Policy Making at the Second Tier of Local Government in Europe

What is happening in Provinces, Counties, Départements and Landkreise in the on-going re-scaling of statehood?

Xavier Bertrana, Björn Egner, Hubert Heinelt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780415843485
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317374855
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Debates about multi-level governance have led to a profound restructuring of regional and local government. The second level of local government is under review in most European countries, with the aim to strengthen the institutional capacity of municipalities or to develop appropriate institutional structures for governing fragmented urban areas.

This book provides a thematic and cross-national analysis of the key actors in local government that form the crucial components of effective and democratic policy making. Focussing on the second tier of local government, it examines new empirical data on councillors from this level of government in 15 European countries and integrates important variables such as party politics, notions of democracy, finance, multi-level settings. Divided into five parts, it addresses:

• Attitudes of county/provincial councillors towards administrative and territorial reforms;
• Their role perceptions and role behaviour;
• Their political orientation;
• Actor constellations and governance arrangements;
• Political socialization and recruitment, professionalization and career patterns of county/provincial councillors.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of local government, urban studies, regional studies, political science, sociology and geography.

1
Introduction

Xavier Bertrana, Björn Egner and Hubert Heinelt

Aims, origin and main questions of the book

Instead of focusing on national sovereignty and government-centred governance, increasing interest is dedicated in political and scholarly debate since the 1990s on multi-level governance, which stresses the importance of the spatial dimension in public policy and governance in general as well as collective self-determination. In this context the effectiveness and the democratic quality of policy making in multi-level systems have occupied a prominent position on the political agenda and led in most European countries to a profound restructuring of regional and local government (for recent publications on this topic see Loughlin et al. 2011; Baldersheim and Rose 2010).

One of the main focuses of these reform processes is the second tier of local government, which has become the weakest link in the chain of the multi-level government systems in European countries. It is frequently squeezed between the powers of upper levels of governments and the municipalities. While in some European countries this level of local self-government, based on a multipurpose jurisdiction, has being upscaled or even abolished in the context of wider region-alisation processes, in others it has been completely revised either to become an proper institutional structure for governing fragmented urban areas by upscaling municipal powers or decentralising tasks of upper levels of government tasks (see, for example, OECD 2015). In fact, exceptions to this multi-level reform processes can be found in most of the Eastern European countries included in this book, where decentralisation took place quite recently and the second tier of local government has only experienced minor institutional changes. Nevertheless, where reforms took place in Eastern European countries the second tier of local government has played an important role in establishing democratic political structures at the subnational level and strengthening local autonomy. For that reason, reform processes at county level have affected the central state administration (or, in other words, the deconcentrated state administration) either to give the second tier more autonomy in relation to the central state (as happened in Croatia in 2001) or simply to abolish central state administration offices at county level (Czech Republic).

Northern European countries like Denmark, Sweden or the United Kingdom share a long tradition of continuous structural reforms of local government, which continued during the last decade (for a historical overview, see the different country chapters in Baldersheim and Rose 2010 or Heinelt and Bertrana 2011). For example, in 2007 Denmark abolished counties, shifting most of its tasks to municipalities (which were amalgamated) and creating new government structures at the regional level responsible for health services (see Mouritzen 2011). In Sweden, there is an ongoing review of the second tier of local government towards amalgamation which should be complemented by the allocation of more functions of the deconcentrated central state administration at this level of government (see Bäck 2011). Finally, in England there is a continuous process towards the creation of the so-called unitary authorities merging former counties and districts.

Due to coercive top-down approach employed, these kinds of reforms in Nordic and North-middle European countries have been termed the ‘North European Strategy’ (Wollmann 2010). By contrast, the ‘South European Strategy’ has retained not only the historical small-size format of the municipalities by creating different kinds of intermunicipal bodies, but also created a highly stable second tier of local government (Bertrana and Heinelt 2013).

From this perspective, one of the most striking features of the reform processes on the local government system during the last decade in Southern European countries like France, Italy or Spain is their impact in the second tier of local government. In almost all of these cases the economic and financial crisis played a crucial role in the reforms deviating from the South European Strategy (see Bertrana and Heinelt 2013).

In France, the départements and the regions will be completely renewed if the Socialist government’s plans for reform succeed. The different levels of local government are experimenting in such an ambitious reform that it is difficult to synthesize it in a few lines. While municipalities will still be considered as the basic level of local government, sub-national levels of government above the municipalities are experiencing a significant reform of their electoral system, their powers and competences (with a probable abolishment of the general clause of competence) and their territorial structure. In January 2015, for example, different métropoles were created with both municipal and departmental competences. This applied to cities like Rennes, Bordeaux or Strasbourg. In January 2016 the metropolis of Paris and Marseille will be created and the former 22 regions will be replaced by 13 new regional units (see Gouvernement de la République Française 2015).

In Italy the Law on the Metropolitan Cities, Provinces, and Unions and Municipal Amalgamations transformed different provinces into 10 ‘metropolitan cities’ on 1 January 2015. They will also combine the competences of the former municipal and provincial levels of government. These ‘metropolitan cities’ are lead by a ‘metropolitan mayor’ who is the mayor of the biggest city and a council consisting of ‘metropolitan councillors’ elected amongst and by the municipal councillors and mayors. Furthermore, a transitory regime for the remaining provinces is planned before they are abolished after a Constitutional reform.

In Spain, the ‘Law on the Rationality and Sustainability of Local Administration’ has focused on the rescaling of municipal services to the provincial level to overcome the weaknesses of the fragmentation of the municipal level. However, at the same time, the actual implementation of this law is questionable if we take the weak democratic legitimacy of provincial councils and the contested role of the Spanish provinces in the context of the Estado de las Autonomías into account (i.e. the particular political system of Spain with its strong ‘autonomous communities’/regional governments).

The planned reform of the Dutch provinces continues to be uncertain because the plans of the Dutch cabinet to reduce the number of provinces through mergers have failed – as in the recent case of the planned amalgamation of Utrecht, Flevo-land and North Holland. Nevertheless, ideas about the abolition of city-regions, the amalgamation of municipalities (with a mixed approach between voluntary mergers and intermunicipal cooperation) and the development of new cooperative arrangements between municipalities and provinces in an experimental way are still defining an ongoing process of reform, which is altering the multi-level system of government in the Netherlands (for a general overview see OECD 2014 and 2015: 66–67).

Finally, since the regionalisation of the competences regarding the organisation of local government in Belgium (in 2001), the reform plans are divergent in the two main regions of the country. The implementation of the planned reforms is dependant on the strength of the different political parties (and their different views on the state structure) in both regions. After the 2014 regional elections, the Walloon government consolidated the provinces. That government remains important at the intermediate government level to support municipalities in partnership with the regional government. The Flemish government that came into power in 2014 plans a far-reaching functional reform to alter the multi-level system of government and the role of the provinces. From 2017 onwards Flemish provinces will be responsible for territory-related competences only (and no longer for person-related competences) while excluding all their supralocal initiatives in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and their partnership in intermunicipal cooperation.

These examples show not only that the democratic quality and the effectiveness of the second tier of local government is increasingly contested in the ongoing rescaling of statehood, but also that reform processes are taking place even in countries where until now this level of local government has showed a high capacity to resist any attempt to impose far-reaching structural reforms.

How this rescaling of statehood has affected the second tier of local government in European countries has been shown in detail in Heinelt and Bertrana (2011; see also Bertrana and Heinelt 2013). However, gaps remain in knowledge about what is happening in daily practice at this level of government, how policy making is done and how the rescaling of statehood is perceived by those actors involved in policy making at the second tier of local government.

To close this gap of knowledge, a group of scholars from a number of European countries carried out a survey among councillors, political executives (i.e. presidents of provinces, Landräte etc.) and leading bureaucrats (executive officers/CEOs), i.e. the highest ranking appointed and not elected civil servant or employee at the second level of local government (provinces, counties, départements, Landkreise, etc.) in the years 2012 and 2013.¹ Results of this survey are published in this book. We have to admit that due to the small number of responses of political executives and leading bureaucrats at the second level of local government (see Table 1.1) most chapters of this book are focused on councillors.

Table 1.1 Countries in the data set, number of cases

The main (interrelated) research questions addressed in this book in a comparative way are:

• What are the attitudes of councillors, political executives and leading bureaucrats at the second level of local government towards recent administrative and territorial reforms?
• What is their role perception, and what is their actual role behaviour?
• What is their notion of democracy and how does it affect their role perception, role behaviour and attitudes towards administrative and territorial reforms?
• What is the political orientation of key actors involved in policy making at this level of government? Do party politics (or party politicisation) play a role?
• How do key actors respond to newly emerging governance arrangements? More specifically: How do councillors, political executives and leading bureaucrats at the second level of local government interact among each other? And how do they interact with societal actors and actors from upper levels of government?
• What sorts of people become a councillor at the second level of local government? (What is their social background, political career and level of professionalization?)

The book edited by Heinelt and Bertrana (2011) provided the background for this survey (as the editors of this book as well as a number of authors who contributed country studies to it were part of the research group).

The following countries are covered by this survey (carried out by the partners listed): Belgium (Tony Valcke, Kristof Steyvers, Herwig Reynaert and Tom Verhelst), Croatia (Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović and Sunčana Slijepčević), the Czech Republic (Dan Ryšavý and Daniel Čermák), England (David Sweeting, Colin Copus, and Thom Oliver), France (Eric Kerrouche), Germany (Hubert Heinelt, Björn Egner and Max-Christopher Krapp), Greece (Nikos Hlepas), Hungary (Ilona Pálné and László Kákai), Italy (Carlo Baccetti and Annick Magnier), Norway (Jacob Aars, Bjarte Folkestad and Lawrence E. Rose), Poland (Pawel Swianiewicz), Romania (Cristina St_Ďanuş and Daniel Pop), Spain (Jaume Magre, Carmen Navarro, Joan Manel Sánchez and Xavier Bertrana) and Sweden (Anders Lidström, Katarina Roos and Linn Antonsson).²

Content of the book

According to the aforementioned questions tackled by individual chapters the book is arranged in the following way.

The first part of the book is focused on counties in multi-level systems and attitudes of actors at this level of local government towards administrative and territorial reforms.

In Chapter 2, ‘County councils in a multi-level position: formal powers and assumed autonomy’ are reflected by Anders Lidström and Katarina Roos. The Heinelt and Bertrana (2011) book made a first attempt to develop a specific analysis of the position of the second-tier local authority in a comparative perspective. However, a limitation in the analysis is that it is only based on ‘objective’ criteria. There is no room for the decision makers themselves to express their views about their county’s position. This chapter fills this gap of knowledge with an actor-centred analysis of the vertical position of the second-tier local authorities vis-à-vis other levels of government. A key question is to what extent objective criteria and subjective assessment correspond. One of the main findings is that the assumed relationships vis-à-vis the municipalities on the one hand and vis-à-vis upper levels of government on the other are uncorrelated. This suggests that downwards and upwards relationships reflect different logics. The link to the municipalities is more a governance-oriented exchange between equal partners whereas the relationship upwards is of a hierarchical type, where county councils are clearly understood to be subordinate authorities with little scope for making a difference. Aside from formally identified differences in the institutional setting of the second tier, councillors emphasise the existence of different modes of governance regarding downwards and upwards relationships. There is support for both the theory of limited rationality and the notion that the formal position and the assumptions of autonomy are two different phenomena. For this reason, as Lidström and Roos show, whenever possible formal measures should be complemented with subjective assessments in order to obtain a fuller picture of a unit’s vertical autonomy.

‘Perceptions of New Public Management reforms’ are addressed by Hubert Heinelt and Max-Christopher Krapp in Chapter 3. New Public Management (NPM) has been the major paradigm of administrative reforms since the 1980s. However, it is quite unclear what local government actors really think about the need for administrative reforms and the reform perspectives offered by NPM. Heinelt and Krapp try to give answers to this question in this chapter. Furthermore, they refer not only to results of the survey carried out in 2012 and 2013 with second-tier councillors but also to surveys with local government actors carried out over the last 20 years. This is done to tackle the question if changes in the perception of local government actors regarding the need for administrative reforms and NPM related reform perspectives can be identified. Finally, this leads to the question if the heydays of NPM have passed and what could be possibly expected ‘beyond NPM’.

In Chapter 4, Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović and Sunčana Slijepčević look at ‘County councils: between revenue shortfalls and growing responsibilities’. In the last decades the process of decentralization has been present in most European countries. This chapter starts with a review about the scholarly and political debate about decentralisation and particularly the relevance of decentralisation for regional and local economic development. Based on this, the authors explore the role of the second tier of local government and attitudes of second-tier councillors towards a decentralisation process and their perception in fostering local economic development, keeping in mind that there is a gap between revenue shortfalls and growing responsibilities that has been further deepened by the global financial crisis. The authors conclude that in the last few decades many European countries have been faced with the same situation that the share of the second level of local government revenue in terms of GDP stayed at relatively low levels. Central government keeps under its control main revenue sources. Transferred responsibilities to the second tier of local government in the countries analysed are different but generally, the responsibility of the second tier of local government for coordinating local development policy remains low. Because of limited financial resources for current responsibilities, the attitudes of county councillors towards new tasks and responsibilities are not homogenous across the countries analysed. Most county councillors across Europe think that their role in the coordination of local economic development should be more important. Therefore, additional attention is given to the analysis of county councillors’ attitudes towards territorial reforms and the division of responsibilities for providing basic public services/goods between the private and the public sector in different European countries. The emphasis is on an advocacy role of county councillors in the promotion of regional development and overall well-being of the local community.

The second part of the book deals with the role perception and role behaviour of actors at the second tier of local government (particularly with councillors).

Cristina St_Ďanuş approaches ‘The political representation focuses of second-tier councillors in Europe’ in Chapter 5. The main aim is to describe and explain...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• PART IV
• Index