Institutional and Governance Reform in a Hybrid Regime: Practising Decentralisation in Cameroon, 1990-2020

Abstract

This paper examines the practice of decentralisation in a hybrid regime,1 political and governance system. Going by the metaphor of “a  lion giving birth to a cat”, this article provides an explanation on the realities in the practice of decentralisation and the workings of these  reforms in a hybrid regime in Cameroon. The resilience of the centralised state agency in the implementation of the policy of  decentralisation is properly explained by David Easton’s “systems theory”. 2 It describes Cameroon’s institutional and governance reality  as a complex political entity, highly integrated and resilient to the reform of decentralisation, enshrined in the constitution of 18th  January 1996. In its seventh year of practice, this study interrogates if decentralisation in Cameroon is not more of an administrative  deconcentration with no fundamental outcome, neither in the transfer of resources, decision making nor any real impact on local development. The paper made use of primary and secondary sources. From these sources, investigations reveal that the implementation  and impact of the instruments and structures of decentralisation is handicapped by two factors; the fear for any real competition  between them and those of the centralised model; to keep at bay and curb the desires for power from the forces of democratic and political change from reaching the nucleus of the hyper-centralised governance system. This paper concludes that the structures of  decentralisation are chambers created to exist in the political power periphery and remained submitted to orders from the governing  establishment of the centralised state system.