Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject South Asian Studies, South-Eastern Asian Studies, grade: A, Thammasat University, Bangkok (Faculty of Political Science), course: Comparative Public Administration, language: English, abstract: This paper solely focuses on the issue of decentralization. As this administrative reform theme is arguably the most influencing in both countries, this special focus seems well fitting. To do so in the course of this paper, the historical developments in both countries will firstly be examined to highlight its common grounds. In a second step the Indonesian and Filipino problems and challenges in the path of decentralization will be collected and comparatively assessed. Thirdly, the reform efforts in both cases will be outlined to set the stage for the last conclusive step in addressing the similarities and differences in decentralization implementation in both countries.