Editing Centralisation (section)

{{Short description|Process by which control becomes more concentrated}}
{{Redirect|Centralized system|other uses|Democratic centralism|and|Moral centralism|and|Centralized computing|and|Star network|and|Central consonant|and|Central vowel}}
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{{More citations needed|date=November 2015}}
{{Original research|date=December 2020}}
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{{Use British English|date=July 2018}}
[[File:Centralization to Distributed Decentralization.jpg|thumb|Diagrams of systems in various degrees of centralisation. From left to right: centralisation, [[decentralisation]], distribution, and distributed decentralisation.]]
'''Centralisation''' or '''centralization''' ([[American English]]) 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]]'',<ref>{{Cite web|title=Thesaurus results for CENTRALIZATION|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/centralization|access-date=2022-02-07|website=www.merriam-webster.com|language=en}}</ref> 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 [[centralized government|centralised government]], which has [[sovereignty]] over all its [[administrative division]]s. Conversely, a [[decentralized system|decentralised system]] of government often has significant [[separation of powers]] and local [[self-governance]].