In recent decades, Local government is becoming more dominant in terms of execution capacity. local governments in Israel have increasingly relied on independent income to supplement their budgets in order to cope with substantially reduced government revenues, particularly following the sharp cuts in government grants in 2003. Self-income increased dramatically 2/3 income and 1/3 grants, and this process produces less dependence.
This change, amounting to decentralization in practice, was not accompanied by an orderly work plan; the government sees the process as being forced on it and its feasibility was not tested. Furthermore, while there was a process of decentralization in terms of budgeting, in practice, it was not clear if the relevant power was granted to local authorities. This is especially evident in light of Israel’s low standing in the world in terms of its level of decentralization.
We claim that since there is no Basic Law of Local Government, it is difficult for local authorities to act and initiate moves to improve the residents’ quality of life. In our presentation we will show that there are many advantages in providing powers to the local government, by using a couple of case studies from recent periods like in health or the education in the pandemic covid-19 period. Moreover, we will show by International Literature Review and statistics indicators that Israel is one of the most centralized countries in the Western world and has a weak local government status compared to other countries:  the decentralization index for local authorities of World Bank researchers show that Israel is ranked 94th out of 182 countries in the world, and among all OECD countries, Israel is ranked lowest.

​

​

​

This talk will be presented together with Sagit Azary-Viesel.