Abstract
This chapter looks for main differences among local government systems as well as similarities among them. This has been done by the authors with the aim to grasp the institutional setting in which mayors have to act. The authors did it by updating and extending existing typologies and indices of local government systems. Nevertheless, an extension was first of all necessary with respect to vertical power relations because previous typologies considering them took neither the local government systems in Eastern and Central Europe nor the changes in the Western part of the continent into account. Furthermore, reflections about typologies are extended to the present one on public administration at the municipal level. All this have been underpinned by statistical data, the recent work on a ‘Local Autonomy Index’ (LAI; see Ladner et al. Measuring Autonomy in 39 Countries (1990–2014), Regional and Federal Studies, 26, 321–357, 2016) and information collected by the partners involved in the survey.
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Notes
- 1.
The survey could not be finished in Turkey. Nevertheless, Turkey is still being considered in the following because Turkish partners provided the information for the institutional variables reflected in this chapter.
- 2.
For a more detailed overview, see Heinelt and Hlepas (2006: 21).
- 3.
Even in the case of the UK, Peter John (2001) argued that it does not have a clear dual system.
- 4.
This applies particularly to one of Goldsmith’s consecutive studies in which he elaborated a slightly different typology of local government systems based ‘on the objective or ethos which underlies them’ (Goldsmith 1992: 395).
- 5.
Constitutional protection: 0 = no explicit or implicit constitutional protection; 1 = constitutional provisions provide implicit means to assert local interests; 2 = explicit constitution guarantee of local authority.Corporate influence: 0 = insignificant influence; 0.67 = limited influence; 1.33 = strong role, not formally institutionalized; 2 = institutionalized representative role (in constitution, laws).
- 6.
Supra-local supervisory officials: 2 = local administrative/supervisory official; 1 = local administrative official, elected locally or possessing limited powers; 0 = no local supra-local representative.Appointment of local executive: 2 = supra-local appointment of executive; 0 = local appointment.Control of the form of local governmental: 2 = supra-local determination of local structures; 1 = significant but limited elements of local self-determination; 0 = widespread local choices of government forms.Civil service status: 2 = national civil service for local personnel with full coverage (job duties, tenure, discipline, rewards, closed recruitment); 1.6 = national civil service for local personnel with four of five items; 1.2 = national civil service for local personnel with 3 of 5 items; 0.8 = national civil service for local personnel with two of five items, or separate, national local civil service with full coverage; 0.4 = separate, national local service with limited conditions; 0 = separate local or other sub-national civil service, without national rules.
- 7.
Local tax autonomy: 2 = Central or intermediate government sets rates, base; 1.60 = standardized or strictly limited rates with some discretion, but no discretion as to base; 1.20 = No discretion as to base, and range set for rates, or no discretion as to base, and diversion of revenues to other governments, or informal constraints on rates; 0.8 = no discretion as to base/assessment, or informal constraints on rates, or sharing; 0.4 = autonomy to set base/assessment and procedural or insignificant constraints on rates (e.g. requirement of local majority vote); 0 = full autonomy to assess and set rates. Borrowing: 2 = approval required; 1 = Almost free; 0 = Free, or requirement of local majority vote.
- 8.
In cases where no clear ‘scoring’ was possible due to differences in the respective countries, the value has been split, that is a 1 or ½ were given. This applied for instance to Germany, where differences exists between the Länder with directly elected mayors and a collective form of local government. Finally, the three different forms of local government in England had to be considered—namely the leader-cabinet model, the so-called alternative arrangement and one with a directly elected mayor (see Heinelt and Hlepas 2006: 34ff. for these three different forms).
- 9.
The data collected for the variables can be accessed in Table 2.17 of the Appendix of this chapter.
- 10.
However, a majority formed for the appointment of a mayor does not need to be stable.
- 11.
The data from England contains responses from only one directly elected mayor which will not be considered in this chapter. The other responses from England came from municipalities with a collective form of local government. In Austria, only answers from mayors acting in a collective form of local government could be collected. In Germany the situation is different: 89.6 per cent (N = 532) of the respondents are strong mayors and 10.4 per cent (N = 62) are from the federal state of Hesse, that is they are acting in a collective form of local government.
- 12.
- 13.
The index was calculated as: [(I_MAY – I_CEO) + ((I_MAY – I_COM) + (I_MAY – I_COUNC))/2]/2, where: I_MAY—perceived influence of mayor, I_CEO—perceived influence of the CEO, I_COM—perceived influence of committee leaders, I_COUNC—perceived influence of single influential councillors.
- 14.
There is also a clear correlation between the indices of mayor’s strength presented in Tables 2.1 and 2.2 and the self-perceived influence of mayors. The correlations are based on means for individual countries and not on the individual level. The correlation coefficients between mayoral strength based on Table 2.2 and the difference concerning the self-perceived influence of mayors and the influence of the other actors mentioned before are +0.41—or in more details: +0.52 for CEOs, +0.22 for committee leaders, and +0.18 for single influential councillors. Taking the index of mayoral strength into account presented in Table 2.1, its correlation coefficients with the differences of the self-perceived influence of mayors and the influence of the other mentioned actors are +0.24, or more precisely +0.34 for CEOs, +0.16 for committee leaders, and +0.01 for single influential councillors.
- 15.
Significance was measured on a 0.05 level based on a one-way Anove test with Bonefronni alpha test.
- 16.
The five variations which are not significant are those related to the influence of the committee leaders when (a) the council-manager and the committee-leader form and (b) the collective and the strong mayor form are compared. Furthermore, variations are not significant which are related to single influential councillors in respect to (a) the council-manager and the collective form and (b) the council-manager and the strong mayor form. Finally, the differences regarding ‘all these actors’ are not significant when the council-manager and the committee-leader form are compared.
- 17.
- 18.
The scale was built in the following way: 0 = own sources yield less than 10 per cent of total revenues, 1 = own sources yield 10–25 per cent, 2 = own sources yield 25–50 per cent, 3 = own sources yield more than 50 per cent.
- 19.
Only taxes (no other revenues like fees and charges) which can be directly influenced by local governments were considered, that is no taxes shared with and defined by other levels of government (e.g. income tax).
- 20.
- 21.
The clustering of these two variables is not surprising since the applied definition of tax autonomy takes also the total size of municipal spending into account. However, the two variables are not identical because there are countries (e.g. the Czech Republic) with a relatively high share of municipal spending in relation to GDP but a very low share of autonomously raised local taxes.
- 22.
Interestingly, applying factor analysis (main components, variomax rotated) produces three background dimensions: one is correlated with the same variables as cluster I from the Ward method and the other two are strongly correlated with the variables forming cluster II of the hierarchical typology using the same method.
- 23.
That means lower than 0.2 of the standard deviation below the mean for the whole set of countries.
- 24.
It has to be admitted that placing the countries under the different types was not entirely a result of mere statistical calculations. The following four countries were moved to another though similar type—namely the Netherlands from type VIII to type V, Turkey from type VII to Type VIIII, Romania from type IX to type VII and Portugal from type IV to type VII. The change in the case of Portugal is not only the easiest to justify, it is also exemplary to the problems arising when constructing a typology by quantitatively measured variables: The score for Portugal on the dimension I of the typology was very close to qualifying the country for type VII. In fact it would be enough to change the threshold for the medium score from −0.20 to −0.19.The scoring of individual variables could also be a problem because in six out of seven variables the typology is based on data from the Local Autonomy Index. Although it was stated at the beginning of this section that this index is currently the best source for the data required, it is far from being perfect. In spite of relatively detail codebook instruction developed in the LAI project, there was still space for subjective scoring as the experts prepared the reports on individual countries.Furthermore, moving the four countries to other types helped reduce significantly the heterogeneity of municipal spending and local autonomy within the individual types. In other words, by moving the four countries from on type to another, the types became more homogenous than before.
- 25.
In purely geographical terms, Greece and Turkey are part of the Eastern side of Europe, although being classified under the Western ‘political bloc’. Relatively recent political dictatorship is another common feature of all countries within this group (including Spain).
- 26.
Regarding Belgium, which has meanwhile been federalized, it is necessary to differentiate between the Flemish region with a Nordic tradition and the Walloon region with a Latin/Napoleonic tradition. For simplification purposes, Belgium was grouped with the Continental European Napoleonic cluster.
- 27.
Although it does not belong to Continental Europe geographically, Turkey displays many features of the Continental European Napoleonic administrative profile (Southern European sub-group) and was therefore classified within this group (see Turc et al. 2016).
- 28.
Although the Netherlands are characterized by a historic legacy of the Napoleonic tradition (Lidström 1996), it also shows many similarities with the Nordic countries (see John 2001), which have been further strengthened by way of recent (decentralization) reforms (Torsteinsen and van Genugten 2016).
- 29.
We distinguish two types of Eastern European systems by combining parts of the more differentiated typology proposed by Swianiewicz (2014) that consist of five Eastern European sub-groups.
- 30.
Country experts explained specific reasons for the grouping of their country referring to specific administrative traditions and path-dependencies shaping the local administrative systems of their cases. They emphasized, for example the Ottoman and British Colonial past and other strong historical, cultural and geographical dynamics in Cyprus. Hence, Cyprus was suggested for three possible types, namely AS, CEN and SEE. Nevertheless, the country experts opted for the AS type as the dominant one. Furthermore, Israel is also a ‘non-fully fledged’ AS type. Since the late 1970s, it departed from the CEN type towards the AS type.
- 31.
We draw on the univariate analysis of variances and a nominal, non-chi-squared-based measure of association (uncertainty coefficient, UC). It goes without saying, we are aware of the strong correlations between several of these variables. However, as we are not attempting at defining complex statistical models that are sensitive for partial or semi-partial correlations (etc.), this procedure appears appropriate for the purpose.
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Heinelt, H., Hlepas, N., Kuhlmann, S., Swianiewicz, P. (2018). Local Government Systems: Grasping the Institutional Environment of Mayors. In: Heinelt, H., Magnier, A., Cabria, M., Reynaert, H. (eds) Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy . Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67410-0_2
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