DECENTRALISATION AND DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND PRACTICE IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

Decentralisation as a policy or practice has received much attention in recent years as it centres around one of the most crucial and recurring debates in the developing world about the degree of control that central governments can and should have over development planning and administration. Most of the developing countries in some form or other have experienced decentralisation. According to Smith, decentralisation has proven to be ideologically indispensable throughout the Third World; its varied advocates have emphasised the claims that decentralisation can be the unifying force in the consolidation of new national identities, or a remedy for the centralised bureaucracies, or a policy that will: "soften resistance to the · inevitable and potentially destabilising social changes that development brings about" (Smith 1988 : 214). ·