New paths of centralization in the 21st century? the case of the Portuguese public administration

This chapter intends to analyze the distribution of administrative power in the history of Portuguese public administration. For that purpose, it considers the concept of centralization (and related concepts) and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the centralization of power from a legal point of view. Although the last decades have witnessed a clear movement towards decentralization in many states, some equivalent tendencies of centralization can also be identified. The concept and advantages of centralization and related concepts have traditionally been considered regarding hierarchical structures within a single entity or vertical structures of distribution of power among different entities in the same state. It is regarding this traditional structure that we can identify the referred movement of decentralization. However, the organization of public administration has evolved in the last decades in at least two different ways, both of which show a movement toward centralization. On the one hand, more power has been centralized into bodies located at a higher (European or international) level. This new centralization results from the realization that some tasks cannot be efficiently undertaken at the national level. On the other hand, other structures have emerged – network or neural structures. This new organization evolves from hierarchical or vertical structures, as a result of the creation of coordination bodies, usually of a technical nature. These bodies coordinate the activity of pre-existing bodies, either from different branches of hierarchical levels or from different entities, thus connecting them horizontally. These coordination bodies compensate for some of the disadvantages of administrative power decentralization, which can result in the lack of an overall consideration of problems and the unity of administrative action necessary to solve them.