Harald Baldersheim

Measuring Local Autonomy in 39 Countries (1990–2014)

ABSTRACT Local autonomy is a highly valued feature of good governance. The continuous efforts of many European countries to strengthen the autonomy of local government show the importance given to decentralization and the transfer of far-reaching competences to the lowest units. Measuring and comparing local autonomy, however, has proven to be challenging. Not only are there diverging ideas about the core elements of local autonomy, there are also considerable difficulties applying specific concepts to different countries. This paper outlines a comprehensive methodology for measuring local autonomy. It analyses 39 European countries and reports changes between 1990 and 2014. A network of experts on local government assessed the autonomy of local government of their respective countries on the basis of a common code book. The 11 variables measured show an overall increase of local autonomy but significant variation between the countries. The variables also add up to an overall measurement of local autonomy.

Local democracy in post-communist Europe

Local government reform in post-communist Europe - Making local democracy work: What were the challenges? - Values of local democracy as seen by mayors in East-Central Europe - Representational roles in local politics - Community challenges in post-communist towns - Optimal size for local democracy - The international contacts of municipalities - Trends in local government in the Visegrad countries - Local government development in the Baltic countries - Institution building of local government in Russia - Local reforms in Croatia and Slovenia - Decentralization: Lessons for reformers

Territorial Choice: Rescaling Governance in European States

Reformers of public administration are on a perennial quest for a better fit between the scale of problems confronted by governments and the scale of governmental institutions that are responsible for solving those problems. Such a fit, however, can never be a permanent one; societies change and so do the extent and nature of challenges confronting governments. Institutions, moreover, have an inbuilt inertia that often confounds reformers and leads to intractable solutions — or to surprising innovations and variations in the way problems are confronted. Nowhere are these parallel trends more visible than in the field of local and regional governance, where daring experiments often coexist with long-standing deadlocks and antiquated institutional patterns.

From Public Service to Commodity: The Demunicipalization (or Remunicipalization) of Energy Provision in Germany, Italy, France, the UK and Norway

There were three components of de-municipalisation: 1) the creation of a national electricity system made possible by the establishment of national grids, 2) the functional and organizational separation (‘unbundling’) of generation, transmission and distribution, and 3) the transformation of electricity from a local service into a commodity. Another common development is the comeback of municipalities in the regulation of energy consumption. From being active producers and purveyors of energy, municipalities are becoming overseers of its use and conservation.

Norwegian centre–periphery relations in flux: Abolition or reconstruction of regional governance?

Abstract The periphery has traditionally had a strong position in the Norwegian polity. From the 1990s, the periphery and its institutional underpinnings, especially the county councils, have been put onto the defensive. Why is this happening? And how is the likely pattern of regional governance going to look? Our main argument is that the region-building forces are facing an uphill struggle against a fundamental transformation of the Norwegian periphery and a concomitant change of the Norwegian state into a financial giant. In combination, these two features drive a classic ‘revolution of rising expectations’ that undercuts the position of the county councils and possibly also that of future enlarged regions. An ever more centralised state is not an unlikely course of development for the Norwegian polity. Europeanisation and identity politics may work in favour of a New Regionalism that involves cities as actors in regional governance more than has been the case hitherto.

Mayors Learning across Borders: The International Networks of Municipalities in East-Central Europe

The age of internationalization has also reached local government. Leaders of local authorities are increasingly in touch with their opposite numbers in other countries. The cross-border networks between cities, towns and regions seem to grow denser day by day (Goldsmith and Klausen, 1997, Baldersheim and Ståhlberg, 1999a). East and Central European mayors are very much a part of this trend. However, not all municipalities and mayors are equally involved in this pattern of cross-border networking. To the extent that important information, economic resources, or strategic advantages flow from membership of such networks, those who cannot or will not take part may be disadvantaged. In this article, we shall address three issues related to these networks: (1) What precisely are the activities mayors engage in when taking part in international networks? (2) How far-flung are the networks of the EastCentral European mayors? What are the geographical patterns? (3) And what are the forces driving international networking? What are the characteristics of the cosmopolitan mayor and municipality? The material we use comes from a survey of mayors in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia carried out in 1997. Between 300 and 500 mayors were surveyed in each country (see Table 8 for details of the respective samples). The survey was in some respects a repeat of a 1991 study reported in Baldersheim, Illner, Offerdal, and Swianiewicz, 1996. To us, it seems appropriate to conceptualize international networking as a learning process. This choice of perspective seems especially appropriate with regard to the East-Central European mayors under study here. They were only the second cohort of democratically elected mayors since the fall of communism in 1989. They were responsible for running new institutions established in 1990, a task for which most of them had had little chance of preparation. Their lot was very much one of learning by trial and error once in office. Many of them rose to the occasion and have managed admirably

A Comparative Analysis of Territorial Choice in Europe — Conclusions

Choices about sub-national organization are inherently controversial. Such choices are about power-sharing in carving up a territory into smaller jurisdictions. Territorial choice may involve large choices, such as drawing up a federal constitution, or small ones such as minor adjustment of borders between two municipalities. Territorial choice may come in neat packages, such as a choice between amalgamating two or more municipalities into a consolidated unit or leaving things as they are. Sometimes choices are based on well-researched recommendations with easily grasped consequences. More often territorial choices are fuzzy affairs with numerous battlefronts and bewildering claims of benefits and pitfalls associated with the various options. Is a unitary urban authority better for a large conurbation than retaining a number of smaller jurisdictions? Better for whom, or for what purposes or functions? Perhaps a two-tier system is better for such an area, with a functional division between a larger unit and a series of smaller units? A choice between small or large local authorities may also hinge on a redistribution of functional responsibilities between state and local government: small units may mean less devolution, large units more devolution. And then there is the related issue of finances: how are jurisdictions to be delineated so that local authorities are financially viable? Territorial choice also impacts on political chances and careers. One way of carving up the territory may ensure the permanence of left-wing strongholds, another way of cutting the pie may yield right-wing bastions. The binding force of international treaties, from the EU to the WTO, adds further complications to territorial choice. State sovereignty is increasingly constrained, with concomitant constraints on power-sharing. No wonder these choices are controversial.

Measuring Local Autonomy

This chapter develops a comprehensive and empirically applicable concept to measure the autonomy of local government in the 39 European countries covered. To this end, we first discuss already existing measurements and typologies of local autonomy and decentralisation. We argue that existing data on fiscal decentralisation only tells part of the story and does not capture the role and discretion of local government in an adequate manner. Subsequently, we present our methodology to measure local autonomy, the coding scheme we developed to code the different countries as well as the different variables used. The chapter contains also information about the organisation of the whole project, the different experts involved and the method applied to gather comparative data.

The Staying Power of the Norwegian Periphery

Local government in Norway is somewhat unique. Rather than being mentioned in the constitution and thereby being formally recognized as an integral part of the political system, local government is the subject of special legislation. The first such laws were adopted as early as 1837. Under this legislation a two-tier system of local government was established. On one level a system of municipalities was created, at a second level county councils were established. The passage of these initial laws was largely the result of efforts by local groups — primarily farmers and businessmen — who sought greater freedom from the central bureaucracy and additional rights to make decisions on matters affecting the local community according to local prerogatives. As such, a centre-periphery cleavage was apparent even at this early stage in the evolution of Norwegian democratic politics. This cleavage has proven to be an enduring feature as will become apparent in two stories regarding recent attempts at reforming territorial governance in Norway.

Local government reforms in the Nordic countries. Bringing politics back in

Reputedly, a wave of market-oriented reform initiatives has hit local government in countries across the world. By some accounts, it may seem that local government, as we have known it, is coming to an end. The democratically run, public service-based and community-centred institution known as the municipality is being replaced by a series of service-peddling firms of doubtful accountability. The citizen is being replaced by the consumer. The manager is taking over from the politicians. A story such as this derives its credibility from the way local reform is being talked about these days. And I admit that the talk about reform is dominated by a New Public Management (NPM)-inspired terminology. However, the practice of reform is different. Practice is much more varied — and interesting — than the talk reveals. A much wider concept of change than that of NPM is needed to capture what municipalities are really up to. A closer scrutiny of reform initiatives in Nordic municipalities will demonstrate that, yes, change is happening all over the place, but the market does not rule unequivocally. Other, perhaps more interesting types of institutions are also being tried out.