Patterns of Local Autonomy in Europe

The balance between local autonomy and central control is a perennial issue in the territorial organisation of states. Despite the importance of local autonomy, there is little theoretical convergence regarding the core elements of the concept, and a limited number of studies try to measure local autonomy comparatively. This volume aims at filling this gap. On the grounds of a theoretically rooted concept, we measure the autonomy of local government in 39 European countries over a time period of 25 years. After presenting the main research intentions of this volume and the key issues regarding local autonomy, this chapter discusses the underlying normative values and the origins of the concept. What are the different theoretical perspectives and various aspects apprehended by the various disciplinary approaches? We conclude that local autonomy definitely is a multidimensional concept.

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 legal status of local autonomies in modern states has been the subject of a long discourse. Constitutionalist movements, legal theory and the dialogue between high courts have been elaborating common understandings nowadays enshrined in provisions of the European Charter of Local Self-Government which were also used for the construction of local autonomy coding scheme and variables. In most legal aspects (institutional depth, administrative supervision and legal protection), cross-country deviations and changes over time were moderate, since the European Charter of Local Self-Government set minimum standards already met by the majority of consolidated democracies and soon reached by democratising countries. Reflecting decentralisation degrees and processes, an exception was thrown by the variable of effective policy discretion, which was also the only one correlated to another legal variable, institutional depth, as different statistical tests have shown. In each country, the mix of legal elements seems to follow distinct national contexts and path dependencies, since it was found to deviate across countries without following clear patterns or country groupings. In this chapter we also compared the scores of the country covered in legal variables to monitoring reports on the implementation of the European Charter. This revealed considerable inconsistencies, mostly in countries with rule of law deficits and/or centralist inertia. Future research should, therefore, further investigate the relation between the rule of law and the level of local autonomy.

The purpose of the chapter is to analyse variations in local policy autonomy across countries and over time. Policy autonomy refers to the tasks that local authorities perform and the discretion they enjoy in the performance of those tasks. Policy autonomy is at the heart of local democracy as it sets the range of policy choice open to the elected representatives serving on local councils and therefore also the potential range of political choices presented to local voters. Policy choices drive political competition and accountability. Policy autonomy has increased over the time period analysed here in most of the countries included in the study. In some countries, the increase is rather marginal; in other countries policy autonomy has grown substantially. Nevertheless, the most remarkable finding is the range over variation in policy autonomy still existing across European countries, with the Nordic countries leading in terms of policy autonomy while Black Sea countries lag behind. This contrast has persisted throughout the period. The chapter analyses, furthermore, policy autonomy in detail, policy by policy. European countries also vary as regards the range of functions allocated to local government as well as the amount of discretion granted in performing the respective functions. The functional variation across countries suggests that the development of local policy autonomy in European countries follows distinctly national trajectories.

This chapter analyses regulations and practices related to the financial aspects of local autonomy. It refers to fiscal federalism theory but it also shows that European practice differs from the assumption of the theory. It discusses how basis of financial autonomy is defined and protected by the European Charter of Local Government. The analysis includes the structure of local revenues, discretion of local tax policies, intergovernmental transfers and regulation of local government borrowing. The chapter presents both variation among European countries and dynamics of changes in the 1990–2014 period. It finds out that overall trend has been an increase of local autonomy, especially visible in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe which used to be very strongly centralised at the beginning of the analysed period. The trend has stopped as a reaction to the 2008 economic crises which brought re-centralisation of the finance regulations in many countries, especially those related to local borrowing.

This chapter looks at the organisational autonomy of local government seen as the possibilities municipalities have to choose their political institutions and to organise their local administration. In some countries municipalities can decide on elements of their electoral system or on the form and the size of their local executive, but in most of the countries these parameters are set by national legislation. As for the local administration, most countries have the freedom to hire their own staff, fix the salaries of their employees, choose their organisational structure and establish legal entities and municipal enterprises. There are, however, also countries where the local administration is more directly organised and administered by the central state. The development across time is not particularly spectacular. If there have been changes in the degree of organisational autonomy, most of them took place in the 1990s. There are, however, a considerable number of countries, in which reforms specifically aim at increasing organisational autonomy.

This chapter examines the supervision of local authorities’ actions by upper levels of government. The starting point is that all regional or national authorities exercise a certain type of administrative control over the activities of local governments. However, there is diversity among systems both in the scope (legality v. expediency) of supervision and in the tools (a priori v. a posteriori) that they use for this control. The empirical analysis concentrates on the first aspect and shows both that most European countries limit the supervision to controlling only the legality of local acts and that there have been barely changes over time in this dimension of local autonomy. A closer look to country specificities shows, though, how along these positive values and remarkable stability a subtle trend towards a growing supervision on financial management stands out as an emerging pattern in a non-negligible number of the cases analysed.

This chapter scrutinises access as the entrance mechanisms local authorities dispose of towards their upper tiers of government. Apparent in much of the literature on intergovernmental relations conceptual consensus emerges on the existence of two main modes of vertical linkage: a direct and individual variant and an indirect and institutionalised counterpart. Empirically, this chapter concentrates on the latter form. Our measure determines the absence or presence of access through consultation and/or representation further distinguishing limited from substantial influence on higher-level policy-making. Our analysis shows that over time access has overall increased with a surge in a rather limited time frame. As general evolutions conceal similarities and differences between and/or within particular countries, we subsequently discuss the (evolving) scores for access of the latter, discerning between high, medium and low with(out) changes. Ultimately, two main trends stand out. The first is that by the end of our reference period in every country some form of consultation and/or representation existed. The second is an incremental and positive shift in the amount of influence on higher-level government policy-making. In many instances, consultation of local authorities’ associations is now routinised and/or their representation in intergovernmental forums institutionalised.

In this chapter we attempt to create an index of local autonomy. Ideally, such an index includes all the different aspects of local autonomy discussed in the literature and combines them according to their importance. The chapter emphasises the choices made while constructing the index and suggests different ways to test the results. Given the multidimensionality of local autonomy, we argue that the local autonomy index (LAI) has a formative character. We first combine the original standardised 11 variables to 7 theoretically and empirically meaningful dimensions of local autonomy: that is, legal autonomy, political discretion, policy scope, financial autonomy, organisational autonomy, access and non-interference. Favouring a functional and economic approach, we argue that particular weight should be given to political discretion and financial autonomy. Together with legal autonomy, we claim that these three dimensions form the cornerstones of local autonomy. The overall index simply aggregates the seven weighted dimensions. The results are presented as mean values for the five five-year periods between 1990 and 2014 as well as country rankings and country-specific patterns of local autonomy.

This chapter develops an empirical typology of local autonomy clustering countries with similar configurations. Aligning with the discrete quantitative approach emerging in the comparative literature, it tries to add depth and scope to the existing classifications whilst critically engaging with them. Empirically, the chapter draws on the dimensions of political discretion and financial autonomy recategorising scores as low, medium or high and probing into observable combinations thereof at the beginning, the middle and the end of the reference period. Three main conclusions stand out. First, it is possible to classify about 40 countries into 9 different types of local autonomy summarised into 4 ideal and 5 transitory types. Second, although central in existing classifications, geographical location only continues to matter to a certain extent according to our data. Third, as most of the existing classifications referred to stable state traditions, our findings suggest a combination of static as well as more dynamic features. Hence, we conclude that there is no such thing as a universal and encompassing typology of local autonomy that will be valid and reliable for the long term. Future research should revisit and update dimensions and classifications and delve deeper into the ontology and implications of their configurations.

The previous chapters of the book have identified substantial and persistent patterns of variation in terms of local autonomy and its components across the 39 countries covered by the present study. This chapter seeks to explain the variation of local autonomy by trying to identify drivers of variation. Six hypotheses are explored in this regard with the database available. The hypotheses state that local autonomy varies in response to voter preferences, requirements of modernisation, state traditions, path dependency, games of multilevel governance, or citizen trust. State traditions, multilevel governance and citizen trust are the factors that best account for the cross-country variation in local autonomy.

In this chapter local autonomy is treated as an independent variable. We want to know whether there is a causal link between the degree of autonomy and the performance of the different countries in terms of the quality of democracy, economic growth, corruption and happiness. The chapter starts with some theoretical remarks concerning the expected impact and shows that there are in fact positive relations between local autonomy and input as well as output-related aspects of local government. These links remain positive even when we control for the size of the municipalities and whether they belong to the group of former communist countries. Our conclusion, however, is a bit more cautious. It remains doubtful whether one can simply increase the autonomy of the municipalities to increase the performance of local government. This process is likely to be more complicated.

In this final chapter, we recall the importance of local autonomy as it is promoted by many international organisations and the theoretical foundations of the concept. Subsequently, we summarise findings on the different variables measured and outline the patterns of local autonomy found among the 39 countries under scrutiny, as well as to the overall index of local autonomy, its distinct dimensions and the country rankings. The chapter also recalls our attempts to explain the variation among the countries and to learn more about the consequences. The chapter is rounded off with further analysis of patterns of interactive governance and democratic space. The patterns that emerge should encourage scholars to develop further hypotheses about the effects of local autonomy and decentralisation on performance.