IDEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRALISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

Nowadays, state reform is a fundamental theme for public authorities and the civil society and its major goals are to reduce bureaucracy, to increase transparency in decision-making (democratisation) and to transfer competence toward local communities. All these political-economic targets come under the concept of decentralisation. Yet, despite a very strong localist, autonomist and decentralising movement, there are also deep traces of centralism. It lay at the basis of the construction of the modern state and it had not only constitutional but also social connotations (the authoritarian redistribution of welfare). 20th century state centralism was based on a series of conducts derived from the mechanisms of socialisation and from those related to the satisfaction of human needs, on a psychological propensity called “voluntary servitude” as well as on some great ideological movements. The main idea in our study is that all the ideologies of the 20th century promoted centralism and this regardless of their positioning on the left or on the right side of the political line. The communist left and the fascist extreme right used centralism in order to gain absolute control of society; democratic doctrines (from social-democracy to liberalism and Christian-democracy) used centralism as a means of operation within the Welfare State and as a way of mustering resources in view of a possible conflict during the Cold War.