Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues (Print ISSN: 1544-0036; Online ISSN: 1544-0044)

Abstract

Harmonizing Relationships Between Central and Local Governments in a Federal Structure

Author(s): Faris Abdulraheem Hatem, Noor Farihah Binti Mohd

In the twentieth century, especially during the last forty years from it, the implementation of the political decentralization (Federalism) spread across many countries. The decentralized system has become an indispensable necessity to many countries for the advantages of this system, which is the exercise of democracy where the government is more accountable when it is closer to the people. Also, the citizens can better oversee the behaviour of public officials when they live in the same region than when the officials operate from a distant national capital. Besides the democratic advantages of decentralization, there are also advantages related to improving the delivery of services to citizens. The political decentralization creates an incentive to present the maximum quality of public services at the lowest cost. On the other hand, the decentralization can protect the states which are threatened by division, especially in highly divided societies. Therefore, to achieve the objective of the federalism, which is to achieve the advantages of this system, there must be harmony and cooperation between the central government and regions in the performance of their functions. This harmony is achieved by the application of legal texts that distribute competence between the central government and the states and not to violate these texts, which are the constitution. The guarantor of the implementation of the legal texts that distribute the competence is the judiciary which is the constitutional judiciary. This study explains this phenomenon with the help of two law cases.

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