7. Conclusions and key messages
If the past is any guide to the future, governments will continue to restructure their public administrations regularly in a relentless quest for better governance systems. The last 30 or so years have seen much capital and time spent across Europe in decentralisation, recentralisation, regionalisation, formation, abolition and amalgamation.
Against this backdrop, it is perhaps surprising that the costs and benefits are rarely assessed, ex ante or ex post, and hence reforms are largely based on intuition and ambition, rather than informed by robust evidence. Success is sometimes characterised narrowly as reduced spending, but improved policy results (particularly with greater responsibilities at the municipal level), public trust and customer satisfaction in service delivery could also be assessed.
At the central level, ‘machinery of government’ changes often revolve around elections, either to energise the incumbent’s electoral chances in advance, or in the aftermath to enact the incoming administration’s new mandate. But the bigger multi-level governance (MLG) story is about how national governments relate to subnational governments, and hence the primary focus of this theme. MLG ranks among the toughest challenges faced by policymakers, so it is no surprise that it features in the European Semester, the EU’s framework for the coordination and surveillance of economic and social policies in the Member States
MLG is about a systemic approach that is more than the sum of its parts. To move from multi-level government to multi-level governance requires that administrative structures are coherent, consistently apply the administration’s principles and values, and that institutions interact to maximum effectiveness. This means
- reviewing the existing architecture of the public administration using the subsidiarity principle and asking whether the right balance is struck between centrifugal and centripetal forces, and whether too many institutions creates coordination challenges or conversely that too few undermines the connection with citizens
- assigning legal powers and functional competences to each level and organisation appropriately, in line with the principle of subsidiarity in decision-making
- implementing fully the provisions of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, which embodies the subsidiarity principle and inter alia commits the signatories (including all EU Member States) to applying basic rules guaranteeing the political, administrative and financial independence of local authorities
- ensuring that administrative units within each level are ‘fit for purpose’, with sufficient scale, resources and capacity to be effective
- putting in place practical mechanisms for vertical and horizontal coordination
- enabling partnership working with external bodies representing citizens, businesses and non-governmental organisations, either by law or by encouragement.
Administrations must also be able to deal with the unexpected, namely disasters and policy challenges they did not or could not anticipate, which means all levels need flexibility in their functions and responsiveness in their resourcing.
Paradoxically, the major decisions about the structures, powers, resources and relationships of local and regional authorities (LRAs) fall to national governments and parliaments. Counter-intuitively, the history of MLG has been dominated by the trend to decentralise, ceding powers from the centre of the state. The rationale is good politics and better policy. Statistics show that subsidiarity is popular: people prefer power to reside with public institutions that are closer to their communities. The advent of co-creation and co-production taps into the growing interest of the public in actively contributing to policy design and service development, which can happen most readily with LRAs - less so at the national or supranational levels.
Improving the ‘supply side’ of governance by empowering LRAs is not enough. It is just as important to strengthen the ‘demand side’ too, by ensuring that citizens are enabled and encouraged to engage with them. While the argument is made in the framework of third countries, the principle holds true for LRAs in Member States too.
| ‘Citizens are not interested in electing or holding accountable local authorities that do not have powers (executive, legislative or judicial) worth holding them accountable for, and citizens cannot hold local authorities accountable and make them represent them without an array of accountability mechanisms (positive and negative sanctions).… Together, discretionary powers in the hands of leaders who are accountable to citizens constitute democracy. Accountability without power is empty. Power without accountability is dangerous. Democracy - at any scale - needs both.’ European Commission Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (2016), Supporting decentralisation, local governance and local development through a territorial approach |
The emergence of open data and open government is equipping citizens with the motivation and means to connect with their LRAs. The online availability of transactional services has also transformed access to public administrations, and increasingly allows service users to tailor packages to their circumstances. It also permits them to simultaneously interact potentially with all parts of the administration, at all levels and locations - bringing the whole of government within reach of the population.