Self-rule Index for Local Authorities (Release 1.0)

Local autonomy is a highly valued feature of good governance. The continuous attempts of many European countries to strengthen the autonomy of local government show the importance given to decentralisation and far-reaching competences at the lowest units of a state. Measuring and comparing local autonomy, however, has proven to be a difficult task. Not only are there diverging ideas about the core elements of local autonomy, there are also considerable difficulties to apply specific concepts to different countries. This project suggests a comprehensive methodology to measure local autonomy. It analyses 39 European countries and reports changes between 1990 and 2014. A network of experts on local government assessed the autonomy of local government of their respective countries on the basis of a common code book. The eleven variables measured are located on seven imensions and can be combined to a "Local Autonomy Index" (LAI). The data show an increase of local autonomy between 1990 and 2005, especially in the new Central and Eastern European countries. Countries with a particularly high degree of local autonomy are Switzerland, the Nordic countries, Germany and Poland

Évaluation du secteur communautaire du Service social de la Ville de Genève

Le Conseil administratif de la Ville de Genève a mandaté l'IDHEAP en tant qu'expert indépendant pour évaluer le secteur communautaire, une unité administrative rattachée au Service social. En prenant en considération les enjeux socio-sanitaires auxquels la Ville de Genève est confrontée, le concept d'étude proposé par l'Unité de politiques locales et d'évaluation de l'IDHEAP vise à établir un bilan de l'action du secteur communautaire, à déterminer la pertinence de cette action, son efficacité et son efficience, à tracer des perspectives en tenant compte notamment des prestations fournies par d'autres acteurs présents dans les domaines de la cohésion sociale et de la prévention socio-sanitaire, ainsi qu'à proposer des recommandations

Rapport d'évaluation du programme Nature en ville de la Ville de Neuchâtel

La Direction de l'urbanisme, de l'économie et de l'environnement de la Ville de Neuchâtel a mandaté l'Unité de politiques locales et d'évaluation de l'IDHEAP et le bureau d'études en écologie appliquée L'Azuré pour évaluer le programme Nature en ville de la Ville de Neuchâtel. Le but de l'évaluation est de déterminer si les objectifs visés par le programme ont été atteints et d'améliorer l'ancrage du programme Nature en ville dans le fonctionnement de l'administration communale

Measuring Local Autonomy in 39 Countries (1990-2014)

Local autonomy is a highly valued feature of good governance. The continuous efforts of many European countries to strengthen the autonomy of local government show the importance given to decentralization and the transfer of far-reaching competences to the lowest units. Measuring and comparing local autonomy, however, has proven to be challenging. Not only are there diverging ideas about the core elements of local autonomy, there are also considerable difficulties applying specific concepts to different countries. This paper outlines a comprehensive methodology for measuring local autonomy. It analyses 39 European countries and reports changes between 1990 and 2014. A network of experts on local government assessed the autonomy of local government of their respective countries on the basis of a common code book. The 11 variables measured show an overall increase of local autonomy but significant variation between the countries. The variables also add up to an overall measurement of local autonomy

Financial Control

This chapter analyses regulations and practices related to the financial aspects of local autonomy. It refers to fiscal federalism theory but it also shows that European practice differs from the assumption of the theory. It discusses how basis of financial autonomy is defined and protected by the European Charter of Local Government. The analysis includes the structure of local revenues, discretion of local tax policies, intergovernmental transfers and regulation of local government borrowing. The chapter presents both variation among European countries and dynamics of changes in the 1990–2014 period. It finds out that overall trend has been an increase of local autonomy, especially visible in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe which used to be very strongly centralised at the beginning of the analysed period. The trend has stopped as a reaction to the 2008 economic crises which brought re-centralisation of the finance regulations in many countries, especially those related to local borrowing. © 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)