Decentralisation,Governance and the Structure of Local Political Institutions: Lessons for Reform?

Many governments are devolving power to elected local councils, hoping to improve service delivery and citizen representation by bringing officials closer to the people. While these decentralisation reforms hold the promise of improved governance, they also present national and sub-national leaders with a complex array of options about how to structure newly empowered local political institutions. This article draws on cross-national experience and the latest research to identify the trade-offs inherent in structuring local political institutions. The study's specific interest is in the impact of strong, locally elected councils on governance and representation. Proceeding from an empirical basis that competitive elections are vital for the legitimacy and efficiency of local political institutions, the analysis first questions the impact of four institutional features – central versus local control, local executive versus local council authority, local council structure, and the role of parties – on service provision and fiscal solvency. The article's second section analyses the impact of decentralisation on political representation, with a particular focus on the role of institutional design in combating the threat of extremist parties. A final section summarises empirical findings and advances some policy-relevant conclusions.     

Changing Municipalities in the Information age

Abstract

Political leadership at the local level has attracted growing attention in recent years in parallel with reforms of local government and of the municipal administration, as well as the debate on a shift from government to governance. Considering the power triangle of (i) the mayor, (ii) the municipal administration (executive officers) and (iii) the council, it is surprising that the latter has gained little interest so far. This article analyses how the roles of local councils as representative bodies are assessed by mayors from seventeen European countries and how differences in the perception of councils can be explained. Can differences be explained by institutional settings, the notion of the mayor towards the role of political parties or by the kind of interaction between the mayor and the council – or are specific local conditions and idiosyncratic personal factors crucial?     

Is local authority procurement supporting SMEs? An analysis of practice in English local authorities

The UK coalition government wishes to improve the access of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to public procurement, in recognition of their importance to the economy and for the benefits they can bring to public procurement and the wider public sector. Local government provides a significant opportunity for small firms, spending £84 billion of the total procurement spend of £230 billion. However, about two-thirds of both small businesses and local authorities think that SMEs face barriers in successfully accessing public procurement. This paper examines how councils are supporting SMEs in the procurement process by analysing 67 entry forms to the ‘Best Councils to do business with’ competition. This unique data source has provided insight into councils’ attitudes and procurement practices, and demonstrates that although a wide range of supportive actions are being employed there is considerable diversity across councils. Ambiguities and tensions in policies, between local and central government, have also emerged.     

Electronic Local Government and the Modernisation Agenda: Progress and Prospects for Public Service Improvement

The wider use of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) is central to the current drive to promote public service improvement in the UK. This paper describes the policy context within which 'e-government' is being developed by local authorities in the UK and evaluates the strategies developed by a sample of local councils against the key components of an ideal model of the electronic local government organisation. It suggests that many authorities have made significant progress in providing information 'on-line'. However, additional funding and staff development, combined with more fundamental changes to internal business processes and inter-organisational working, are needed if councils are to harness the full potential of new ICTs to transform their transactions with service users and citizens.     

Hybrid land markets: monetarised customary land transactions in Zambia

This paper examines the growing trend of monetarised transactions of customary land in Zambia, and the impact of these dealings on customary land practices and norms. While transactions of customary land involving money are not a new phenomenon in many parts of Africa, including Zambia, the growing demand for land, especially in areas where land shortages are emerging, has led to a steady growth in these transactions, with the practice becoming more widespread. In the Zambian context, this is directly linked to the policy that allows customary land to be converted into leasehold tenure. Local elites, urban dwellers, and foreign investors are taking this opportunity to acquire customary land which they then convert to leasehold tenure. However, while these dealings have some features of a conventional market, they are, at the same time, bound up in local customary land norms. Although such transactions have been reported widely in the literature, there has been little analysis of their nature and the impact this is having on traditional land practices and norms. Drawing mainly from qualitative data, this paper examines the nature of these transactions and the effects they are having on customary land relations, practices and norms.     

Of texts and practices: Empowerment and organisational cultures in world bank-funded rural development programmes

The World Bank's recent concern for ‘empowerment’ grows out of longer standing discussions of participation, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society. While commitments to empowerment enter World Bank texts with relative ease, their practice within Bank-funded projects is far more contingent, and the meanings they assume become much more diverse. This paper considers the relationship between such texts and the development practices which emerge, using an analysis of the ‘organisational cultures’ of the Bank and the many organisations on which it depends in the implementation of its rural development programmes. The paper presents a framework for analysing these organisational cultures in terms of (a) the broader contexts in which organisations and their staff are embedded; (b) the everyday practices within organisations; (c) the power relations within and among organisations; and (d) the meanings that come to dominate organisational practice. A case study of a development programme in Bangladesh is used to illustrate the ways in which cultural interactions between a variety of organisations – the World Bank, government agencies, NGOs, organisations of the poor, social enterprises – mediate the ways in which textual commitments to empowerment are translated into a range of diverse practices.     

From Tuscany to Victoria: Some Determinants of Sustainability Reporting by Local Councils

This paper seeks to respond to recent calls by the academic community for studies investigating sustainability reporting by the public sector, as well as for more engagement-based studies of this issue by examining the views of managers within local councils (LC). The objective of this project is to provide insights as to the possible reasons and explanations for the types of sustainability disclosures among a group of local councils operating in Italy and Australia. In particular, an international comparison is undertaken to ascertain the effect of culture on the adoption of sustainability reporting (SR). Evidence is collected from semi-structured interviews with managers and accountants from ten local councils consisting of five from Italy (Tuscany) and five from Australia (Victoria). The findings suggest that although there are available some general policy documents relating to sustainability reporting, councils are left to their own discretion as to what they consider fit under the definition of sustainability and therefore, determine to a large extent, what to report to stakeholders. Moreover, there was a range of legitimacy type behaviours displayed by a number of councils while others were influenced by notions of public sector accountability and transparency. Adopting Hofstede's cultural framework, the research also highlights the relevance of the Italian and Australian cultural settings in shaping the SR practices used by LCs. The findings suggest that differences regarding cultural dimensions, such as ‘power distance’ and ‘uncertainty avoidance’, influence key aspects of SR.     

Crises,What Crises? New Evidence on the Relative Roles of Political and Economic Crises in Begetting Reforms

Crises beget reforms is a powerful hypothesis. But which type of crises – economic or political – are the main drivers of structural reforms? To answer this question, we construct measures of labour market and trade liberalisation and the two types of crises for a panel of about 100 developed and developing countries between 1960 and 2000. We find that political crises are more important determinants of structural reforms than economic crises. This finding is robust to the inclusion of interdependencies between crises, feedbacks between reforms, different estimators and various alternative measures of crises.     

A Vaccination for Education: Early Childhood Development Programme and the Education of Older Girls in Rural India

Girls lag behind boys in education in India and relatively more provide childcare at home. This paper investigates whether provision of childcare services by India’s largest child development programme narrows the gender education gap by reducing childcare costs. Using logit, village fixed effects and mother fixed effects, I find that girls 6–14 years old, whose younger sibling 0–5 years old is receiving any of the programme services intensely, are at least three percentage points more likely to be in school than similar boys. Further, I find that these girls are also more likely to complete early primary grades than boys.     

The Donor Problem: An Experimental Analysis of Beneficiary Empowerment

Donors often rely on local intermediaries to deliver benefits to target beneficiaries. Each selected recipient observes if the intermediary under-delivers to them, so they serve as natural monitors. These recipients may, however, withhold complaints to ‘thank’ the intermediary for selecting them. Furthermore, the intermediary may distort selection (for example, by picking richer recipients who feel less entitled) to reduce complaints. We design an experimental game representing the donor's problem. We compare two institutions. In one treatment the intermediary selects recipients. In the other selection is random – as by an uninformed donor. In our data random selection dominates delegation of the selection task to the intermediary. Selection distortions are similar but intermediaries divert more when they have selection power (correctly anticipating that gratitude for selection will reduce complaints). Our results identify a problem in combining selection and delivery tasks. The insights are also applicable to social funds, decentralisation and participatory projects.     

Political leadership in local government: T. Dan Smith in Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne∗

Recent initiatives for modernising local government have ignored the potential contribution of parish and town councils. This article critically examines English parish and town councils in the context of the current debate about the need for government to be more responsive to community needs. It considers measures to enhance the capacity of these grassroots councils by recalibrating the responsibilities and resources between tiers of local government. It concludes by setting out possible reforms to facilitate the contribution of these local councils to the modernising agenda as both representatives of the community and potential providers of local services.     

Do Local Elites Capture Natural Disaster Reconstruction Funds?

Using original survey data with rich, direct measures of local elites in rural Fiji, this article examines potential elite capture in the allocation of natural disaster reconstruction funds. Allocations of housing construction materials – both receipt and amount received – across villages, clans, and households are strongly targeted on cyclone damage, and local elites do not receive larger benefits over time. As the supply of reconstruction funds is limited during early periods, more severely affected victims do not receive benefits early, while clan leaders and elite clans do receive benefits early within villages.     

How single-member districts are reinforcing local independents and strengthening mayors: on the electoral reform in Polish local government

In this article, we investigate whether the design of the electoral system used in the elections of local councils affects the position of national parties and their main competitors, local independent lists. We study the case of the electoral reform enacted recently in Poland which modified the rules of council elections by introducing the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, quite rarely used in local elections. Using empirical evidence from the municipalities where FPTP replaced the open-list proportional representation (OLPR) system, we demonstrate that the introduction of single-member districts, and majoritarian rule in council elections, increased the number of single independents, unaffiliated to any party or committee, and limited the (already poor) presence of party candidates and councillors. The reform also strengthened the position of directly elected mayors, in Poland – usually independent, by assuring many of them safe majorities in councils. We found that the share of seats for the winning mayor’s list increased by 10 pp on average after the reform.     

The Politics of Competitive Tendering: Political Orientation and Attitudes towards Contracting Out among Finnish Local Politicians

Using survey data on Finnish local politicians (n = 364) we examine the extent to which political orientation affects attitudes towards and perceptions of competitive tendering in social and health service provision. Expectation of cost benefits turns out to be the most important factor accounting for willingness to increase the usage of competitive tendering. The perceived positive impact of tendering on local democracy is also related to local politicians' readiness to implement reforms. However, political orientation does have a strong effect on politicians' perceptions. We also consider whether there are mitigating factors that could mask the relationship between political orientation and attitudes towards tendering. We identify one such factor, municipal employment: public-sector employees form a kind of informal ‘interest group’ resisting public-sector reforms in municipal decision making. In general, our results suggest that macro-level studies on competitive tendering underestimate the effects of political ideology on local decision making.     

ENGLISH METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT SINCE ABOLITION: AN EVALUATION OF THE ABOLITION OF THE ENGLISH METROPOLITAN COUNTY COUNCILS

The Local Government Act 1985 abolished the Greater London Council (GLC) and the six English metropolitan county councils (MCCS); but it did not abolish the services for which they were responsible. It transferred them: some directly to the lower-tier borough or district councils, others to a variety of joint boards, joint committees, residuary bodies, and special purpose agencies. As a result, there are, in at least some of the former MCC areas, many services still operated wholly or partially on a county-wide basis. The first part of this article compares the contrasting approaches adopted in the six metropolitan areas to the retention or re-creation of county-wide services after abolition. The second part attempts to explain these contrasting approaches: why, for instance, significantly more county-wide institutional arrangements were voluntarily negotiated by the districts in West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester than by those in South Yorkshire and Merseyside.     

Notes on contributors

The phrase ‘North – South divide’—as well as variations such as ‘North – South gap’ or ‘North – South cleavage’—has become well established in public discourse and scholarly writing. The phrase, however, is highly problematic, as it is simplistic and as there is a substantial danger of misapprehending it for ‘reality’ as such. The indiscriminate usage of the phrase ‘North – South divide’ overlooks the ways in which words create and shape our understanding of the world, on which we, in turn, base our judgements and decisions. The aim of the present paper is to point out specific ways through which this linguistic distinction—as much as any other—shapes our conception of (social) reality. The paper is in two parts. In the first we will initially draw out some pitfalls that inhere in the notion of a ‘North – South divide’qua notion, and then point to other pitfalls that relate to the usage of the expression. In the second part two case studies are presented to illustrate our arguments: one of them deals with China, the other with intellectual property rights.     

The Persistence of Social Differentiation in the Philippine Uplands

Certain drivers of social and economic differences facilitate the reification of ethnic identity between so-called uplanders and lowlanders on Palawan Island in the Philippines. Drawing on case studies, in this paper we examine how two seemingly distinct social groups – Christian migrants and indigenous Tagbanua – use their respective positions in society to mark differences in ethnic identity and livelihoods. We then argue that as non-governmental organisations build on notions of indigeneity as a means to facilitate their programmes, they further reinforce how each group articulates difference. We demonstrate that the tendency of NGOs to construct and reify notions of indigeneity in support of land claims and conservation has in fact polarised ethnic differences and, in turn, reinforced inequality between each group. We conclude that although non-governmental organisations have tried to remedy social and economic disparities between social groups, their simplification of local ways of life reinforces stereotypes of these people and their land uses.     

A Tangled Web: Complexity and Inequality in the English Local Government Finance Settlement

The £29 billion formula grant stands at the heart of the English local government finance system. This transfer of resource from central to local government has, since 2006–07, been distributed using the so-called ‘four block model’. This extraordinarily complex formula-based funding mechanism aims to ensure that all local authorities are able to provide individuals with a broadly comparable level of public service – offering greatest support to local authorities with high service needs and/or low capacity to raise revenue. This paper outlines the structure and workings of the four block model and, drawing attention to key methodological shortcomings, explains why the resulting distribution of the formula grant is both arbitrary and inequitable. In particular it argues that key model parameters – specifically the need and resource equalisation proportions – are set in order to fulfil a particular funding outcome. This flies in the face of the basic tenets of resource allocation methodology in that, being outcome-led, the approach is clearly neither need-based nor impartial. The paper argues that the four block model fails to meet its own goal of fiscal equalisation, is likely to lead to increasing service disparities, and must be replaced as a matter of urgency.     

Inequality and the Impact of Growth on Poverty: Comparative Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa

This study explores the extent to which inequality affects the impact of income growth on the rates of poverty changes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to non-SSA, based on an unbalanced panel of 86 countries over 1977–2004. For all three measures of poverty – headcount, gap, and squared gap – the impact of GDP growth on poverty reduction is a decreasing function of initial inequality. The impacts are similar in direction for SSA and non-SSA, so that within both regions there are considerable disparities in the responsiveness of poverty to income growth, depending on inequality. Nevertheless, the income–growth elasticity is substantially less for SSA, implying relatively small poverty-reduction response to growth.     

Ethics in Local Government: Evaluating Self-Regulation in England and Wales

Local government in England and Wales is subject to the implementation of the Labour government's 'new ethical framework' legislation. This involves a statutory code of conduct for councillors, local standards committees to promote good practice and external investigative and adjudicative bodies to deal with allegations of misconduct. Prior to this many local authorities had adopted a self-regulatory approach to improving their ethical practice. This article charts the development of non-statutory policy towards standards of conduct - largely due to the generally high ethical standards in councils. A study of councils who have introduced self-regulation through standards committees shows that it provides a positive strategy for strengthening the ethical climate, although there is a role for external verification and, potentially, intervention where councils face structural problems of misconduct and/or corruption. The current creation of a statutory system with powerful investigatory agencies is not justified in the context of levels of misconduct and the experience of self-regulation.