<P> "A large number of developing and transitional countries have embarked on some form of decentralization programmes . This trend is coupled with a growing interest in the role of civil society and the private sector as partners to governments in seeking new ways of service delivery...Decentralization of governance and the strengthening of local governing capacity is in part also a function of broader societal trends . These include, for example, the growing distrust of government generally, the spectacular demise of some of the most centralized regimes in the world (especially the Soviet Union) and the emerging separatist demands that seem to routinely pop up in one or another part of the world . The movement toward local accountability and greater control over one's destiny is, however, not solely the result of the negative attitude towards central government . Rather, these developments, as we have already noted, are principally being driven by a strong desire for greater participation of citizens and private sector organizations in governance ." </P> <P> Those studying the goals and processes of implementing decentralization often use a systems theory approach . The United Nations Development Programme report applies to the topic of decentralization "a whole systems perspective, including levels, spheres, sectors and functions and seeing the community level as the entry point at which holistic definitions of development goals are most likely to emerge from the people themselves and where it is most practical to support them . It involves seeing multi-level frameworks and continuous, synergistic processes of interaction and iteration of cycles as critical for achieving wholeness in a decentralized system and for sustaining its development ." </P> <P> However, decentralization itself has been seen as part of a systems approach . Norman Johnson of Los Alamos National Laboratory wrote in a 1999 paper: "A decentralized system is where some decisions by the agents are made without centralized control or processing . An important property of agent systems is the degree of connectivity or connectedness between the agents, a measure global flow of information or influence . If each agent is connected (exchange states or influence) to all other agents, then the system is highly connected ." </P> <P> University of California, Irvine's Institute for Software Research's "PACE" project is creating an "architectural style for trust management in decentralized applications ." It adopted Rohit Khare's definition of decentralization: "A decentralized system is one which requires multiple parties to make their own independent decisions" and applies it to Peer - to - peer software creation, writing: </P>

Should there be decentralization of the supreme court