Chapter 3 Gear toward Centralized Decentralization
3.3 Paradoxical Mixture of Centralization and Decentralization
3.3.1 Conceptualize Centralization and Decentralization
The key to the seemingly paradoxical mixture of centralization and
decentralization is the role of state in the education system. According to Max
Weber‘s (1919/1994) influential definition of state in Politics as a Vocation, the modern state monopolizes the means of legitimate physical violence over a well-
defined territory. Moreover, the legitimacy of this monopoly is of a very special kind,
―rational-legal‖ legitimacy, which is based on impersonal rules that constrain the power of state elites. Here, Weber makes it very clear that an entity is a state, if it has
a relatively settled population, a well-defined territory, and legitimated monopolies
over the population and the territory. Meanwhile, Weber‘s definition also indicates that the state is not simply there; the rise of state, typically, involves legitimated
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monopolies and imposed rules. It‘s not difficult to find supportive voices for Weber‘s definition in recent years. Political scholar Nancy Fraser (1989) argues that the state is
an arena in which different groups struggle to legitimate and institute their own sense
of needs and needed discourses. Reverberating Weber's echo, education scholar Andy
Green (1994) refers to the state formation as a historical process through which ruling
elites struggle to build a national unity at economic, cultural and territorial levels and
consolidate political and ideological consensus. Bruce Curtis (1992) emphasizes that
―the state may best be studied as a process of rule‖ (p. 9). These scholars have already reached an agreement that at all levels the state is constantly being formed by diverse
social forces. Thus, it is necessary to look at the interplay between these social forces.
Foucault (1978/1991) offers us a deepened theoretical framework for the
analysis of interactions between those social forces and how the examination of the
formation of state in terms of power relations. Foucault rejects the attempts to theorize
state. For Foucault, the state has no universal essence based on unexamined
presumption about its essential unity, its given functions or its inherent tendency
toward domination. Foucault claims that
the state, no more probably today than at any other time in its history,
does not have this unity, this individuality, this rigorous functionality,
nor, to speak frankly, this importance; maybe, after all ,the state is no
more than a composite reality and a mythicized abstraction, whose
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Breaking the fascination of the state, Foucault (1978/1991) argues that what is really
important for the society is the governmentalization of the state. Foucault defines
governmentalization as the tactics of government, which are internal and external to
the state and which ensure the state‘s survival. Thus, Foucault argues that ―state can
only be understood in its survival and its limits on the basis of the general tactics of
governmentality‖ (p.103). Foucault‘s emphasis on the art of government is closely connected with his concerns on the emergence of population, which is defined as ―the
end of government, the subjects of needs and aspirations, but also the object in the
hands of the government‖ (p.100). In this sense, Foucault further points out that the
state of government has to deal with the interest of individuals who make up the
population, and the interest of the population as a whole regardless of any individual‘s
interest. Individual‘s interest in Foucault‘s words should not be understood in a
narrow sense. Individual could be extended from a person to any specific object in a
collection, such as human society.
Interests might diverge or even conflict with each other, and thus diverse social
forces might be produced. In his book, History of Sexuality Foucault (1978/1990)
defines ―the multiplicity of force relations‖ as power (p. 92). Foucault makes it very clear that power in his term ―is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex
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power is immanent in all social relations and the understanding of power should begin
from below, in the heterogeneous social forces.
At the same time, Foucault (1990) believes that there is no binary and all-
encompassing opposition between the dominant and the dominated. The manifold
relationships between forces are the basis for ―wide-ranging effects of cleavage that
run through the social body as a whole‖ (p. 94). These manifold relationships can also
form a general line of force and ―bring about redistributions, realignments,
homogenizations, serial arrangements and convergences of the false relations‖ (p. 94).
Foucault also asserts that ―[W]here there is power, there is resistance‖ and resistance
is always inside power, ―there is no ‗escaping‘ it‖ (p. 95). Foucault emphasizes that the existence of power relationships depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance:
these play the role of adversary, target, support or handle in power relations. These
points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network.
With his emphasis on immanent power and resistance, it is more understandable
that Foucault would argue that there is no trans-historical, universal, unchanging
notion of state. In fact, Foucault regards the state as an ensemble of power relations,
which are in constantly changing. Thus, attention should be placed not on domination,
but rather on governmentality, where the technologies of power, the exercise of power
and projection of power are happening. Foucault (1982) explains how power
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Basically power is less a confrontation between two adversaries or the
linking of one to the other than a question of government…
―Government‖ did not refer only to political structures or to the management of states; rather it designated the way in which the
conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed... To govern, in
this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others. The
relationship proper to power would not therefore be sought on the side
of violence or of struggle, nor on that of voluntary linking (all of
which can, at best, only be the instruments of power), but rather in the
area of the singular mode of action, neither warlike nor juridical,
which is government. (p. 221)
Based on Foucault‘s theory about state, power and governmentality, centralization may be viewed as a tactic of governmentality which operates on
something called the state, and decentralization as a resistance against centralization.
Centralization and decentralization work at the point where power is produced.
However, centralization functions toward concentration, convergence and
homogenization; whereas, as a resistance, decentralization functions toward disparity,
divergence and heterogenization. Centralization is used to reformulate diverse social
forces into a coactive force via a set of means. Within the processes of centralization,
there are struggles, confrontations and transformations among diverse forces and the
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inscribed in centralization, in the same way that resistance is inherent in the power
network. The coactive force formed in centralization is always challenged by various
social forces in different forms. Indeed, decentralization is an effort to destabilize and
deconstruct a consolidated arrangement of force relations, producing cleavages in a
society and leading to a regrouping of those social forces. In this sense, centralization
and decentralization, as the tactical strategies of governmentality, are always
entangled together.
In the education sector, both centralization and decentralization function as
effective means to realize governmentality over the system. Centralization involves
the concentration of authority over resource flows across decision-making points at
the upper level of a hierarchized system; decentralization involves the distribution of
authority over resource flows across decision-making points down to the lower levels
of the system or outside the system. Thus, quantitative aspects including finance,
personnel and information, are important indicators of the degrees of centralization
and decentralization. However, the most fundamental dimension of both centralization
and decentralization is authority, which is the manipulating force behind those
superficial phenomena. In terms of the shifting of authority, centralization and
decentralization functions toward opposite directions, but they are not necessarily
against each other.
In reality, there are no education systems which are completely centralized or
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authority, but are motivated by different intentions and toward diverse objectives. In
Mark Hanson‘s (2006) words, ―[C]entralization or decentralization are not ends in themselves, but only means to an end‖ (p. 9). Consequently, under given conditions the rationale behind strengthening centrality or decentrality is persuasive. In this sense,
the tension between centralization and decentralization could be universal. The real
issue surrounding this tension is how the two forces balance each other out.
Both centralization and decentralization assume there is a center that plays a
vital role in the concentration or distribution of authority within or beyond a bounded
system regardless of whether the pressure comes from the upper or the lower levels or
from both. In the Chinese education system, the central state is playing this vital role.
In the latest curriculum reform, the central state finds itself in a very complex
situation that is common to quite a few countries in reconstructing their education
systems. Educational foundations scholar Joseph Zajda (2007) summarizes:
On one hand, the concept of nation-state necessitates the centralization
of certain functions, including the provisions for mass education.
Current educational policy reforms designed to achieve competitiveness
and diversity by means of standardized curricula, national standards and
standardized assessment also suggest an increasing centralization. On
the other hand, the state defined policies of educational restructuring in
response to demands for equality, participation and diversity, have the
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Different countries take different strategies to deal with this paradox. Current Chinese
curriculum reform is through a top-down approach, where the content, the process,
the goals and the strength of the reform are determined by the center and used as a
tactic to reach desired outcomes of the state. In this sense, deconcentration in Chinese
curriculum reform is a centralized decentralization.