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Abstract
Local autonomy and national equality are conflicting political values. Finding the balance between autonomy and equality is a difficult challenge for local leaders in multi-level government systems everywhere. This article aims to find factors that explain the attitudes of local representatives in these matters. The results show that left–right ideology, party interest and local economic interest all have substantial effects on the representatives’ attitudes. Representatives on the right are generally more positive to local autonomy and more critical to equalisation compared to representatives on the left, but the ideological stance of right-wing representatives depends on the economic strength of their municipality. Left-wing representatives are less affected by local economic interests. Representatives of all colours are more positive to increasing local autonomy when they are part of a local ruling majority. The study builds on data from a survey of all local representatives in Sweden.
Notes
1 However, spending levels in autonomous municipalities do not always vary as much as one might expect. One possible explanation for this comes from the field of fiscal decentralisation (in the tradition of Tiebout (Citation1956) and Oates (Citation1972)), which regards municipalities as competitors on a market where citizens and businesses are ‘customers'. The outcomes of such competitions are heavily debated, but some researchers have suggested that competition could under certain conditions lead to convergence rather than divergence of tax rates and service levels, for example in a race-to-the-bottom (e.g. Stewart, Citation1977). But the explanatory value of competition theories in the Nordic context is uncertain (cf. Edmark and Ågren, Citation2008). And a recent study from a Scandinavian case (Norway) has proved that increased spending discretion, when granted to municipalities, does indeed allow public-good levels to vary and adjust in response to local demands (Borge, Brueckner and Rattsø, Citation2014).
2 The Swedish equalisation system has no official name and therefore no simple English translation. In the most recent government commission concerned with the system, several similar terms were used, most prominently: “The system for municipal economic equalisation” [Swedish: systemet för kommunalekonomisk utjämning] (Statens offentliga utredningar Citation2011:39). Since the 1990s, the term ‘Robin Hood tax' has been used as an informal and illustrative name for the system. The term originated from the fact that rich municipalities paid a fee—‘were taxed’—and poor municipalities received grants. In most debates and news reports on this subject, ‘Robin Hood tax' is used, and it is the name of the system that is used by most Swedes. It should be added that the character of Robin Hood is nowhere mentioned in the official papers.
3 Another possible interaction effect relating to the relationship between ideology and party interest could be that the effects of ideology depend on whether or not the representatives are supporters of the national government. It might be easier for representatives to accept an intervening state when their party is ruling the country. In order to test this assumption, we need data on representatives’ attitudes from at least two election periods where the composition of the national government has shifted. Unfortunately no such data is available at the moment.
4 The full questions were: here follow a number of proposals that have occurred in the political debate. What is your opinion on each of these? (1) Reduce national influence on local affairs, (2) Aim to create service equality among municipalities in the whole country, (3) Reduce the economic equalisation between municipalities and counties with strong and weak tax bases.
5 A correlation analysis produces expected relationships between the three questions: support for national equality is negatively correlated with support for local autonomy (r = −.15). Support for national equality is also negatively correlated with support for reducing the Robin Hood tax (−.08), while there is a positive correlation between reduced Robin Hood tax and increased local autonomy (.13). These correlation values are, though all statistically significant on the .01-level, surprisingly weak.
6 The full question was: “Sometimes it is said that political opinions can be placed on a left–right scale. Where do you place yourself on such a left–right scale?”, and the responses were given on an 11-grade scale from 0 ‘definitely on the left' to 10 ‘definitely on the right', with 5 indicating ‘neither left nor right'. An alternative indicator for ideology could have been party affiliation, especially since the Swedish party system is heavily based on the left–right scale. However, the correlation between party affiliation and the subjective left–right position is Eta = 0.88, and the two variables could not be included into the same analyses due to multicollinearity. A control analysis shows that the single variable ‘position on the left–right scale' generally produces better fitted models than ‘party affiliation'. Furthermore, the single variable for left–right position makes analyses of interaction effects more straightforward.