![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
In selecting the United Kingdom/England, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain and Hungary as comparative cases, and in focusing on three institutional tracks (local leadership, internal administration and external operation), this article first discusses, on the one hand, whether local government has been institutionally strengthened, and on the other, whether governance-type actor networks have expanded in the countries under consideration and whether, across-countries, this developments has shown convergence or divergence. Secondly, it addresses the question of whether the two currents (strengthening of traditional local government and expansion of local governance networks) are conflicting or complementary.
Notes
1 Within the conceptually and terminologically more complex and quite fluid governance debate a meaningful distinction can be made between the analytical-descriptive understanding which aims at identifying actors, institutions and structures, on the one hand, and a prescriptive-normative understanding which envisages the capacity to influence and ‘steer’ governance structures, see Wollmann Citation2006).
2 The UK consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The following text largely refers to England (with 87 per cent of the UK population).
3 In the case of Land of Nordrhein-Westfalen, see , footnote 4
4 In the case of Land of Rheinland-Pfalz, see , footnote 4
5 It should be added that, buttressing the remarkably high degree of local autonomy, the local revenue stems predominantly from locally levied (income) taxes.
6 The federal level is constitutionally barred from having any administrative structures of its on in the subnational space.
7 For interpreting the pertinent situation in the U.K./England one needs to take into account that the respective data (14 percent) pertains to both tiers of local government.
8 In England the share of state grants is, by comparison, very extended (amounting to almost 50 per cent– nota bene: relating to both local government tiers) which hints at England's high degree of centralisation.
9 The source refers to an indicator-based data collection which has been compiled and published (also on the internet), since the late 1980s on an annual basis, by Sweden's local government association (along with Sweden's Statistical State Office). It provides regular (bench-mark type) monitoring of the spending of all 290 Swedish municipalities on a broad scope of local activities and services (for references see also Wollmann Citation2008a, p. 228, 2008b, p. 329 ff).
10 For an analogous interpretation in a similar argumentative context see Wollmann Citation2010c, Hooghe and Marks Citation2003, p. 240, Mayntz Citation2003, p. 31–32.
