Lund University STV403 Department of Political Science 19941031 The Territorial Dimension of the State Paula Uddman Malte Lewan PARTICIPATORY TRENDS IN EUROPEAN LOCAL DEMOCRACIES Contents: 0. Prelude 1. Report: "Local Systems in Europe" 2. Classifications a. Goldsmith's two groups b. Hesse's three groups c. Norton's four groups and the report's classification 3. The Use of Referenda 4. Examining Classifications 5. Participatory trends in Germany 6. Efficiency and democracy in Sweden 7. Conclusion --- 0. Prelude :-) I intend to in this text examine classifications of European local governments with the aspect of elements of direct democracy? Does it follow proposed classifications? In the following, I'm going to talk about participatory democracy in a way that in some parts might seem like participatory democracy necessarily needs to be formal voting power for its citizens. There are many other ways usually included in that term, but in this study, I will mostly concentrate on the formal rights exercized through referenda. One exception is the text about Sweden though. 1. "Report: Local Systems in Europe" This year (1994), a 114 page Swedish Public Report (SOU 1994:2) was published which described most European local and regional governments. In that the authors Anders Lidstroem and Christin Johansson say that there are 45 European countries that have declared themselves independent. Their study consists of 31 of these, leaving out all the very small countries (San Marino, Andorra etc) and also Moldavia, Turkey, Cyprus and the ex-Yugoslavian countries. The reasons for the latter ones are for example that there exists no local level, a lack of information or other unclear circumstances. They still maintain that the report basically is exhaustive. Describing 35 countries in about 100 pages means of course that the study is not very penetrating. In the report, a municipal unit has to fulfill the following criteria: 1. It has a clearly defined territory within a country. 2. It enjoys some kind of autonomy or self-government. 3. It has certain authoritative power towards its citizens. 4. It has decision makers who are elected through direct and democratic elections. For every _country_ (intern differnces may exist but the report in those countries concentrates on what is similar), the following aspects are studied: basic structure, regulation of self-government, organisation and tasks of the municipality, the financial circumstances, the democratic fixation of the local self-government, and municipal development tendencies. 2. Classifications The classification of local governments have been a recurrent theme in comparative local studies. I'm here going to desribe some. Traditionally only Western European countries have been included and even today the Eastern European municipalities have not really been classified into any existing systems according to Lidstroem and Johansson (1994). a. Goldsmith's two groups Goldsmith (1992) defines three different models where he places local governments. First, there is the North European model which covers Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland but also possibly the UK. He thinks using governments as a service-providing agency for delivery of welfare services is charecteristic for that model. Second, there is the South European model with a narrow scope of local government and a close relationship between central and local politics. They don't think it's clear whether Spain belongs here or not. The third is not an European model (American) and so falls outside the content of this paper. Page & Goldsmith (1987) are building on the same classification and say that there is a more direct form of access for local elites to central elites in the South European countries. They say that it is impossible to state whether South European or North European ones have more discretion. North European ones are in one way more regulated but are free to act within these regulations. In the South European ones, central officials are involved earlier in the policy process. In North there is statutory regulation and in South, there is administrative regulation. b. Hesse's three groups Hesse (1991) describes 20 local systems. He divides them into three groups: a French, an English and a North European/Central European. His linking of North and Central European systems together in the last group is interesting. c. Norton's four groups and the reports classification Lidstroem and Johansson follow the division of Alan Norton in Batley & Stoker (1991) with his four Western European types. The argument they (L & J) use for differing between Northern and Central European systems is that the later are in federal contexts. When the new European democracies are added, local governments are divided into six categories: - North European: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland - British: United Kingdom, Ireland - Central European: Germany, Austria, Switzerland - Napolean: France, Netherland, Belgium, Luxemburg, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece - East European: Poland, Chechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania - Post-Soviet: Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania They give significance in their study to degree of autonomy, part of a federal structure or not, how much welfare politics are realised through local governments, central influence of civil servants and mayor, size of municipality and direct democratic elements. In the Northern European systems, the welfare politics is salient for the local level. In the British systems, the local autonomy has decreased. The Central European countries are all federal and - what I'll talk more about later - the direct democratic traditions are stronger. In the Napolean systems, the central power has had much influence also in appointments of local leaders but this has partly changed. The municipalities are mostly still small (but not in Belgium and Netherland). The East European and Post-Soviet systems are both in a process of reform. To different degrees though. The name Napoleon system comes from that these systems were under the Napoleoninc state's influence and the instituional relationships survived long after. That is one reason to explain the differences between this system and the North European one. Religious differences is another. Archer (1979, chapter 3) thinks this was an important factor in shaping education administration. A later development from agrarian to urban society could be one reason. Later development of the welfare state. Social democratic regimes in Scandinavia. Page & Goldsmith (1987) say that it seems central government doesn't like to leave many functions to small local units. The reason is not necessarily because of inefficience reasons, but because the small units are harder for them to control. Also, they think functional allocation, size and forms of supervision are related. Explanations are cultural, religious, historical and size/efficiency related but the need for the state to get control is an explanation that could be more examined. 3. The Use of Referenda In the report, most of the countries direct democratic institutions were listed under the title "the democratic fixation of the local self- government". By looking at the countries individually, it was possible for me to create the following statistics. Also the average population of each municipality was listed, and since I find there is a relationship and will comment on that later, I included it in my table. I have chosen to divide the institutions into three categories based on initiator for referenda. In the first category (A), 'popular initiative', the people has some kind of power to push a question into a referendum. It is done by collecting a number of prescribed signatures and turn it in to the government. In the second (B), 'governmental initiative', the occurence of referenda are totally dependent on the initiative of elected representatives, whether the council or the mayor etc. In the third category (C), the local governments are not allowed to hold referenda. (One note here is that this is based on practise rather than formality. For example, in Denmark and Norway, local referenda are not mentioned in the constitution but they are in reality held. In Portugal, local referenda are mentioned in the constitution but the law specifying what rules are regulating these is not made (yet?).) Here are the 21 countries that somewhat easily could be fitted into my classification: Popular initiative - A 1. decisive: Switzerland (2300) 2. decisive/participation rule: East Germany (5000) 3. consultive: Austria? (3200), Luxemburg (2900) 4. ->poss ref, consultive: Finland (10900), Sweden (29800) Governmental initiative - B 1. decisive: Hungary (3300) 2. concultive: Norway (9000), Denmark (18800), United Kingdom (128000 in England/Wales), France (1600), Netherland (23200), Italy (7200), Poland (15600), Chechia (1800), Slovakia (1900), Bulgaria (35200), Belorussia (?) Referendum not legal - C 1. Irland (103000), Belgium (17000), Portugal (32000), Greece (1700) To express this in words, Switzerland is the only country where the people by collecting signatures can force a referendum that is decisive regardless of voting participation. In 8 laender in Germany (mostly in East Germany), the situation is roughly the same, but if a certain level of participation is not reached, the referendum is declared invalid. The report is not absolutely clear on the case of Austria. It could possibly move up to A1 or A2, but it is probably so that in both Austria and Luxemburg, a referendum can by the people be forced to be held, but the local government doesn't have to follow it. Finland has long had the tradition of the "power" of the people to force the local council to bring up an issue on the agenda and to discuss it for possible holding a referendum on it but the council can also turn it down. Of course, in practise, this might not be such a feasable political action, depending on the political culture. Sweden recently (1994) got the same law. Now, there are proposals to abolish the possibility for the Finish councils to reject popular initiatives (SOU 1993:90) which would move Finland up into category A3. When the new Swedish function was considered, this was not really an issue (ibid). The report is once again not clear about Hungary but implies government initiated decisive referenda are possible. Some of the the B2 countries, have recently moved to this category from non-legality of referenda. That is true for France and Italy. And as can be observed, there are only four countries left, where referenda are unlawful. Two countries that have special decisive institutions are Iceland and Poland. Iceland with 770 inhabitants in average (the much bigger Reykjavik not counted) in its communes has a special law about decisive referenda for redrawing borders. This compulsory referendum function plays an important part in strives by central government to create bigger units. It can't be done without the consent of the people. In Poland, it's not possible for local governments to raise taxes, or disolve the council before the end of term limit unless they get the consent of the people. In some countries, town meetings are held where people gather to make decisions. This is what sometimes is considered true direct democracy. These meeting are held in _small_ communes in Iceland (only consultative), Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Belorussia. In Spain and Portugal, this is only the case in extremely small communes. It is not mentioned in the report what rules apply for Romania, Albania, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The factor of uncertainty is naturally big here. 4. Examining Classifications Since the Norton classification of European local governments are the most detailed, I'm going to use that as astarting opint at least, when looking at where the different categories fall in my direct democratic classification system. If we start looking at North European local governments, they rank high or average on the formal participation scale. They are in categories A4 (A3 possibly for Finland soon) down to B2. The British are low down (B2 to C1). The Central European are all in the top except for eight German bundeslaender. The Napolean ones are definitely in the bottom. They are A2 or C1 and then you could remember that France and Italy only recently moved up to the A2 allowing referenda at all. Luxemburg is an exception to this group but it is of course an exceptional country in general. The East and Post-Soviet states are a bit harder to tell anything about since data from so many countries are lacking, but according to the report, they are about in the middle. What you can notice is how nicely clustered the different groups are. You can explain even more by looking at average poulation in the municipalities. First, the North European group contradict the trend. Sweden with very big local governments is high in the scale, for example. It's new in that category though. In the British group, very big municipalities are maybe reasons for limited use of referenda. The Central European group has very small municipalities and is in top. The Napolean group has mostly small units which contradicts the trends but exceptions Belgium and Portugal could maybe explain unlawfulness of use of referenda. Greece is a surprising case though. There are of course other explanations than size for use of institutions of direct democracy but it can be shown to have an impact. Concerning general classifications of local governments I find that North European and Central European have some in common when it comes to elements of direct democracy. Putting Scandinavian and British systems of local governments together like Goldsmith does (1992) is _not_ supported if you give this variable some weight. The bonds with Central European systems implicate that Hesse's (1991) is a better one. An interesting area of research would be to see exactly what variables are deciding how much direct democracy a country allows in its municipalities. Is it dependent on degree of autonomy, federal structure (we have here evidence, this could well be true), welfare politic function of local government or maybe something else? Now I will take a bit more penetrating look at local governments for two representatives of the categories I have presented the idea have something in common. I start with a contemorary study of change in Germany and continue with a historical analysis of Sweden. 5. Participatory trends in Germany Grunow (1992) writes an article in Local Government Studies about a contitutional reform for local government in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). It is the largest land in Germany with 17 million people. The local governments are bigger than in the rest of the country. What now is discussed in NRW in light of the reform is both issues concerning (A) democratic representation/political participation and (B) adminstrative competence and efficiency. In the first group, election, functions and party-politicization of the council, decision power and control and _additional forms of citizen participation_ are issues. I'm going to concentrate mostly on the last one. Grunow says: "Additional more formal interventions of citizens into the decion-making process are topics of the recent reform debate." I want to stress the word "formal" that is somewhat the key-word for this paper. Germany is in a federal situation of different commune constitutions in different laender and that makes comparision easy and very interesting. Naturally, influence from other laender about systems are common. There are distinctions between the North and South German systems, for example in how the mayor is elected: in the south directly and in the north by the council. By looking at Baden-Wuerttemberg, we might find another. Here, citizen appeal (buergerantrag) and citizen decision (buergerentscheid) are part of the commune constitution. It was established as a counter mechanism to the powerful mayor. This form of direct democracy (or semi-direct democracy, according to some) is not emphasized too much in the NRW constitutional proposals. Banner (1982) is a firm believer in the Baden-Wuerttemberg system and uses three criteria to show it's advantages: budgeting, personnel policy and citizen policy. But Grunow thinks he finds only one non-normative criteria of these and that is the balance of the budget. There might even be other factors than the participatory elements that are responsible for the succesful balancing of the budget. One critic is Wehling who argue that the participatory system has allowed the devlopment of a specific political culture that cannot be transported into another context easily (thinking of the NRW constituion). Why the political culture couldn't be developed in NRW and grow there and if there would be some direct problems with such an develpoment are questions surprisingly not answered. Grunow's conclusion of this is that comparison of complex models seldom reveals any clear evidence for better or worse performance which would lead to the choice of a new model. Instead, most authors advocate only partial changes on the basis of existing practise. One could add that whether this is a good strategy or not, it's a convinient argument to avoid major change. Except for differences between North and South German commune governments, there is the East German situation that is quite different. First, totally new commune constitutions has had to be established. That also means that there a fewer conserving forces. Grunow says: "Thus, this situation could lead to a more open and impartial review and evaluation of the existing alternatives." But new arrangements still have to take into account a DDR law on self-administration from 1990 which emphasizes citizens' rights of participation - "a consequence of the experiences of the peaceful revolution". The notion of grassroots democracy is much more anchored here than in all models in West Germnay. There are strong interests in East Germany to include participation and decision rights for the citizens in the commune constitution. East German states seem not willing to accept pressure from West German ones, but influences from advisors are bound to have an impact. Western advisors bring implicitly with them the model of commune systems they know best and many times try to argue for it. NRW seems to be on its way to export its sytem of big communes to Brandenburg, even though that system has been showed not working out that well. There could also be a counter trend, now for example when NRW formulates a new constitution. In general, Grunow thinks that West German supporters of grass roots democracy might benefit while the 'efficient city management' ideas of West Germany can be affected. No prognosis can yet be formulated, though. There is a trend of 'Europe of the Regions' too that Grunow suggests would lead to the laender being the arena for much of the democratic aspects of government while the communes would more be messengers of efficient administration. But in East Germany, the trend is the opposite. The communes are here the basis of participatory democracy and the laender are seen as administrative units for cooperative networks. 6. Efficiency and Democracy in Sweden Montin (1992) describes the development of local government in Sweden in three phases. The first phase started in the late 1940s and lasted to the mid-1970s. It was oriented toward improving efficiency. The average number of inhabitants increased from 3000 to 30000 (or 16000, median value). It could be said to be a decentralization in the respect that the municipalities got more responsibilities but from the individual citizen's point of view, it could also be said to give him more distance from local government authorities. The efficiency seemed to have improved but the level of participation declined. So there was a fear of decreasing local democracy but according to many researchers, the fear was exaggerated. Participation took other forms and people approached bureaucrats and interest organizations instead of politicians. This was quite natural since the idea behind the reform was to decrease the number of politicians. In the second phase, the idea of 'bringing democracy back in', was salient. Local consultative referenda was one reform. Other new arrangements was created. The third phase started with decentralization, user-democracy and freedom of choice. Soon, decentralization "became the trade-mark for nearly every change and experiment."" At the same time, effeciency was now regarded as a more important policy objective than democracy. Many of the local governments believed that the problems they handle are had nothing to do with democracy or citizen participation, but with freedom of choice for consumers and produsers of public services. Now there are (1) privatization advocates that form an ideological standpoint want to give people more freedom in their choice, (2) traditionalists that criticize new reforms because they see representative democracy threatened and (3) decentralists who obviously want decentralization as a way for democratization. They are less strong today. (4) are the economizers who want to halt the public sector expansion. As far as I can see group 1 and 4 are the same but 4 are in a new batch for whom privatization is a mean for competition (and thereby efficiency), not a goal with it's freedom of choice. 7. Conclusion I have looked at three different classifications of European Local Governments. The most simplistic one puts Scandinavian and British system into one category. I then analysed the governments from one specific point of view, of direct democratic elements and found a pretty easy scheme for which to rank them. When I examined how the general classification categories did in my arrangement I found that there definitely was a pattern. Most opportunities for direct and popular decision makings was found in the Central European countries followed by the Scanidinavian countries. British and Napolean systems were equally bad in this respect and it seemed wrong to from a starting opint of this variable bundle British and Scandinavian systems together. Another point was that there seemed to be some relationship between size of municipalities and possible institutions of direct democracy. To get a more comprehensive picture, I then studied some decriptive texts about debates on local governmental systems. The German text described a country partly divided over the issue of participatory democracy, especially after the addition of the six East German laender, but also the old presence of the South German laender with another tradition in this field. The was on some kind of agenda at least. In Sweden, the democratic debate was of a different nature. The participatory elements of democracy could be anything from decentralization to easy access to bureaucrats, but formal decision power came a poor second (or third). The political climate is still a bit different in Scandinavia and Central Europe. --- References: - Banner, G; Zur politisch administrativen Steuerung in der Kommune; Archiv fuer Kommunalwissenschaften (1982), pp 37-61 - Batley, R & Stoker, G (eds); Local Government In Europe; MacMillan, Houndsmills 1991 - Goldsmith, M; The Structure of Local Government. In Mouritzen, P E, Managing Cities in Austerity; Sage 1992 - Grunow, Dieter; Constitutional Reform of Local Government in Germany: The Case of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW); from Local Government Studies vol 18, no 1. Spring 1992 - Hesse, JJ (ed); Local Government and Urban Affairs in International Perspective; Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1991 - Kommunsystem i Europa; from Kommunerna, Landstingen och Europa; Civildepartementet; SOU 1994:2 bilagedel; 1994 - Montin, Stig; Recent Trends in the Relationship Between Politics and Administration in Local Government: The Case of Sweden; from Local Government Studies; vol 18, no 1. Spring 1992 - Lokal demokrati i utveckling, Slutbetaenkande av Lokaldemokrati kommitte'n (SOU 1993:90); Stockholm 1993 - Page, E & Goldsmith, M; Centrality and Locality: explaining cross- national variation. In Page & Goldsmith (eds); Central and Local Government Relations; Sage 1987 - Wehling, H G; pp 84-96