Centralization is the act — or the result — of gathering control into one place, so that things are done or decided there instead of in many places. A government centralizes when the capital takes decisions away from cities. A company centralizes when head office, not each shop, sets the rules. The word is a noun, and it sounds like news, essays, and office talk. Though actually, people also stretch it to any gathering-in: putting all the files on one computer, all the money in one account, all the buying in one department. In politics it often sits next to its opposite, decentralization, which means sending power back out to the edges. Do not treat it as a person or a party; it is the move toward the centre, or the state of having already moved.