Decentralisation in a Globalised World: Consequences and Opportunities

Globalisation accompanied by the growing importance of information technology and knowledge-based production pose challenging problems for federations. We summarise the difficulties that traditional decentralised federations face in addressing problems of competitiveness, innovation and inequality brought on by globalisation. Adapting to these challenges involves rethinking the roles of various levels of government and rebalancing them appropriately. On the one hand, responding to inequality enhances the policy role of the federal government. On the other hand, state and local governments must respond to the imperative of providing education and business services to equip citizens and firms to compete in the knowledge economy. Perhaps most important, large urban governments are best placed to provide the physical and social capital to support innovation hubs. A key challenge for fiscal federalism is to facilitate the decentralisation of responsibilities to urban governments. This entails new thinking about revenue decentralisation, policy harmonisation and the structure of intergovernmental transfers so that cities can implement their policies effectively and accountably.