In the past three decades there has been a strong trend toward decentralisation in public employment services. There have been two principal types: (1) managerial or administrative decentralisation and (2) political decentralisation or devolution. Managerial or administrative decentralisation usually takes the form of performance management with management by objectives (MBO). It is a classical managerial strategy for reconciling flexibility and accountability in PES organisations and the common denominator of diverse intra-organisational decentralisation strategies. In political decentralisation or devolution lower tiers of government play a central role in implementation and, in some cases, policy. The implementing agencies are no longer subordinate departments of a central administration but autonomous political entities. In such complex multilevel governance the relationship between central and regional or local authorities is inherently less hierarchical than in a national PES organisation.