Across many democracies in the Global South, decentralisation has been promoted as a way to bring political authority closer to citizens, recognise territorial diversity and make government more responsive to local needs.
Yet transferring authority is easier than building governments capable of exercising it. Peru and South Africa, are confronting the tension at an unusually revealing moment.
On 4 October, Peruvians will elect regional governors, mayors and other subnational representatives. On 4 November, South Africans will vote in local government elections.
The elections illuminate a question relevant beyond either country: What makes decentralisation work?
In Huánuco, a region in Peru's central Andes, an expression has recently circulated in political discussion: the "regional mayor" — a colloquial way of describing the regional governor when the regional government takes a leading role in projects citizens would associate with municipalities. What sounds like a political quip points to a larger problem.
Peru relaunched its decentralisation process through constitutional reform in 2002, establishing national, regional and local levels of government and recognising their autonomy. More than two decades later, autonomy coexists with differences in institutional capacity.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has identified limited technical capacity, staff turnover, shortages of specialised personnel and coordination problems between levels of government. In contexts such as Huánuco, the disparities can encourage a pragmatic response: a government with greater resources or administrative capacity may take a larger role in implementing projects associated with another level of government.
The problem begins when an exceptional solution becomes a habitual way of governing. Autonomy remains, while effective political power moves elsewhere.
South Africa's Constitution defines national, provincial and local government as three spheres that are "distinctive, interdependent and interrelated". Chapter 3 requires them to respect one another's powers, assist one another and coordinate their actions. The Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act of 2005 established mechanisms to facilitate the relationships.
The lesson for Peru: cooperation cannot depend primarily on whether a governor and a mayor are political allies. If decentralisation distributes authority territorially, institutions must provide durable ways of reconnecting the different parts of the state. But cooperation alone cannot make autonomy meaningful. Autonomy also requires capacity.
South Africa provides provincial and local governments with a constitutionally guaranteed equitable share of nationally raised revenue, while municipalities have recognised fiscal powers of their own.
Yet the architecture has not prevented municipal failures. In 2024–25, only 39 of 257 municipalities achieved clean audits. Service delivery, failing infrastructure and governance are prominent issues.
Peru can learn from South Africa that subnational autonomy requires institutionalised cooperation and resources to sustain it. South Africa demonstrates that neither constitutional autonomy nor elaborate rules of cooperative government can substitute for administrations capable of governing.
South Africa also provides rule-bound mechanisms for dealing with failure. Section 139 of its Constitution allows provincial intervention when municipalities fail to fulfil executive obligations. This illustrates that intervention can be regulated without permanently displacing local autonomy.
The experiences of both countries suggest that the debate between centralisation and decentralisation misses the deeper problem. The harder task is to construct three things simultaneously: subnational autonomy, state capacity and intergovernmental cooperation.
Without autonomy, decentralisation gives way to concentration. Without capacity, governments may possess powers on paper that they cannot exercise. Without cooperation, autonomous governments can produce fragmentation, duplication and conflict. Strengthening one side of the triangle while neglecting the others can create new weaknesses.
Peru warns us that repeated failures of capacity and coordination can encourage political actors to concentrate implementation in whichever institution can act. South Africa offers the complementary warning: a constitution can protect autonomy, distribute revenue and require cooperation but the achievements cannot manufacture competent administrations.
Across many democracies in the Global South, territorial inequality and uneven state capacity complicate the promise of bringing power closer to citizens. Comparison can reveal the limitations of calls for either greater decentralisation or stronger central control.
Elections cannot, by themselves, determine whether the institutions will work. Distributing power is only the beginning of decentralisation. Making the power work — while preserving autonomy, building capacity and compelling governments to cooperate — is the much harder democratic task that comes afterwards.
Pool Rivera Domínguez is a political science researcher and writer from Huánuco, in Peru's central Andes.