Instances of decentralization in East-Central Europe: operationalization, taxonomy and applications on local political elites' outlook.

• Jurisdiction: Rumania
• Date: 01 January 2014
• Author: Marin, Roxana

Introduction

The problematique of the decentralization of public services towards the local communities has represented a perennial preoccupation on the agenda and within the programs of the post-communist governments, while its legislative realization and, further, the implementation of such a policy have generated remarkably diverse--here and there, controversial--outcomes: on the one hand, observers and decision-makers praise the benefits of "local autonomy" and independent public policy at the local level, accompanied by a more meaningful citizens' participation, on the other hand, contestations are voiced through the prism of what is seemed to be a gradual "impoverishment" of the small-to-medium sized municipalities, in the absence of the financial support provided by the state budget. The question of decentralization is much more conspicuous in periods of crisis, as it puts a considerable pressure on the financial situation of the local communities which, in a decentralized and devoluted administrative system--hence in the absence of the significant sums recouped from the state budget--, find themselves forced to collect appreciable taxes in the local budget from a population increasingly impoverished by the effects of economic fluctuations. In this sense, the degree of de facto decentralization is probably most relevantly illustrated by the average proportion from the local budget of all the administrative-territorial units on the area of a state, ensured out of its own, independent sources, by the municipalities themselves: within those states with a decentralized administrative tradition, the budgetary proportion resulting from the collection of taxes from within the local community can constitute up to 60% of the total of the municipality's budgetary revenues (e.g. Poland); on the other hand, in countries administratively centralized, the municipalities are exposing serious problems in the management of local finances, collecting under 30% of the budgetary revenues, while the rest of the income emanates from the state budget. This is the case of Romania as well, where the successive attempts of decentralization failed to prepare the small communities (i.e. the communes, the small-to-medium sized towns) in efficiently collecting and effectively administering the local taxes. Meanwhile, after the 1989 momentum, the local communities have been entrusted with increasingly broad administrative attributions (e.g. the administration of schools and hospitals, the management of public security, social welfare, etc.), without the improvement of the capacity of collecting taxes in an autonomous fashion.

Such municipalities confronted an impoverishment of the local political elites' abilities to initiate and implement local development projects (particularly, in the sphere of infrastructural development and of economic growth through investments and attraction of private capital); such a circumstance has the unfortunate "merit" to constitute itself into a fertile soil for unprofitable public venue, for the exercise of personal influences at the local level, for corruption and the perpetuation of "patron-client"-styled relations (cf. Grzymata-Busse, 2007).

In this context, the present paper attempts to address the puzzle of d-/re-defining and operationalizing the notion of "decentralization," and to further discuss the impact of this process, in practice, on the outlook of the local decision-makers. As will be shown in the following sections, there has been a general neglect in the literature regarding the effects of decentralization on local leadership in the still young democracies of East-Central Europe, the focus being shifted instead towards infant democracies outside Europe (China, India, Latin America, etc.).

Theoretical discussions on the concept of "decentralization"

"Administrative decentralization" points to "the existence of some local public persons, appointed by the territory's community, with their own attributions, who directly intervene in the management and the administration of the community's problems, including local autonomy' (Apostol Tofan, 2008, p. 253-255), a definition which poses the problem of the degree of decentralization that is actually favorable to a democratic construct and to an efficient administration, considering different factors (e.g. the traditions and the history, the area and the population of the state, the dispersion degree of the inhabitants, the economic conditions and the political context, etc.).

Equally dilemmatic remains also the convenient operationalization of the concept of "decentralization." Adverting on the major discrepancies between "administrative decentralization" and "political decentralization," (3) from a legal perspective, Dana Apostol Tofan (2008, p. 255) distinguishes between (a) "territorial decentralization," i.e. "the existence of some elected authorities, at the level of the territorial-administrative units, authorities that dispose of general material competence"), and (b) "technical decentralization" or "decentralization through services," i.e. "the existence of some moral persons of public law, that perform specific public services, distinct from the bulk of public services provided for by the state authorities."

All these developments and dynamics are primarily elite-generated, but, in turn, they tend to lead to important changes in the local elites' outlook, strategy prioritization, value orientation, and attitudes (Mitra, 1991, p. 390-413; Shawkat Ali, 1987, pp. 787-799; Crain & Rosenthal, 1966, pp. 169-195). Moreover, different degrees of decentralization and diverse forms of decentralized policies are prone to determine variations in the local elites' profile, behavior or attitudinal patterns (Yates, 1973). Conversely, Paul Carnegie contends that, generally, structural and "institutional reform requires a modification of elite behavior, however slightly" (2008/2009, p. 518).

Concretely, decentralization needs the simultaneous fulfillment of the following prerequisites: the existence of a local community with its own necessary material means (i.e. a local budget), the existence of local decision-making bodies elected by the community (not by the central authorities, which otherwise exert some sort of administrative endorsement for the limit between local problems and those of general interests not to be breached.) (Fesler, 1968, p. 370-379).

The different types of decentralization bear as fundamenta different criteria: organizationally, (1) "vertical" ("the power dispersion to bottom on the chain of authority"), and (2) "horizontal" ("the transfer of some responsibilities to particular organizations outside the central administrative structure"); structurally, (1) "functional" ("the recognition of some autonomy of the institutions and public services situated at the local level"), and (2) "territorial" ("the recognition of some autonomy of the local communities" per se). Generally, decentralization is defined as comprising two steps (Stoica, 2003, p. 65-66): (a) "de-concentration" (in its turn, being either of "vertical structure," with an "unintegrated local administration," or of "prefectorial structure," with an "integrated local administration"), and (b) "devolution" ("the power transfer from the central government to the regional institutions," as an intermediary stage between the central governance and the local one. Devolution can be either "administrative" ("the regional institutions only implement the policies decided upon at the centre"), or "legislative" (i.e. "the establishment of elected regional assemblies, invested with political responsibilities and with a certain fiscal independence, a situation which confer them a high degree of maneuver and decision-making in their area of responsibility") (Heywood, 1997).

Most recently, Jean-Paul Faguet (2012) refers to "decentralization" from two dimensions, bearing in mind the example of Bolivia: "First, it [decentralization] encompasses reforms such as deconcentration, devolution, and delegation that in incentive terms are fundamentally different [...] Second, the word conceals great variation in the extent to which reform is effectively implemented across different countries" (Faguet, 2012, p. 2).

Similarly to Triesman (2002), in a well-documented contribution on the evolution of the concept, Pollitt (2005) presents a quite rich typology of decentralization, which contains, most notably, the distinctions between (a) "competitive" (i.e. authority parceled out on the basis of competition) versus "non-competitive" decentralization (i.e. authority parceled out on the basis of allocation); (b) "internal" (i.e. "authority parceled out within an existing organization") versus "external" decentralization or "devolution" (i.e. "authority transferred to other [possibly new] organizations") (Pollitt, 2005, p. 375).

There is a constant concern within the literature regarding the new administrative developments, especially decentralization, and their impact on the outlook and orientations of the local/ regional political elite. Such a concern has been focused primarily on Latin America, South Asia (Beard, Miraftab, and Silver, 2008; Smoke, Gomez, and Peterson, 2006; Burki, Perry, and Dillinger, 1999; Escobar-Lemmon, 2003; Bardhan, 2002; Garman, Haggard, and Willis, 2001; Falleti, 2005, etc.), and Africa (Cottingham, 1970), while the topic has been generally neglected for the developing democracies of East-Central Europe.

Dora Orlansky (2000, p. 196) discusses the impact of decentralization upon the power-sharing between the central and the local administrative layers and upon the extent of political power and responsibility local elites are expected to exert. Discussing a series of examples from Africa and South Asia, Devarajan et al. (2009, p. 118-119) refer to the dangers of elite isolation with the increase in decentralized communities and to shifts in delivery of public...