Sustainable local democracy

To identify what is needed to sustain local democracy we need a model of democratic government and an idea of the kind of social and economic context that is supportive of democracy. Local democracy requires a combination of a liberal democratic model of local government and the prerequisites of democratic stability: economic development, equality, political culture and the development of civil society. However, a number of factors, non-local as well as local, may undermine local government and local democracy, especially centralization, economic decisions, external conflicts, dependency on civil servants, the dilution of elected representation, formalistic participation, skewed representation, class conflict and official attitudes. However, democratic local government can contribute to economic development, the reduction of inequality, a democratic political culture and the development of civil society, thereby strengthening local democracy.     

The Local Politician: Loyal to the Party or Responsive to the Local Constituency?

The community equilibrium model of local fiscal policy-making perceives of political leaders as 'invisible hands' or as anonymous, reactive figures who automatically adapt to the preferences of the citizenry. The party model, in contrast, views political leaders as willful representatives of certain interests in society who will pursue policies that are in accordance with the preferences of the party and its followers. In a context which is clearly biased in favor of the latter, the two models are tested. Under these extreme circumstances the community equilibrium model comes out as the most fruitful with respect to prediction of the fiscal behavior of local political leaders.     

Immigrants in the Political Process

Immigrants, who comprise a growing group in many European countries, are usually under-represented in the political process. Sweden's immigrant policy, with its far-reaching social and political rights, liberal citizenship laws and respect for cultural differences, is often regarded as an exemplary model of how to integrate immigrants in society. The 1975 electoral reform in Sweden gave immigrants the opportunity to become active in the democratic process by allowing foreign citizens to vote in local political elections. This article examines the political and organizational participation of immigrants. The findings indicate widespread and significant exclusion and under-representation of immigrants in political and organizational life. We argue that immigrant political participation is best understood in terms of a tension between individual characteristics and institutional and organizational factors. In particular, the long-term exclusion of large numbers of immigrants from labor related organizations is shown to be an important obstacle to their further social and political participation.     

Polity Size and Local Political Trust: A Quasi‐experiment Using Municipal Mergers in Denmark

This article examines the relationship between polity size and political trust in local government for which two schools of thought offer opposing expectations. The theoretical disagreement has received considerable attention and this article contributes with a dynamic perspective of how changes in polity size affect changes in citizens' political trust on the input‐side of local government. The case examined is the recent municipal mergers in Denmark which were implemented on 1 January 2007. The article reports an analysis of a panel based on a repeated survey of Danish citizens using an untreated control group design with pre‐test and post‐test. A quasi‐experimental difference‐in‐difference identification strategy is used to obtain the effect of municipal size on local political trust. The results show that changes in municipal size negatively affect local political trust, which is consistent with the expectation from the political economy theory that political trust tends to decrease with the size of the polity.     

In Search of the Government in Local Government: Coalition Agreements and Office Payoffs in Norway

The politics of European local government is often assumed to take place in a rather depoliticised and non-partisan environment. This feature is especially apparent in Norway, where local government institutions are designed to create a high degree of consensus and accommodation. No local cabinet takes office, and therefore no formal roles of a majority government and an opposition are offered. This paper tells a different story, however. Following the 1999 elections many municipalities are now experiencing partisan cooperation based on binding political agreements. In these cases the common practice of proportional distribution of the important political positions is replaced with a 'winner takes all' principle, as only the majority constellation is rewarded with office payoffs. Given that this form of cooperation is the closest analogue to any cabinet formation at the local level, it is clearly of interest to uncover under which conditions it occurs. The empirical analysis therefore uses variation in structural, socioeconomic and political characteristics to predict the local coalition behaviour. The empirical model captures some important determinants in the variation of structural characteristics, and, as expected, explicit and binding coalition agreements are found in the large and central municipalities. Socioeconomic setting is furthermore important, since municipalities with a high degree of financial autonomy and poor policy performance experience this kind of formalised cooperation more frequently. Systematic effects are also found for political characteristics, with electoral volatility, party fragmentation and functional organisation models all increasing the probability of coalition agreements.     

Government Performance and Political Accountability at Subnational Level: The Electoral Fate of Local Incumbents in Norway

Under which circumstances do voters turn against governing parties for their performance in office? This question forms the basis of the considerable research field often referred to as the ‘VP‐literature’, which seeks to explain support for governments as a function of economic and political outcomes. After thirty years and more than 200 studies the economic part of the VP‐function still remains much better explored than the political part. In addition, focus has almost solely been on the national level so far. The present study therefore sets out to bridge the gap between the VP‐literature and the field of coalition studies to examine the relevance of the VP‐function for local elections. The ambition is to arrive at a more satisfactory understanding of the political part of the model. Results from the two most recent Norwegian local elections, in 1995 and 1999, reveal that the electoral liability associated with office is almost three percentage points. The multivariate analysis then tests systematically under which economic and political conditions local incumbents suffer the most electorally. The rate of unemployment plays an important role in how the voters evaluate the incumbents, since each extra percentage point of unemployment translates into additional loss for the incumbents. The levels of local fees and charges and service coverage are also significant. Political characteristics are furthermore highly relevant, since the numerical status of the government is in fact one of the most important predictors of electoral success, the advantage enjoyed by minority cabinets over majority coalitions amounting to more than three percentage points of the popular vote. Other important political determinants of local electoral performance are one‐party status, national support and ideological closeness.     

Priming the Parish Pump

Abstract

In this article we argue that the almost exclusive focus of political communications research on national political actors and agencies has led to an inadequate understanding of the functioning, the relevance, and the influence of local political communications strategies. This paper seeks to redress this neglect through exploring political marketing strategies of national political actors and agencies which have implications for local political communications; and political marketing strategies of local political actors and agencies and their implications for local political communications, with specific reference to the local newspaper coverage of the local campaign in the 2001 UK General Election. Drawing on a unique and extensive analysis of local newspapers' election reporting, combined with detailed interviews with journalists, editors, politicians and their agents, we argue that news management strategies enacted at a local level were characterised by an exchange relationship in which, although parties traded information for editorial space, the local news media retained a dominant role. Thus, although parties were, to differing degrees, successful in securing coverage of their candidates and policies, this success was always achieved in the context of local newspapers setting the broader agenda.     

Local government grants and income tax revenue: Redistributive politics in Norway 1900–1990

An important aspect of the welfare state is public provision of private goods, primarily education and health care. In Norway the provision of these services has been organized through the local public sector. The development of the welfare state has to a large extent been the development of welfare communes. The important revenue sources of the local and county governments, grants and income tax revenue, have been controlled nationally, and the paper addresses the determinants of these revenues during 1900–1990. The approach combines a demand model of local public services emphasizing price and income-elasticities with a political economy model of central government ideology and strength. The decision making is understood as bargaining between the government and interest groups, and the political structure consequently is of importance for the policy outcome. The analysis shows how politics matter, and the results indicate that a minority coalition government implies 30% more grant and income tax revenue to local and county governments than one party majority in the long run.     

演化范式下中国地方政府创新可持续性研究

地方政府创新不仅是世界范围内政治经济发展的一种普遍现象和趋势,也是推动我国政治-行政改革的主要手段。本文在梳理地方政府创新相关文献、分析中国地方政府创新案例的基础上,基于演化范式对中国地方政府创新可持续性进行了理论探讨。首先,本文重新界定了地方政府创新可持续性的内涵;其次,研究了其演化路径与内容,指出了地方政府创新可持续性的四条演化路径和三个方面的内容;然后,分析了其内外部决定因素,总结出地方政府的适应性学习、"政治企业家"精神、知识累积、创新的路径依赖、多样性选择主体的内生需求、知识外溢与竞合、创新嵌套的行政文化和技术创新等八个决定因素;最后,构建了地方政府创新可持续性的分析模型。     

Consensual Coalitions? Coalition Formation in Norwegian Municipalities

While widely applied to political coalitions in national assemblies and cabinets, theories of coalition formation have seldom been tested at the local level of government. This article presents a model of coalition formation in connection with mayoral elections in Norwegian local councils and tests it on the basis of the first systematic collection of data on the election of mayors from a large number of municipalities. It finds small significant effects on the probability that oversized coalitions will be formed. Contrary to "common" knowledge, the size of a municipality has a positive influence on the conflictual climate, and thus on the size of the coalitions formed, which implies that the probability that an oversized coalition will form is higher in a large than in a small municipality. It also finds that the possibility that an oversized coalition will form increases if one party controls a majority of the councilors on its own, and if the majority is non-socialistically controlled. The assumption of a strong norm for reaching consensus-based decisions, reinforced by the design of the local political institutions, is supported.     

The politics of redistribution in local government

Abstract. This paper deals with the politics of redistribution in local government. Traditionally, it has been assumed that redistributive policies are crucial in electoral competition and party politics, both in national and local political systems. From this perspective, differences in local competition and party systems are essential to an explanation of local redistributive efforts. Peterson (1981), however, claims that redistributive policies are excluded from the local agenda because they impair local economic prosperity. These policies are therefore not conceived as instruments in the vote-maximizing strategies of local political parties. In this paper, hypotheses on the impact of party competition and party politics on local redistribution are formulated and tested on data for 342 Dutch municipalities. The results show that, contrary to what would be expected from Peterson's perspective, municipal redistributive efforts were related to electoral competitiveness and the party system. The proposed model, however, proved to be unsatisfactory in accurately predicting the direction of the effects of these explanatory variables. These results suggest that, rather than abandoning the study of local redistribution as a non-issue in subnational politics, an effort should be made to develop a better theoretical understanding of the ways in which competition and party politics shape these policies.     

Institutions and representation: How institutional rules shape political recruitment in French regional elections

This article attempts to develop an approach to political recruitment that combines the study of strategies deployed by candidates, party officials and local leaders, with an analysis of the effects induced by the institutional environment within which they act. It is suggested that institutional ‘rules’ specific to French political life shape the competition among political actors who participate in the selection of candidates standing for regional election. More specifically, political recruitment can be fully understood only if three kinds of institutional variables are combined: the rules of the regional electoral system; the organisational features of political activity at the local level; and, above all, the variety of non‐codified norms and criteria which orient the perceptions and beliefs of the political groups involved in the selection process. The main empirical conclusion is that institutional variables engender ‘unexpected effects’ which modify traditional mechanisms of local elite recruitment.     

Institutional Reforms and Voluntary Associations

This article explores the changing relationship between the public and voluntary sectors. In 2007, a local government reform reduced the number of Danish municipalities from 271 to 98 and assigned new tasks to these. Consequently, the reform resulted in major local political and administrative changes, thereby giving a unique opportunity to examine how institutional changes affect the voluntary sector. Based on data from qualitative case studies and two questionnaire surveys (2004 and 2010) the article examines how the local government reform affects the relationship between the two sectors. The findings indicate that the political and administrative changes in the local political system have influenced municipality collaboration, contact and interaction with local associations. While some associations experience a decline in personal contact, there is an increase in formalization of the relationship and an increased degree of collaboration between the voluntary and public sectors.     

Politics of E‐Government: E‐Government and the Political Control of Bureaucracy

This case study reports an innovative e‐government experiment by a local government in Seoul, South Korea—Gangnam‐gu. A new local political leadership in Gangnam made strategic use of e‐government applications to exert greater political control over the local civil service bureaucracy. The authors find that e‐government applications possess political properties that can be applied effectively by the political leadership as instruments to improve control over the government bureaucracy as well as to enhance essential government accountability and transparency. The political circumstances underlying e‐government development as well as its impact on local government are reported, along with key variables associated with this innovation and directions for future research.     

Local interests,central leadership,and the passage of TRA86

The U.S. federalist public economy is an ever-evolving system of financing and expenditure responsibilities between local, state, and federal governments. The past decades have seen a significant centralization of responsibility for the financing of state and local public services through grants-in-aid and federal tax subsidies. This article advances a model of local constituent influence in central government fiscal policies which seeks to explain this trend, and then examines how strong executive branch and congressional leadership might begin to control the local pressures for central government financing. TRA86 is offered as one example in which this leaedership proved effective. The general lesson is that good fiscal policy in federalist public economies requires not only capable local governments, but central government political institutions with the strength to meet national needs as well.     

The Continued Relevance of Local Parties in Representative Democracies

This article assesses the value of local parties. It asks why political parties value their local sections. It also considers the ways in which local parties can benefit society. Local parties act as a democratic training ground for party members, are a conduit for political communication and provide parties with a range of resources. They also act as problem solving agencies; they ensure that policy is responsive to local needs; they provide an additional channel of communication and accountability; and they link citizens with the state. The article ends with an appeal to party scholars to refocus their attention towards local parties.     

Crafting village democracy in China: The roles, networking, and strategies of provincial elites

There is no obvious and direct correlation between the provincial level of economic development and democratic level of village elections. There is a great disparity in the level of rural democratization and the implementation of village self-governance among and within provinces. The modernization model alone cannot explain why village elections work well in some provinces but not in others. This paper looks at the political elite’s ongoing efforts at provincial level to conduct village elections and implement village self-governance in rural China. These efforts include the strategies for crafting village democracy employed by provincial elites: elite cooperation, local legislature, political responsibility, political programming, and the art of balancing party leadership and village elections. He has published extensively on China’s village elections and local governance. He is author and coauthor of several books. His current research interests include the development of non-state, local governance, and political participation. The author gratefully acknowledges the anonymous reviewers, Professor He Baogang of Deakin University and Professor Zhong Yang of University of Tennessee for their suggestions on an earlier draft. My special thanks to Professor Joseph Fewsmith of Boston University, Professor Tan Qingshan of Cleveland State University, and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, as well as to East Asian Institute of National University of Singapore for providing support for this research.     

Newspapers and political accountability: evidence from Japan

This study examines the effects of local and national newspapers on local political accountability. Local newspapers are expected to monitor local governments’ behavior. However, national newspapers could also contribute to local governments’ accountability by attracting nationwide attention to a local policy issue. Using the method developed by Snyder and Strömberg (J Polit Econ 118:355–408, 2010), I construct a variable that measures the weighted market share of locally circulated newspapers in an administrative district in Japan. I find that an increase in the market share of local newspapers is associated with a reduction in local public works spending (seen as rents for local interest groups), which indicates an improvement in political accountability. In addition, the accountability effect of local newspapers becomes greater one year after national newspapers focus readers’ attentions on the issue of unnecessary public works. This result suggests that national newspapers serve as an agenda setter and complement local newspapers for strengthening local political accountability.     

Reinventing the Governance of Public Finances in Remote Indigenous Australia

The economies of remote Indigenous settlements are dominated by public finances. The current system of governing public finance is highly saturated, fragmented and centralised, and this has a corrosive effect on local governance capability. The political accountability of leaders to their constituents is weakened in favour of an administrative accountability ‘upwards’ to higher authorities. New Public Management reforms have promoted administrative deconcentration, over political devolution, and this has been accompanied by an influx of public servants, Non‐Government Organisations (NGOs) and private contractors, and a decline in Indigenous organisations and local government. The end result in many settlements is a marked disengagement of Indigenous people in their own governance. There is evidence of considerable political capabilities existing within local government electorates. Decentralised financing arrangements can be used to catalyse these capabilities and then address deficits in administrative and technical performance.     

Lokale Politik und die Sozialisation demokratischer Einstellungen in Europa

The legitimacy of European democracies is challenged by a fading away of their citizens’ support (see Putnam et al. 2000). This phenomenon of declining support might even become more severe when formerly national political competencies are moved away to supranational institutions like the European Union. In this situation the local level gains importance. Can local government be a “training-ground” for positive democratic attitudes that strengthens political support also at higher levels of government? And is local autonomy a tool to foster this support function of local politics? Using comparative survey data on local and national political attitudes in Europe as well as macro data on local autonomy these questions will be investigated. The results show a remarkable socialization function of local politics, which is especially strong concerning feelings of local political competence. However, positive effects from local autonomy that support this democratic support function of local politics are hardly to be found.