Centralisation

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Centralisation or centralization (see English spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning, decision-making, and framing strategies and policies, become concentrated within a particular group within that organisation. This creates a power structure where the said group occupies the highest level of hierarchy and has significantly more authority and influence over the other groups, who are considered its subordinates.

An antonym of centralisation is decentralisation,^[1] where authority is shared among numerous different groups, allowing varying degree of autonomy for each.

The term has a variety of meanings in several fields. In political science, centralisation refers to the concentration of a government's power—both geographically and politically—into a centralised government, which has sovereignty over all its administrative divisions. Conversely, a decentralised system of government often has significant separation of powers and local self-governance.