Devolved authority without resources is ghostly autonomy.

Evidence

Devolution frequently means that large-scale problems, such as recessions, finance-capital crises, unemployment, or environmental problems, as well as fiscal crises of the state, are sent down the pipeline to small and weak units unable to cope with them technically, politically, or financially. Thus, state funding cuts in education or mental health devolve responsibility for these undertakings to municipalities, which in turn devolve them to individual schools or agencies, which devolve them to individual departments, which then have something called “decision-making authority,” absent, of course, the resources to exercise this ghostly autonomy and sovereignty. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 254

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘ghostly autonomy’ of devolved units with authority but no resources is a sharp lens for an essay on how austerity is laundered through decentralization.
• XREF: connects to: State autonomy generates an ideology disconnected from its economic conditions. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 913; Human rights vanish for people who lack their own sovereign government

Broader Connections

• State autonomy generates an ideology disconnected from its economic conditions. #expands (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 913
• Human rights vanish for people who lack their own sovereign government #exemplifies (0.75)