Mayors in governance: Heading for efficiency and democracy? The Belgian case

Abstract

In many countries local government is perceived to be shifting towards local governance. This article tries to link three dimensions of governance using data from the Belgian context. While New Public Management tries to improve the efficiency of government, more direct and issue-specific forms of citizen involvement aim at democratic renewal. Strengthening the executive puts leaders in a pivotal position in dealing with the former both in evaluative and deliberative terms. Our evidence for Belgian mayors shows a somewhat conservative attitude towards the studied dimensions of governance. Redefining their role in a strategic direction might provoke a perceived loss of power in an environment only hesitantly adapting to governance. The balance between NPM and democratic renewal is less clear-cut in mayoral belief systems. Different factors seem to explain attitudes on both dimensions.

Notes

1 As Kersting and Vetter (2003: 11–14) note, the perception of such pressure by key decision-makers might outweigh its actual presence as a catalyst of the ‘new reform movement’.

2 Moreover, the related concept of citizenship is redrawn: the citizen is increasingly identified as a consumer of local policy output, a tendency on which we will return later in this article.

3 Of course, we are aware that efficiency enhancement is not solely pursued by introducing NPM. Other measures – e.g. amalgamation of municipalities for economies of scale, devolution of competences towards the municipal level – might provide alternatives for redesigning local management.

4 A more thorough analysis of all dimensions, evolutions and problems with New Public Management can be found in Hood (1991: 3–19). For the purposes of this article the distinction of its core dimensions visible at the local level seems sufficient.

5 At the same time interdependence at the ‘apex’ (Self, 1972) of political and administrative leadership often occurs, allowing chief administrators to play a more ‘political’ role by giving them a voice in the formulation of policy goals and frameworks (e.g. in managerial teams comprised of politicians and top bureaucrats).

6 Box and his colleagues (2001: 613) are quite straightforward on the impact of NPM on democracy: ‘this concept of management has little to do with democracy and democratic values […]. What is left is a core of market orientation to economic efficiency in the public sector’.

7 Such as the high information cost of citizens before being able to participate, the slowing down of the decision-making process, the potential emergence of non-rational or ineffective and inefficient political choices by certain citizens or groups.

8 ‘NPM risks making government much less accountable and accessible to its citizens, despite proclaiming contrary aims and objectives’ (Dunleavy & Hood, 1994: 12).

9 Without, of course, questioning the tensions that might arise from the latter.

10 While the northern region of Flanders shows relatively more openness towards dimensions of governance and the southern region of Wallonia clings more to old arrangements, the overall reform pattern resembles that of many ‘southern’ local government systems (Vetter & Kersting, 2003b: 347–349).

11 The ‘Political Leaders in European Cities’ project was carried out in 17 different European countries and coordinated by the University of Florence (Annick Magnier). While for the comparative part only mayors from municipalities above 10,000 inhabitants were studied, in Belgium all mayors were scrutinised. A standard questionnaire was sent to all mayors in the period April–May 2003 referring to all mayors in office since 2001. The response was quite acceptable (42.3%). Data were representative in terms of region, municipal size and the type of list the mayor was elected on.

12 Mayors could respond on a scale from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree) on the question: ‘How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements?’ Labels in Table 1 refer to the following items: ‘Public–private partnerships and networks should play an equally important role in social problem-solving as public administration and representative decision-making’ (public–private partnerships); ‘There are few benefits from contracting out or privatising services in the municipality’ (privatisation/contracting out – item scores reversed); ‘Local bureaucrats should as far as possible stick to politically defined goals’ (equality in power relations – item scores reversed) and ‘Politicians should only define objectives and control outputs, but never intervene into the task fulfilment of local administration’ (role differentiation). Data represent means (X), standard deviations (S) and the number of valid cases (N). Though some dimensions appeared from factor analysis, none was reliable enough to construct a one-dimensional scale.

13 For ‘principles’ mayors could respond on a scale from 1 (of little importance) to 5 (very important) on the question: ‘People have different ideas about how local democracy should function. Please indicate how important for local democracy you think the following requirements are.’ Labels refer to the following items: Residents should participate actively and directly in making important local decisions (co-producer); ‘Residents should have the opportunity to make their views known before important local decisions are made by elected representatives’ (consult); ‘The results of local elections should be mostly decisive for determining municipal policies’ (voter) and ‘Political representatives should make what they think are the right decisions, independent of the current views of local people’ (subject). For ‘practices’ mayors could express their agreement (see note 14) on the following items: ‘Local referenda lead to high quality public debate’ (referenda) and ‘Political parties are the most suitable arena for the involvement of citizens’ (parties). Data represent means (X), standard deviations (S) and the number of valid cases (N). Though some dimensions appeared from factor analysis, none was reliable enough to construct a one-dimensional scale.

14 Significant relationships are represented in bold.

15 The binary logistic analysis for belonging to the group of mayors relatively open to including non-state actors in public service and relatively tending towards the model of the autonomous administrator included information on the social background of mayors (gender, age, university education, public or private sector background), the territory in which they operated (municipal size, rural character), its region (Flanders or Wallonia), their party label and their reference framework (perceived business world support in elections, perceived influence of the business world in local decision-making and the extent to which the private sector functioned as the reference for developing leadership). The model was significant at the .001-level with Nagelkerke R² = .29 (NPM external) and .24 (NPM internal).

16 With the exception of the reference framework the same variables (note 15) were introduced in a linear regression model using the different items on the principles and practices of democracy as dependent variables. Only significant variation at the .05 level is mentioned. Since we only aim to explore patterns of variation, our argument regarding other factors accounting for variation, standardised regression coefficients or precise levels of significance, are not mentioned.