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Concept and Reality

Concepts are often useful in explaining complex information involved, in acquiring shared knowledge, or in other ways.

However, it is sometimes possible that concepts blur our reality.

Let’s look at the example of “Decentralisation”.

This is often discussed as an antithetical concept to “Centralised administration (or systems of a government)”.

It is said that “Decentralisation” could be classified as “De-concentration”, “Devolution”, and “Fiscal decentralisation”.

At this point, people who are not very familiar with Decentralisation are likely to start being faced with difficulties in making sense of them. Some may like to know what all of those sub-concepts signify. Others may feel like further studying Decentralisation. And, concepts (and sub-concepts) developed in the field of decentralisation certainly help such peoples’ research activities.

Having acquired certain levels of knowledge, it is quite a natural tendency for people to develop discussions over the issue. Some of those discussions may be related to some actions to be taken on the ground, and others may be purely theoretical. In either way, discussions like those will have both positive and negative effects: positive effects in terms of deepening understanding on the issue, or inventing further more effective products, i.e., practical measures, new sub-concepts, or theories; and negative effects as some people start developing discussions for the sake of continuing discussing the issue.

Negative effects are likely to take place for the concepts which involves various sub-concepts, or more simply issues to be dealt with. This happens because such concepts could be interpreted, thus, discussed differently by different discussants, and more problematically it is very difficult for us to attribute any positive change in our lives to such internally diverse concepts. Can we assert that better performance of Grade 12 graduates this year is attributable to devolution which was introduced previous year? Can we conclude that increased revenue of Council A is due to financial decentralisation, not to increased economic activities in A? Will it be easy to measure performance of council workers paid by the council as compared to workers paid by central government? In this way, only “Decentralisation” can further develop various arguments almost endlessly.

Of course, it is important to continuously refine concepts and related theories as tools for investigating our reality.

However, if the concept in question is closely related to practical actions to be taken for improvement of peoples’ livelihoods, too much attention to the concept and its refinement (or further diversification?) may result in just waste of time with having discussants lose sight of real peoples’ livelihoods.

The implementation of “Decentralisation” is no question influenced by highly political issues from head of state level to budget allocation among departments of public sector organisations. We can perceive this, substantiate it by studying theory, and become more competent in terms of conceptual knowledge. But, so what?

Knowledge concerning Decentralisation may not directly contribute to improvement of people’s well-beings. It principally deals with effective ways of governing or administering of organisations (mostly of public sector). Hence, it cannot directly contribute to improved well-beings of the people even though Decentralisation in the present context of international development has been related to Poverty Reduction (through more efficient service delivery by public sector organisations).

This is not stating that Decentralisation is useless for improving people’s livelihood. To the contrary, especially for the case of the aid receiving countries who have already developed Policy for Decentralisation, like Zambia, it is very important (or obligatory) for donors to respect it with special attention to domestic coherence based on which development for people’s well-beings will more efficiently take place. It is, therefore, critical for donors to come up with a kind of fine-tuned strategy with which they help an aid receiving country maintain political stability or coherence of the country as a whole on one hand, and strengthen its functions of delivering various services to the people on the other. To do this, it is a donors’ critical task that correctly point out what is really absent from public sector organisations in terms of service delivery while considering institutional or organisational reforms which require deliberate analyses on related concepts and substantial time.

What is lacking in public sector organisations is experience in using money.

No argument is required to this point.

What needs to be argued is how to have them experience that.


The picture shown above tries to map out a possible framework within which actions are to be undertaken primarily for increased experiences of public servants in using public funds.

Since this framework presumes necessity of fast tracking, it does not aim at any major change in business processes in public sector organisations, but starts with dissemination on improved cash flow of the central government.
This dissemination should emphasise that MPSAs can never impute their delayed implementation of planned activities to unavailability of cash or delayed disbursement of funds from the central authority.
As a result of the dissemination, number of applications for budget allocation is expected to increase.
It is obvious that if those applications sufficiently justifies their costing and purposes of use, or, clearly show timeframe before completing disbursement, the requested funds will smoothly be released.
However, especially at its initial stage, refusal of those applications by the central authority may also be increased due to some quality problems anticipated in those increased applications. What is important is that such refusal of request must be done as quickly as possible with clear explanation, which is expected to feed into subsequent requests for budget allocation in such a way that further lower probability of refusal.
When increased probability of receipt of requested budget is perceived, further more applications are likely to be encouraged.
As a consequence, number of activities undertaken by MPSAs will increase, thus, number of staff experiencing in using public funds will also increase.
Regardless of quality of business processes, efficiency increased through repeated practice is also likely to be achieved.
In addition to achievement of the purpose of increasing experiences in using public funds, some other effects on furthermore broader institutional/ organisational aspects are also expected.
At the beginning of the framework shown above, we cannot but using plans and budgets developed for this year, which are considered to further be improved.
However, once the changes indicated above are realised especially at MPSA levels, both motivation towards developing their work plans and budgets and quality of them will significantly be improved because staffs get accustomed to procedures, come to know better about information that applications for budget should contain, thus, overall efficiency and effectiveness of planning and budgeting would be achieved.
The plans and budgets prepared by MPSAs with even higher motivation should also change the substance of negotiations between MPSAs and MoFNP over budget allocation. Apparently, all the planned activities and their budget are unlikely to be approved. On MoFNP’s side, again, clear explanation for decline of some of the planned activities and budget must be communicated to MPSAs. On MPSAs’ side, it is expected that their plans and budgets are further refined through negotiation with MoFNP.
These increased levels of activities regarding planning and budgeting may also enhance internal negotiations within each MPSA, i.e., coordination between planning department and executing departments.

In this way, Zambian public sector will be able to improve their ability of delivering services regardless of progress of the implementation of Decentralisation Policy.
This is possible because of favourable government’s revenue prospects backed by current higher commodity prices.
What should again be remembered is the fact that cash flow situation of Zambian public sector is completely different from that of the recent past.
What should be done by donors shall be to make public servants in Zambia aware of this difference and to have them make the most of it for improvement of service delivery through increased experiences in using public funds.

Fundamental reforms of the public sector aimed at further more efficient and effective service delivery for improved peoples’ livelihoods may be built on the public servants’ changed mindset through experiences in using public funds.

We should be careful enough not to be distracted by complexities involved in decentralisation or development in general, which have to be treated with thoughtful application of concepts, from capturing real needs of different countries which have been and are surrounded by different circumstances.