VARIABLES

The main variables for the three countries under analysis are introduced and described below. They include: the size of municipality, citizens’ participation, citizens’ effective-ness in influencing local matters, and system responsiveeffective-ness.

4.1 Municipality Size

The literature distinguishes between population number and surface area as the two main measures for municipality size (Swianiewicz 2002, 3). Although both of these are valid conceptualizations, population number is used here as the measure for municipality size.

Following Soós and Tóka, municipalities are initially grouped into eight categories based on their population number (2002, 414). The categories include municipalities with inhabitants from 0 to 999, 1,000 to 1,999, 2000 to 4,999, 5,000 to 9,999, 10,000 to 49,999, 50,000 to 99,999, 100,000 to 999,999, and finally, municipalities with a population over 1,000,000. To provide a clear overview and to allow comparability among our country cases, the eight categories are later merged into three: small mu-nicipalities (0–4,999 inhabitants), medium-size (5,000–49,999 inhabitants) and large (over 50,000 inhabitants).

Table 4.1 illustrates the situation in the three countries in our study. In Hungary 54.81% of all municipalities have fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, in Romania only 1.7%, and in Poland none. In the case of municipalities with a population of between 1,000 and 4,999 inhabitants, 69.88% of Romanian, 23.0% of Polish, and 36.59% of

Table 4.1

Municipalities by Population Size and Number of Inhabitants

Hungary 1997 Poland 1996 Romania 1999

Number of municipalities

Total population

category

Number of municipalities

Total population

category

Number of municipalities

Total population

category

Below 999 1,714 (54.81%)

790,737 (7.8%)

— — 52

(1.7%)

658,180 (20.58%) 1,000

–1,999

651 (20.82%)

934,429 (9.2%)

7 (0.3%)

12,234 (0.0%)

388 (13.1%) 2,000

–4,999

493 (15.77%)

1,476,377 (14.6%)

563 (22.7%)

2,235,165 (5.8%)

1,674 (56.78%)

5,581,663 (24.76%) 5,000

–9,999

133 (4.25%)

931,912 (9.2%)

1,078 (43.4%)

7,656,636 (19.8%)

607 (20.59%)

3,981,735 (17.66%) 10,000

–49,999

116 (3.71)

2.271,414 (22.4%)

734 (29.5%)

13,722,206 (35.5%)

180 (6.11%)

3,530,746 (15.66%) 50,000

–99,999

11 (0.35%)

709,971 (7.0%)

56 (2.3%)

3,750,448 (9.6%)

23 (0.78%)

1,778,327 (7.89%) 100,000

–999,999

8 (0.26%)

1,159,135 (11.4%)

45 (1.8%)

11,262,652 (29.1%)

23 (0.78%)

4,987,762 (22.12%) 1,000,000

and over

1 (0.03%)

1,861,383 (18.4%)

— — 1

(0.03%)

2,027,512 (8.99%) Source: Data from Soós and Tóka 2002, 413–414.

Hungarian municipalities fall into this category. This shows that, while over 90% of Hungarian and 71.58% of Romanian municipalities have below 5,000 inhabitants, in Poland only 23% of the municipalities belong to this group. On the other hand, 72.9%

of Polish municipalities have between 5,000 and 49,999 inhabitants, while for Romania the share is 26.7% and for Hungary it is only 7.96%. In all three countries the share of municipalities with a population above 50,000 inhabitants is very small (0.64% for Hungary, 4.1% for Poland, and 1.59% for Romania).

Although the number of very large municipalities (over 50,000) is small in all three countries, their population still amounts to a significant share of the total population. In Hungary, they account for almost 37% of the overall population of the country. In Poland and Romania, 36.6% and 39% of the population respectively lives in large municipalities.

4.2 Citizen Participation

A direct measure of citizen participation is used in several analyses specific to the study of the relationship between municipality size and participation. Authors seeking to capture the elusive concept of citizen participation employ many different measures including simple indicators such as voter turnout, and complex scales comprising a variety of different direct and indirect forms of political participation.

The LGS collected data on five different forms of political participation (see table 4.2), including:

• attendance at public demonstrations concerning local matters

• collection of citizens’ signatures for petitions on various issues related to local politics

• direct meetings between local officials and citizens or groups of citizens on local political matters

• challenges to local government decisions in a court of law or at a higher admin-istrative authority

• proposal writing or written requests by civil society organizations on any public interest question.

The above table presents citizen participation rates for the different types of political participation in the three countries under study as reported by chief administrative offic-ers (CAOs). From their responses we learn that the preferred forms of activity by citizens vary among the countries. In Hungary, civil society proposal writing and formulating written requests are the most preferred forms of citizen participation. The same is true for Poland, but the share of municipalities in which such action was undertaken is 15%

higher than in Hungary. In Romania, civil society proposal writing holds second place at 14.5%, lower than in Hungary and Poland.

The second most common form of participation in Hungary and Poland—requests for meetings between local officials and citizens—presents even more accentuated differ-ences. In Hungary 24% of municipalities requested such meetings, compared to Poland with over 48%. In Romania this is the most preferred type of participation, yet it only occurred in about 20% of municipalities.

The data show that attending public demonstrations and challenging local decisions in a court of a higher administrative authority are the least preferred forms of political participation in all three countries.

The five forms of participation captured by the LGS data are the most common ones, but they exclude other potentially important types such as direct contact with local officials. This fact somehow weakens our own findings. Also, as the data come from CAOs and not directly from the citizens of the given municipalities, we can not adequately evaluate the levels of citizen participation. Citizens’ effectiveness, however, is a different matter and these data are worth considering for that purpose.

4.3 Citizens’ Effectiveness in Influencing Local Decision-making Citizens’ effectiveness in influencing local matters is evaluated according to how much they are able to influence local decision-making. It is a composite measure, including the influence on local decision-making through local entrepreneurs, firms, and busi-ness associations; civic associations, foundations, trade unions, and churches; the local branches of political parties; the print and electronic media; and direct citizen influence.

The alpha reliability test for the scale of citizens’ effectiveness in influencing local matters is 0.7622 for Hungary, 0.7369 for Poland, and 0.7695 for Romania, with item-total correlations for all three countries presented in appendix I.

Although the measurement relies on the evaluations of chief administrative of-ficers from the selected municipalities, the data refer to the direct experiences of the

Table 4.2

Municipalities’ Share in Type of Citizen Participation in Local Politics [%]

Country

Hungary Poland Romania

Public demonstrations 3.0 10.6 7.3

Petitions 12.6 26.5 12.5

Requests for meetings 24.2 48.3 20.3

Challenges to local government decisions 4.4 9.2 5.3

Civil society proposals 37.0 52.4 14.5

Source: LGS, 2001.

respondents (as in the case of citizens’ participation). Therefore, they are substantively more reliable than in the case of CAOs reporting on citizens’ participation levels. Given the data constraints, however, we also include institutional variables that influence the structure of incentives to undertake political participation, i.e., the system’s capacity to respond.

4.4 System Capacity to Respond

The capacity of the system to respond to citizens’ requests and to provide incentives for participation is measured by “expenditure rigidity.” The legal status of municipalities determines the responsibilities they are assigned to perform and therefore sets their level of autonomy in decisions on local matters. Expenditure rigidity is the percentage of own revenues in the total budget of the municipalities as reported by the local officials.

Own revenues are those incomes of municipalities over which they have the authority to define both the pool and the amount of the payable taxes, fees or duties. Thus, all the revenues that are collected at the national level and redistributed to municipalities are excluded from this category. A reason for deciding to define own revenues in this way is that the shared tax systems in these countries are largely biased by the earmarked character of the transfers of the municipality revenue shares.

Similarly, national transfers are largely normative and earmarked. Although they influence the income situation of municipalities, they do not contribute to an increase in their fiscal independence. Instead, in adopting a strongly redistributive system in each country, the intent was to guarantee the minimum provision of basic public services in all municipalities.

Although legally there is no hierarchy among municipalities based on their size, and in theory all municipalities perform similar functions, there is still a certain differentiation based on the peculiarities of different municipalities and their level of fiscal independ-ence. For instance, in Hungary and Romania there are municipalities with county rights, which perform the functions of the County Council within their jurisdiction.

The difference between the two countries lies in the fact that, while in Hungary local governments have the opportunity to decide which noncompulsory responsibilities to assume, the Romanian local governments do not have this choice.

Another important distinction among municipalities is their urban or rural char-acter. In the Romanian system, rural municipalities have only limited sources of own revenues compared to urban municipalities. This is due to the fact that a large share of the population in rural municipalities is active in various occupations related to agriculture. Under the current shared taxation system, a certain percentage of all in-come taxes collected in their jurisdictions is redistributed to local governments. This amounted to 35% in 2000 and 36.5% in 2001. But since agricultural income is not

taxable, the amounts collected by rural municipalities as a share of local income are rather small. Various central government and county council equalization transfers are meant to compensate for this lack of funds. Nevertheless, these often come in the form of earmarked transfers, which determine both the scope of funds and the amount spent on specific budget lines.

An important consequence of this is to reduce the policy space available for mu-nicipalities and the ability of citizens to influence decisions; thus, we can theorize that the higher the expenditure rigidity of municipalities, the less effective citizens are in influencing local matters. On the other hand, from the findings of the research it seems that the relationship between municipality size and revenue rigidity is substantial or very strong for each country.

In document Faces of Local Democracy (Pldal 180-185)