Decentralization in the Arab World: Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan from a comparative perspective

自20世纪90年代初以来，我们目睹了政府主导的权力下放战略在阿拉伯世界的出现，这些战略在时机、深度、成功程度、范围和结果方面差异很大。尽管有这些实证研究结果，但在讨论政府决定进一步分散政治体的原因和后果时，学术文献仍然模糊。这是我们研究项目的出发点。它的重点是行政权力下放战略的经验。我们的研究植根于一个被普遍接受的发现，即该地区存在持续存在的新世袭赞助和庇护主义网络。我们假设，权力下放政策是由明确的、可识别的个人网络来指导、启发和实施的。它们将中央、地区和地方各级政府联系在一起。因此，权力下放进程的出现及其作用不仅仅是宪法结构内部修改的结果。权力下放导致政治变化的原因是新世袭网络的重新配置，每当中央政府将权力下放到地方时，就会导致权力的领土化。在我们的项目中，我们提出的问题是，在我们所研究的四个国家中，权力下放过程在多大程度上以及以何种社会和政治后果塑造了治理能力，以及这些过程如何通过制度改革产生超越政权生存的传统目标的合法性。为了调查权力下放对治理能力的影响，我们将预算治理和向次国家一级的财政转移作为指标和分析工具。我们的国家样本包括摩洛哥、突尼斯、埃及和约旦。之所以选择这些案例，是因为它们在权力下放的形式、功能和后果方面差异很大，但同时在结构上非常相似（中央集权国家的传统、相似的国家建设途径和新世袭网络的持续存在）。我们的项目将为阿拉伯世界的权力下放及其后果的研究仍然相当不足的问题提供概念和经验上的贡献。我们的目标是确定一种中等范围的理论方法，使我们能够梳理出阿拉伯世界权力下放政策的内在逻辑，并将我们的研究成果置于现有的关于国家运作的比较研究文献中。

Since the early 1990s we have been witnessing the emergence of government-led decentralization strategies in the Arab world, which vary considerably with regard to timing, depth, success, reach and results. Despite these empirical findings, the scholarly literature remains vague when discussing causes and consequences of governments' decisions to further decentralize the body politic. This is the point of departure of our research project. It focuses on experiences with strategies of administrative decentralization. Our research is embedded in the generally accepted finding of a persistence of neopatrimonial networks of patronage and clientelism in the region. We assume that policies of decentralization are guided, inspired and instrumentalized by clear-cut identifiable personal networks. They interlock the central, regional and local levels of government. The emergence and the function of decentralization processes are hence more than only the result of modifications within the constitutional architecture. The reason for political change by decentralization is a re-configuration of neopatrimonial networks, which causes a modified territorialization of power whenever the central government transfers competences down to the regions. In our project we ask, to what extent and with which social and political consequences decentralization processes shape governability in the four countries under study, and how these processes produce legitimacy beyond the traditional aim of regime survival through institutional reform. In order to investigate the consequences of decentralization for governability we use as indicator and analytical tool the governance of budgets and financial transfers to the subnational level. Our country sample comprises Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan. These cases were selected because they vary significantly with regard to forms, functions and consequences of decentralization, but are at the same time structurally very similar (tradition of centralized statehood, similar pathways of state-building and persistence of neopatrimonial networks). Our project will provide a conceptual and empirical contribution to the still fairly underresearched questions of decentralization and its consequences in the Arab world. We aim at the identification of a middle range theoretical approach that allows us to tease out the inner logic of decentralization policies in the Arab world and which locates our research results in the existing literature of comparative research on the workings of statehood.