role of parties as a source of important information has significantly decreased. Most likely this shift is associated with a change in the way mayors are nominated (by the council before 2002 and in popular elections since then).
4. THE ROLE OF PARTIES IN LOCAL POLITICS: A SUMMARY MODEL
a dependent variable. Independent variables in the model might be clustered in two groups:
• National political culture—represented by dummy variables for each of the countries;
• Institutional factors represented by:
— Population size of the local government (territorial consolidation);
— Method of mayors’ nomination (by the council in Estonia and by popular elections in the remaining four countries);
— Method of council election (proportional in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungarian12 governments with over 10,000, and Polish over 20,000 population, and majoritarian in Slovakia and smaller Hungarian and Polish municipalities).
The weakness of the model (at least in relationship to our data) is the fact that the manner of mayors’ nomination differs from popular elections in one country only (Es-tonia). Therefore, we cannot statistically distinguish the impact of “Estonian culture”
from the impact of the method of nomination of mayors.
The results from the testing of our model are briefly presented in table 1.15. First of all, the model proved to be highly statistically significant, i.e., the selected independent variables explain much of the variation in party significance.
If controlled for other variables, the most significant are the method of council elec-tion and the size of local government. As expected, in big cities and in councils elected by the proportionality principle the importance of parties is higher.
Interestingly, Slovak political culture seems to favor party influence. In spite of Slovakia’s majoritarian electoral system, party influence is relatively high. Bulgarian culture also has the effect of increasing the importance of parties, but in this case the influence is lower, since the high scores for Bulgaria may be partially explained by its
Table 1.14
Index of Party Significance in Local Politics
Bulgaria Poland Hungary Estonia Slovakia
Mean value 73.6 47.6 33.9 50.8 49.5
Size-standardized mean 70.9 43.3 44,5 53,0 48,9
Correlation of the index with population size
*** *** **** *** ***
Note: 0—means no significance, 100—a very large significance of parties in local politics.
Note: * means correlation significant at 0.05 level, ** at 0.01 level, *** significant at 0.001 level, and
**** significant at 0.0001 level.
Source: Own calculations on the basis of the ILDGP survey of councilors and mayors (2002–2003).
proportional electoral system and high level of territorial consolidation. In both Poland and Hungary the political culture seems to weaken party significance.
But curiously, the index shows a low correlation with net sympathy towards political parties, as discussed earlier in this chapter. In Slovakia, where party influence is relatively strong, parties are rather disliked. In Poland, where party importance is very low, they are also disliked. On the other hand, in Hungary parties enjoy a larger net sympathy.
The impact of the method of nomination of mayors, which was not very strong but nonetheless significant, works in an opposite direction to what was expected. But as mentioned above, we are not able to say to what extent this is due to the factor in-vestigated and to what extent it is related to the “Estonia factor.”
Our problem with determining whether the method of mayors’ election has an im-pact on local government politicization may be partially solved by analysis of the Chief Executive Officers’ surveys conducted in seven countries in 2000–2001. Our data do not allow the computing of a similar index of party significance, but we may check the impact of the same set of independent variables on mayors’ party membership rates (see right column of table 1.15). In this survey data we have more cases where mayors are nominated by a council: Estonia, Latvia, and Poland (where the survey was conducted before the 2002 reform which changed the method of Polish mayors’ election). As a
Table 1.15
Factors Influencing Parties’ Role in Local Politics—Regression Model Results
Party significance index Mayors’ party membership
R 0.5860 0.5890
R square 0.3430 0.3440
Significance of the model 0.0000 0.0000
Independent variables:
Proportional elections Size of local governments Direct election of mayor Bulgaria
Estonia Hungary Poland Slovakia Romania Latvia
+ + + + + + + + + NA – – + + +
NA NA
+ + + + + + + + + – – – + + + + + + + – – –
Notes: + means positive and – negative relationships. Number of pluses or minuses refers to significance of the variable. + + + means significance on 0.001 level, + + significance on 0.01 level, and + signi-ficance on 0.05 level. Independent variables are ordered from the most to the least significant.
Source: Own calculations based on ILDGP surveys.
result, we can distinguish the impact of the mayors’ election factor from the impact of the country variable.
But we found that the method of mayors’ nomination remained insignificant when controlled for other independent variables. Other results are not very much different than what has already been presented in the party significance index. Proportionality in elections is confirmed as an important factor. This result may look surprising since it is not directly related to mayors’ party membership. But in countries where the mayor is elected by the council, the method of council election is definitely very important—a more partisan council elected in a proportional system is more likely to nominate a par-tisan mayor. The council election system may also have an indirect impact in countries in which the mayor is directly elected by all voters. Even in this case, a mayor needs to cooperate with the council. We should remember that the position of directly elected mayors in CEE countries is usually relatively weak. For example, they have to rely on council approval in appointing important staff members. However, party mayors have a better chance of success in cooperation with highly partisan councils elected in a pro-portional system. In countries with majoritarian electoral systems, councils are more likely non-partisan and they may cooperate more easily with an independent mayor.
There are also country-specific variables that remain important. Estonia, Romania, Slovakia, and to a lesser extent Bulgaria are more likely to have partisan mayors. In Latvia and Hungary, independent mayors are more likely to be elected, assuming that the impact of other (institutional) factors is eliminated. There is an interesting differ-ence between the impact of the “Poland” variable in both regression models. “Poland”
had a modestly negative impact on the 2003 party significance index, while the impact of the same variable on the 2000 mayors’ partisanship analysis was modestly negative.
The change of sign might be related to the 2002 reform of Polish mayoralty election methods (although, as mentioned earlier, this variable’s high significance has not been confirmed).
Do our results shed light on whether there are parties that govern in Central and East European local politics? The proper answer is—it depends where and when. We have been able to identify countries in which there is a tendency for strong party influence (Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania). But institutional factors also play a role—especially the territorial fragmentation of the local government system and the method of council election.
5. POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION WITHIN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS