiple
forms of decentralization. The forms of decentralization can either be explained by the modalities applied or simply by the key dimensions or variables in the decentralization exercise. Those who follow
the model approach identify three main types of decentralization, i.e., deconcentration, delegation and devolution.”
