To distribute power, authority, or functions away from a central location to multiple local or regional centers. Involves spreading control rather than concentrating it.
Formed by adding 'de-' (away, reverse) to 'centralize' in the 20th century, reflecting democratic ideals and management theories that valued local autonomy and distributed decision-making.
Decentralization is like giving every cell in an organism its own mini-brain - it trades the efficiency of unified control for the resilience and adaptability that comes from distributed intelligence!
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