Centralisation, a term which has come into general use for expressing a tendency to administer by the sovereign or the central government matters which would otherwise be under local management. The centralising tendency has been a feature in most of the great states recorded in history, though not in all of them. The oriental empires admitted of a large degree of local independence among the subject peoples. The Roman empire was one of the most remarkable instances of centralisation the world has ever seen. That empire grew out of the subjugation of all the states round the Mediterranean by the city of Rome, and the control of it passed by the inevitable tendency of events into the hands of a single chief, whose power rested on the army, and who centred in himself all the great functions of government. In the later days of the empire the tendency increased, until the system broke down with the power that wielded it. Amid the chaos that followed the downfall of Rome various systems arose for the restoration of order, political or religious, or both. Of these the greatest is still the Papacy; the greatest in bygone history was the empire of Charlemagne. In those times of struggle, the natural method was centralisation based on military supremacy.
Modern attempts to found a great monarchy in Europe on the model of the Roman empire have failed. There have grown up instead a group of powerful states, in the history of which the centralising tendency is strongly marked. Centralisation was necessary, for in the great struggles which have incessantly been going on, success or even self-preservation could be secured only through a strong organisation repressing internal division, and through large and efficient armies. As an adequate revenue was required for these objects, there was further involved a strong control by the central power of the economic and industrial functions of the state. Thus it will be seen that centralisation is more or less inevitable in the struggle for existence on the European continent. The most notable examples of the opposite tendency at present are apparent in the colonial empire of Great Britain, and in the United States, where we find extensive groups of self-governing communities with only a limited measure of control by the central government. Such control is most limited of all in the British colonies.
On the other hand, in the French commune and in the Russian mir we see, under governments otherwise strongly centralised, a form of local activity which had been long extinct in Britain. The municipal reform of 1835 has done much to revive local action in the town life of England. The aim of the reform of local government begun in 1888 is to revive, extend, and systematise local responsibility and freedom of action, particularly in rural districts. It is now recognised that efficiency in the central government can be best secured by transferring local interests to local management by decentralisation. A wise decentralisation may be subservient to an effective centralisation, a principle which holds good also on the European continent. No absolute rules can, however, be laid down for marking off the respective provinces of the central and local powers. Each country must solve the problem in its own way, as its interests and circumstances require.