Does local autonomy facilitate local government reform initiatives? Evidence from Switzerland

• Date: 14 May 2018
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-01-2017-0016
• Pages: 426-447
• Published date: 14 May 2018
• Author: Nicolas Keuffer
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management

Does local autonomy facilitate

local government reform

initiatives? Evidence from

Switzerland

Nicolas Keuffer

Institut de Hautes Etudes en Administration Publique (IDHEAP),

Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the initiatives of local governments to

launch modernisation processes are facilitated by local autonomy, which is increasingly important in both the

theory and practice of public policy and management.

Design/methodology/approach –Local government reforms are distinguished according to the

institutional structure at which they are directed and local autonomy is assessed as a multidimensional

concept. Drawing on a multilevel analysis of the Swiss case, this paper combines data stemming from a

survey conducted at the local tier with secondary data from the regional tier.

Findings –The main empirical findings are threefold. First, when local governments undertake managerial

or political reform initiatives, their autonomy with respect to higher levels of government matters. Second, it is

not local autonomy but rather the perception of structural problems that is the force driving territorial

reforms. Third, it is not the autonomy enjoyed by local governments vis-à-vis local factors, but rather the

pressures stemming from that context that may lead to reforms.

Originality/value –By adopting a comparative approach to local autonomy, this paper shows that local

governments which have sufficient latitude for local policy making are likely to take initiatives to improve

service delivery in accordance with local preferences.

Keywords Local autonomy, Local government reform, Switzerland, Multilevel analysis

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

This paper focuses on the connections between local autonomy and local government

reforms, which have rarely been examined according to some scholars (Bouckaert and

Kuhlmann, 2016a; Lidström, 1998; Wolman, 2008; Kersting and Vetter, 2003; Pollitt and

Bouckaert, 2011). It examines development paths of local public sector reforms in a

comparative perspective, namely, the “need for more contextual country-case specific

information to understand reforms, their triggers and effects”and “the elaboration of more

comprehensive comparative databases, indicators, indices, and statistics”(Bouckaert and

Kuhlmann, 2016a, pp. 352-353).

Faced with a growing complexity of tasks and a decrease in the corresponding resources

at their disposal to provide them, with the trend of globalisation and with the increasing

level of citizens’demands, many European local governments have since the 1990s

embarked on public sector reforms (Kersting and Vetter, 2003). These are considered as

change processes which have different phases such as the discussion, decision, practice and

results phases (Pollitt, 2002). The focus in this paper is on the emergence of reforms at the

local level and more specifically on the initiatives of local governments to launch change

projects, without considering the implementation processes, the practice or the results.

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 31 No. 4, 2018

pp. 426-447

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-01-2017-0016

Received 5 January 2017

Revised 2 June 2017

26 September 2017

3 November 2017

22 December 2017

Accepted 24 December 2017

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0951-3558.htm

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the IRSPM conference 2015 in Birmingham, England.

The author would like to thank Andreas Ladner, Boris Wernli and the three anonymous reviewers for

their helpful comments.

426

IJPSM

31,4

Following Bouckaert and Kuhlmann (2016b), local public sector reforms are conceptualised

as institutional policies. Hence distinctions should be made between changing activities

based on the institutional structure they are directed at and the objectives they pursue: first,

administrative reforms such as internal managerial transformations, external

reorganisations of local service delivery or territorial restructuring, whose aim is to

improve the supply of goods by local governments; and second, rearrangements of local

politics, targeted at strengthening local democracy. Furthermore, it is assumed that these

reforms are influenced by the degree of autonomy that the local authorities have in carrying

out their tasks (Ladner, 2017; Caulfield and Larsen, 2002). This idea of local autonomy as a

precious asset for local governments is the subject of the European Charter of Local

Self-Government, the preamble of which states that “local authorities [are] endowed with

democratically constituted decision-making bodies and possessing a wide degree of

autonomy with regard to their responsibilities, the ways and means by which those

responsibilities are exercised and the resources required for their fulfilment”(Council of

Europe, 1985). Drawing upon the tangible criteria developed in the Charter and the

literature, local autonomy is apprehended in this paper as a multidimensional concept in

both the vertical and horizontal directions of decentralisation.

Having varied kinds of local government reforms as dependent variables and multiple

types of localautonomy as independent variables, the questionthat this paper aims to answer

is: to what extent are reform initiatives of local governments facilitated by the autonomy of

those local governments? The perspective adopted, thus,consists in considering the potential

consequences of local autonomy. For Wolman and Goldsmith (1992), this involves going

beyond the underlying normative rationales of local autonomy and asking whether the

politics of autonomous local governments “have an independent impact on the well-being of

their citizens”(p. 45). Indeed, by achieving their aims local government reforms may affect

citizens’daily lives. To follow this “freedom to approach”(Pratchett, 2004, p. 365), it is

necessaryto look more closely at the causes of the different localgovernment reform activities

(Wolman, 2008).

In order to answer the research question and assess what type of local autonomy affects

what kind of local government reform initiatives, this paper uses a comparative research

design, with local governments as units of analysis. The analyses are conducted in

Switzerland relying on local (municipal) level data stemming from a comprehensive survey

of all Swiss municipal secretaries and regional (cantonal) level data and across policy fields.

In general, Switzerland is known for its stability, most certainly the result of a kind of

cultural scepticism towards sweeping change and of system-inherent institutional impeding

factors (Kriesi, 1999). Since the second half of the 1990s, however, subnational governments

have been overwhelmed by the execution and the financing of public tasks and have

gradually lost their autonomy. At the lowest level especially, Swiss municipalities

have faced a number of challenges, such as the rising complexity and variety of tasks at a

time when their capacity for action was falling (Ladner et al., 2000), or increasingly strong

demands from citizens for greater effectiveness of public action (Geser, 1997). In response to

these challenges, they have considerably amplified their reform activities in a bid to improve

their administrative efficiency and strengthen democratic participation, falling in with a

broad trend towards change in European local governments (Kersting and Vetter, 2003).

Being a federal country, Switzerland presents a particularly interesting case when it

comes to explaining the connections between local autonomy and local government reforms.

First, Swiss municipalities enjoy far-reaching autonomy in their internal organisation; they

have room to adopt reforms they judge appropriate; they depend on their own financial

resources; and they enjoy diverse means to influence political decisions in European

comparison (Ladner et al., 2016). Second, their size, importance and politico-administrative

settings are characterised by extreme diversity (Horber-Papazian, 2006). Third, citizen

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Local

government

reform

initiatives