Introduction: Decentralization is a new type of organization that results in the formation of various structures for the management at multiple national and local scales. An important perspective of power distribution or decentralization in decentralized systems is to provide the basis for improving management and providing local services by transferring the competences and authorities of land administration from the central government to local governments. For this purpose, and in the process of decentralization, local competences are separated from national competences in these systems. To gain experience on how to separate local from national competences, this article examines the countries of France and Turkey as decentralized systems.
Materials and Methods: The method of the article is descriptive and its approach is deductive, in which the selected countries have been subjected to a comparative study based on the theoretical framework of decentralization. The data collection tool is library and computer, and the study of legal texts and scientific and research documents. In the research methodology, first, considering the most important indicators determining the decentralization model and in order to determine the legal principles of how to separate local competences from national competences in the selected countries, the laws and documents in question have been examined using the method of directional qualitative content analysis. The study framework includes examining the foundations of the formation of local governments and the type of their relationship with the central government, describing the competences of local governments, and also providing an example of how to separate local competences from national competences in the field of health in the countries under study.
Results and Discussion: The results show that understanding the legal status and the type of financial and supervisory relationship between local and central government in such political systems is an introduction to addressing the issue of how to separate local and national competences. In countries with decentralized system, local governments have a legal status in the administration of the country's affairs, the guiding principles of which are derived from the constitution. Despite their extensive competences, local governments in these countries do not have complete independence in decision-making, administration, and implementation of local affairs, and a specific supervisory and financial relationship exists between local and central governments. Influenced by these factors, the position of local governments in the administrative and decision-making structure has been determined, and the scope of its competences and powers has been determined. The experiences of the countries studied show that the system of national divisions and their various levels, rather than simply defining various population and settlement points, focuses more on defining and introducing local units and actors in the administration of the country that have a legal status in the country.
Conclusion: Therefore, the formulation of guiding principles for decentralization is inevitable, in which the type of supervisory and financial relationship between local government and the national government must be determined. Also, in separating local competences from national competences, it is not possible to determine a fixed boundary between the scope of competences and performance of the central government and local governments, but it is possible to consider some of the affairs that are sufficiently homogeneous and have similar characteristics as local affairs within the scope of competences of the central government. It is worth noting that the separation is not done with a specific and specific criterion, but local competences in each of the different areas are separated from national competences among different local units such as secretary of state, governorates and municipalities at the discretion of the boards or legal councils consisting of experts in the same domain.