POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND GOVERNANCE: THE CASE OF SECOND-TIER COUNCILORS IN ROMANIA.

AuthorStanus, Cristina
  1. Introduction

    In contemporary democracies, the shift from local government to local governance is a process involving both structural reforms of local government and a redefinition of the roles of key actors in local politics and policy-making. In the case of local elected officials this re-definition of roles seems centered around accepting they should be less involved in day-to-day administration and more focused on defining the goals to be pursued alongside increased interdependence with relevant local actors (Hansen, 2001). This is consistent with a push toward widespread use of the mechanisms of local participatory democracy. These are, however, perceived to be at odds with the traditional notion of political representation (Hendriks, 2009). So the question remains how local elected officials accommodate political representation with the networked nature of local politics and policy-making and whether there is a linkage between how they see their roles as representatives and their attitudes towards governance.

    Starting from this, the paper sets out to answer two inter-related questions: (1) How does the representational role orientation of Romanian councilors look like? (2) How do Romanian councilors reconcile their representational role orientation with the introduction of governance elements in the Romanian public sector? These questions are approached in the context provided by the second tier of local government in Romania. The paper starts by reviewing literature on political representation and the challenges local governance raises in respect to the relationship between elected officials and citizens. Then, it describes the context and the data used to approach the two questions. The following sections of the paper present and discuss the main results of the analysis.

  2. Literature review

    Political representation defines the relationship between elected officials and voters, its simplest definition emphasizing that representation is the process of making citizens present (Pitkin, 1967). Political representation is concerned with how political and policy decisions are to be made by elected officials at all levels of government (Eulau et al., 1959, p. 745). Hence, there is a strong emphasis on how elected officials see their role (role orientation) and their actual behavior (role behavior). Only more recently (see for example Saward, 2005), the emphasis has shifted towards the represented / the citizens, as well as towards non-electoral forms of political representation.

    The representational role orientation of an elected official comprises expectations related to the rights, duties, and obligations connected with the position of representative (Wessels and Giebler, 2011). Two dimensions define the representational role orientation, the style and the focus of political representation (Eulau et al., 1959; Eulau and Karps, 1977; Saalfeld and Muller, 1997; Wahlke, Eulau and Buchanan, 1962). The style of political representation refers to the particular criterion of judgement a representative is supposed to use when making decisions. Traditionally, the discussion on the representative style of elected officials has centered on the delegate-trustee-politico distinction (Dovi, 2011; Eulau et al., 1959; Eulau and Karps, 1977), which emphasizes the choices of individual elected officials. However, empirical research suggests that this distinction better describes the more individualist American context, as political parties play too much of an important role in building representational linkages in most European countries (the responsible party model, see Bengtsson and Wass, 2011; Thomassen, 1991; Wessels and Giebler, 2011).

    Recent literature puts this discussion in terms of modes of representation defined by two key distinctions: the first opposes representation run from above to representation run from below, while the second opposes ex post and ex ante opportunities by voters to control the activity of their elected representatives (Andeweg, 2003; Andeweg and Thomassen, 2005; Brennan and Hamlin, 1999; Thomassen, 1991; Thomassen, 2013; Verhelst et al., 2014). Four modes of political representation are defined by these dimensions: authorization (which corresponds to the responsible party model and involves representation from above and ex ante control), accountability (which involves representation from above and ex post control), delegation (involves representation from below and ex ante control), and responsiveness (characterizing political representation in the United States, involves representation from below and ex post control) (Andeweg, 2003, p. 152). Other researchers suggest each dimension also includes a neutral position (Verhelst et al., 2014). Local government is thought to be associated with a particular meaning of political representation, where responsiveness and accountability seem to supersede representativeness (Rao, 1998, p. 19), hence we would expect local elected officials to endorse the respective modes of representation.

    The question of whom the representative claims/aims to represent addresses what is known as the focus of representation (Wessels, 2007). The focus of representation is multidimensional, with three main dimensions identified in the literature: (1) the geographical dimension (nation, state, district or other territorial level as the focus of representation); (2) the group dimension (religious, ethnic, economic and ideological /party groups); and (3) the individual dimensions (focused on the representation of individuals) (Wessels, 2007, p. 839). These are analytical categories, in practice we find a mix/overlap of representational focuses of given politicians (Eulau et al., 1959). It has been argued that, in the context of governance, the emphasis shifts from the traditional formal, territorially-defined and electoral constituency to new and more fluid notions of what one representative's political constituency is (Saward, 2005, p. 182).

    The emergence of local governance and its specific mechanisms has fueled the debate on the democratic nature of political representation (Saward, 2005; Sorensen, 2002), as the political system has a role-shaping effect over elected officials (Kuklinski and Elling, 1977; Saalfeld and Muller, 1997; Pateelt, 1997; Wessels, 2007). Governance-oriented reforms of local government in Europe, bring about new roles for all actors involved in local politics and policy-making, starting with the elected officials. Councilors are called upon to take the role of goal-steering decision-makers, formulating and deciding overall goals as well as the financial frame for the local government, in a clear separation between politics and administration (Hansen, 2001, p. 115). Moreover, the notion of representatives constrained by a group affiliation or an interest is seen as problematic in governance networks, as these produce alternative meanings of political representation (Hendriks, 2009, pp. 698-702). It is thus unclear how elected officials accommodate their political representational role orientation to their de facto roles in local governance processes.

    This debate becomes particularly interesting if we focus on the second tier of local government, given its particular positioning between the more easily perceivable by citizens national and local (municipal, first tier) government. The second tier of local government is a relatively unexplored institutional setting (with the notable exceptions of Heinelt and Bertrana, 2011; Bertrana, Egner and Heinelt, 2015). The context for this paper is provided by the second tier of local government (county councils) in Romania, whose key features are briefly described in the following section.

  3. The context

    The post-Communist reconstruction of the second tier of local government in Romania --the county councils--is a process deeply influenced by more than a century of centralist tradition and the high degree of formalism embedded in the Romanian public sector (Stanus and Pop, 2011). In the past two decades Romanian county councils faced the challenge of dealing with administrative and instrumental issues (how to set things up and perform the tasks allocated to them) at the same time with pressure to introduce mechanisms of participatory governance (provide meaningful participation opportunities for citizens). This pressure is related to the fact that the legal framework provides for the direct election of both county presidents (since 2008) and councilors (since 1996), the latter being elected using a proportional representation with closed party lists formula. The pressure has materialized in quite explicit legal provisions which require local governments on both tiers to increase the transparency of the decision-making process and compel them to formally consult local stake-holders before making binding decisions (see for example the provisions of Law no. 544/2001 regarding citizen access to information and Law no. 52/2003 regarding transparency in decision-making). Thus, governance mechanisms are introduced in a top-down, centralist and rather formalist fashion. They are, however, met halfway by the initiatives of the local third sector, which exercises some bottom-up pressure towards making these mechanisms more meaningful. A more challenging aspect is the introduction of metropolitan governance, as part of the wider package of legal provisions concerning inter-municipal cooperation (Pop, Stanus and Suciu, 2007; Pop and Horvath, 2008). Equally challenging, participatory budgeting is introduced by very few Romanian local governments, either by their own initiative or as a result of some bottom up pressure exercised by the local third sector [1]. These mechanisms were introduced against the background of a rather incoherent decentralization process (Dragos and Neamtu, 2007). There have been no significant initiatives to introduce the 'hard' governance-related mechanisms such as co-decision...

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