This article primarily aims to investigate the effects of decentralization on educational autonomy in Taiwan through historical and documentary analysis. To draw an analytical framework, it begins with a brief examination of the concept of autonomy. This is followed by an examination of how decentralization has influenced the state-institution-individual relationship in Taiwan's higher education by using a three-level hierarchical model. After analyzing decentralization as empowering practices, it argues that the emergence of a performativity culture has generated an antinomy of the decentralization reforms, in which decentralization has formed a new ecology of education administration in Taiwan on the one hand, and simultaneously has brought the issue of bureaucratization in education on the other. (Contains 2 figures.)