Impacts of local government reforms in Greece: An interim assessment

Successive waves of local government reforms (territorial and functional) in Greece have depended on factors highlighted in this paper, which focuses on 'institutional evaluation' and the achievement or failure of institutional change. Furthermore, 'performance evaluation' of institutional change is also attempted, based on dimensions/ indicators concerning output legitimacy, coordination/steering and input legitimacy. The paper consists of three parts. The first part deals with decentralisation reform during the period 1981-1995, when the need to transfer competence to local government and broaden the latter's legitimacy predominated. The second part concerns the evaluation of territorial reform orientation and its shift towards efficiency priorities within the framework of Europeanisation (1996-2000). The third part considers the strategic priorities of the current third wave of reform. Finally, a comparative evaluation and conclusions are formulated. During the first wave of local government reform (1981-1995), input legitimacy proved to be particularly strong. On the other hand, coordination and steering proved to be particularly weak, while output legitimacy, especially concerning efficiency, was not a major priority. In comparison with the previous reform, the second wave (1996-2000) scores much better in terms of output legitimacy and coordination/steering, while input legitimacy became weaker. The scope and strategic priorities of the current reform procedure seem intended to tackle deficiencies left over from previous reforms. Worth mentioning are the major reform concerns with efficiency, coordination, transparency, control and accountability deficits. However, the final outcome is still open to conjecture, given the current acute fiscal crisis and the question of consensus building. © 2011 Taylor & Francis

Conclusions: Local Autonomy—Patterns, Dynamics and Ambiguities

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. © 2019, The Author(s)

A New Typology of Local Government? Beyond North-South and East-West

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. © 2019, The Author(s)

Legal Foundations

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. © 2019, The Author(s)

Administrative Supervision

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. © 2019, The Author(s)

Organisational Choice

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. © 2019, The Author(s)

Functional Responsibilities

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. © 2019, The Author(s)