The first large part of the reports, containing four sections, focuses on the internal functioning of local governments. The first section assesses the level of local autonomy.
The most general questions are the level of independence local governments enjoy from central and regional government and the degree to which the local government system is decentralized. The report framework distinguished between three types of autonomy:
legal, political, and financial. The main question about legal autonomy authors had to address was: To what degree can local governments act independently in local issues?
The following questions required a more detailed analysis: How much consensus is there on the jurisdiction of local governments? How intense are the conflicts over the distribution of competences among tiers of public administration? How far are the tasks of local governments mandatory? To what degree are local services regulated by central standards? How strong is the regulatory power of the central agencies? How stable is the regulatory framework in which local governments operate? How quickly do rules change? To what degree do central and regional governments have an influence on the everyday working of local governments?
The general guiding question of fiscal autonomy was: How dependent are local governments on central and regional resources? Fiscal autonomy referred to resources distributed and collected by local governments without the control of central or regional governments. Fiscal autonomy was regarded as high if local governments rely on their local revenue and allocate their revenues at their will. The particular questions were as follows: What is the proportion of state transfers in local government budgets?
What is the proportion of earmarked grants in state transfers? To what degree can local governments collect own revenues? What is the share of local taxes in local governments’
budget? What is the role of equalization mechanisms? This section was obviously related to the first part of the effectiveness section, presented later. Finally, the problem of political autonomy was addressed by the following question: Are local political forces and politicians able to formulate their own local preferences independently of the influence of national or regional political organizations? More precisely: How much control do national and regional organs of political parties have over local party branches? Can a local mayor or councilor have other elected positions (e.g., MP)? If yes, how far does the cumulation of mandates influence the political autonomy of local governments?
As at the end of each evaluative chapter, authors were expected to write a conclusion in which, based on their foregoing discussion, they evaluated the level of autonomy of local governments in their country and suggested or presented reforms and projects to improve the situation.
The second (usually short) section of the first part concentrated on the performance of local governments in implementing legal rules. The leading question was as follows:
T H E S T A T E O F L O C A L D E M O C R A C Y I N C E N T R A L E U R O P E
To what degree does the law guarantee rights and is everyone equally subject to the law? This section included a question on the civil and political rights asserted on the local level by asking: To what degree are civil and political rights equally guaranteed for all? Related questions were: How inclusive is the local citizenship? Are there ethnic or other groups whose exclusion or inclusion provokes debate? To what degree are cultural differences acknowledged and how well are minorities protected? How much consensus is there on the political, economic, and social rights of citizens on the local level (e.g., access to basic health care or education)?
The second problem the section addressed was the implementation of the rule of law: To what degree are local governments consistently subject to the law? Authors answered the following questions to provide more detailed information: How far do local governments as institutions observe legal regulations? How frequently are there violations of due process? To what degree are all public officials subject to the rule of law and to transparent rules in the performance of their functions? How much effort do local governments make to guarantee due process for all? How do local representatives evaluate the political impartiality of the administrative staff? To what degree does the legal system deliver fair and effective justice in legal issues involving citizens and local government? How free are the courts and the judiciary from interference by the local government and influential local individuals? How far do citizens follow legal rules? A few of the questions (especially on perceptions of the level of the rule of law) could be answered with the help of the project surveys.
A crucial question was discussed in the third section within the first part of reports: To what degree do local governments work in a transparent and accountable way? Transparency, generally a severe problem of CEE local governments, was approached by means of the following questions: To what degree can a citizen or citizen group understand local government policymaking from the public documents of local governments? How easy is it to gain access to public documents of local governments? How public are local government contracts? How developed is e-government? Do local governments have websites? How accessible are local government offices via e-mail? How much do local governments do to disseminate their decisions? Are the sessions of the council and other local government bodies open to the public? If they are, how far do local governments attempt to advertise the time of meetings?
Corruption, a problem strongly related to transparency, is the subject matter of the next section, too. The degree to which public officials are free from corruption was measured by the following questions: How effective is the separation of public office from the personal business and family interests of elected and non-elected office holders? How effective are the arrangements for protecting office holders and the public from involvement in bribery? To what degree do the rules and procedures for financing elections, candidates, and local representatives prevent their subordination to sectoal interests? How far is the influence of powerful local business interests over public
I N T R O D U C T I O N
policy kept in check and how free are they from involvement in corruption? How strict are the rules of public procurement and how far are they followed? How far do local governments make efforts to diminish corruption? Do they formulate policies or ethical codes to preserve the integrity of public officials? How much confidence do people have that public officials and public services are free from corruption?
Finally, this section discussed one of the strong antidotes to opaque and corrupted practices, horizontal accountability. The extent to which the separation of local powers contributes to the accountability of local government actors was analyzed by means of the following questions: How extensive and effective are the powers of the council to initiate, scrutinize, and amend local legislation? How rigorous are the procedures for approval and supervision of the revenues and expenditures of the local government budget? How extensive and effective are the powers of the council to scrutinize the executive (the mayor or board) and hold it accountable? How effective and open to scrutiny is the control exercised by councilors and the mayor over the administrative staff of the local government? How important are local administrators in the making of policies? To what degree do they form an independent policymaking center? To what degree does the actual division of power correspond with the formal one? What determines the variance in the perceived power of local government actors? Most problems in this section were addressed on the basis of the existing empirical evidence that could be found in prior research.
The last section in the first part, focusing on local government practices, dealt with the effectiveness of local governments: To what degree are local governments capable of setting and attaining their own goals? This section concentrated on three interrelated dimensions of the policy capacity and performance of local governments: resource control, decision-making capacity, and output control.
The problem of resource control is as follows: How much control do local governments have over an adequate supply of available resources? The more detailed questions are:
How much right do local governments have to set the level of their financial resources (especially local taxes) garnered from the local community, and how effective is the collection of these resources (if collection is a local government competence)? This is linked to the fiscal autonomy question in the autonomy section, but focuses more on internal resources. How many resources originate from the cooperation of local govern-ments with citizens and their organizations? How many resources do local governgovern-ments gain from voluntary or legally required cooperation with other local governments or administrative bodies? Does the size of local administration correspond to its functions?
How competent is the administrative staff of local governments? How do local representatives and citizens evaluate the competence of local administrative staff?
The problem of the decision-making capability of local governments was evaluated by answering the following question: To what degree can local governments make informed and consistent decisions given the temporal constraints on them? The sub-questions were: How
T H E S T A T E O F L O C A L D E M O C R A C Y I N C E N T R A L E U R O P E
smooth is the decision-making in local governments (quorum, extraordinary meetings, decisions by deadline, etc.)? What are the causes of decision-making deficiencies? How coherent is local policymaking? Is there long-term planning? Do policies follow these long-term guidelines? How cooperative is the relationship between the executive (mayor or board) and the council?
The third element of effectiveness, output control, was assessed by means of the question: To what degree can local governments implement their decisions? Some other questions made the discussion more detailed: To what degree do local governments reach the policy objectives that they set for themselves? Are local government projects and plans realized? How efficient are local governments? To what degree do local governments endeavor to improve the relationship between cost and output? How are local services provided and what are common problems of service provision? What is the attitude of decision-makers concerning privatization and outsourcing?