Size and Local Democracy: the Case of Czech Municipal Representatives

Abstract

The municipal structure of the Czech Republic experienced a wave of fragmentation after the fall of the communist regime. As a result, most Czech municipalities today have populations of only a few hundred inhabitants. This situation creates specific conditions for the democratic functioning of local representative bodies. In this paper we focus on two features of Czech local government. First, we deal with electoral competitiveness in Czech municipalities; second, we analyse councillors' accountability to voters, their readiness to stand for re-election and their electoral success in successive elections. Based on an analysis of data on individual candidates and elected councillors in four successive terms, we demonstrate that the willingness to stand for election and re-election does not decrease over time; however, the choice among different candidates is limited in the smallest municipalities. Thus, the data show a reduced willingness to stand for re-election and an extraordinarily high chance of re-election in smaller municipalities. This finding weakens the general assumption about higher accountability of elected officials in small municipalities. On a more general level, we conclude that Czech local government has some features of small political systems with infrequent occurrence of major election conflicts.

Key Words:

• Local councillors
• size of municipality
• incumbents
• competitiveness
• the Czech Republic

Notes

This paper was written within the framework of two projects funded by the Czech Science Foundation (403/08/421, 403/09/1779).

In 1994 elections were not held in the proper term in just under one hundred other municipalities because no candidate list was submitted. All the data come from the Czech Statistical Office and, with the exception of the first item of information, are part of information contained on servers www.volby.cz and www.czso.cz. The numbers of elected councils do not include elections to city quarter councils. See for example, Volby do zastupitelstev obcí 1990–2006 (2007).

The municipal budget is derived from the size of a municipality. In hundreds or thousands of small municipalities, not even the function of the mayor has been fully professionalised (cf. Guérin and Kerrouche 2008).

After the wave of dissolutions passed, Czech mayors were asked, within the framework of the international survey Local Democracy and Innovation II (LDI 1997), about the hypothetical possibility of the reverse process: ‘Imagine a situation in which the authorities suggested merging the municipality where you are now mayor with one or more neighbouring municipalities. Do you think this would be…?’ Two thirds of mayors from municipalities with a population below two thousand saw this proposal as bad or very bad; on the contrary, two thirds of mayors from towns with a population over 50,000 saw such a proposal as good or very good. Six years later, 60 per cent of mayors of Czech towns with a population over 10,000 agreed with the statement ‘Small municipalities should be merged, in order to increase efficient administration’ (POLLEADER 2003).

Problems with IMC in other countries – high transaction costs, financial and personnel duplicities, indirect decision-making and lack of transparency etc. – are discussed, for example, by Swianiewicz (2010) and Wollmann (2010).

Kjaer (2007) analyses the falling number of candidates in Danish local elections, but he does so in a totally different context: that of a highly consolidated structure of local self-government.

This term is used to refer to elections where voters have no other choice than to approve a presented candidate list.

The same is true when an individual runs as an independent candidate. The effects of this provision and details regarding the development of the election laws governing municipal elections were analysed, for example, by Kostelecký (2007) and Jüptner (2008).

Since 2002 there is a five per cent election threshold for gaining seats.

This measure has been in place since the 1994 elections. In the first elections in the fall of 1990 it was the absolute number of received votes that governed the division of seats within the candidate list.

Electoral parties are candidate lists of political parties and movements, associations of independent candidates or individual independent candidates. An electoral party can also be constituted by various coalitions and combinations of these actors.

Seen critically, not even a higher number of electoral parties, or the excess of candidate supply over demand (seats) always ensures actual competitiveness of elections. An obstacle may be in the ‘partification’ of the local political system where ‘parties handle recruitment procedures and structure decision-making, but do not fiercely oppose each other’ (Bäck 2006, p. 149).

Calculations in this study are based on the data of the Czech Statistical Office, which publishes a list of candidates and elected councillors in each election. The data about the number of candidates and council seats in individual municipalities are fairly easily taken over from the Czech Statistical Office data. The preparation of other data for the data set Zastupitelstva českých měst a obcí 1994–2006 (Municipalities of Czech Towns and Municipalities 1994–2006) demanded a more complicated procedure. Lists of candidates were compared with lists of elected councillors in individual municipalities and various elections, and identical names were identified. Using this method it is possible to quite reliably ascertain a range of information about councillors – their readiness to stand for re-election, their election success or the general personnel stability of councils. A problem may arise if a whole name of a councillor changes during an election term (e.g., due to marriage). This, however, occurs in a minimum number of cases, and the error rate is thus very low.

It is the smallest councils with five to seven seats that are being elected in municipalities with the same number of candidates and elected seats. The new amendment to the Act on the Elections into Municipal Councils (Section 22 of Act No. 491/2001 Coll.) made it possible in these municipalities to list on the candidate list one or two extra candidates than is the number of elected councillors. In this way the lawmaker has striven to prevent situations when the withdrawal of even a very small number of elected representatives leads to the abolition of a whole council because there is no one to replace the councillors who stepped down. This change reduced the number of ‘contest free’ municipalities by those where electoral parties made use of the new legislative opportunity. However, by comparing the 2002 and 2006 elections it appears that even without this new provision the percentage of this type of municipalities would not increase any further.

In municipalities with a population over 2,000 inhabitants, the number of candidates equalled the number of elected councillors during the four election terms only twice.

For an impact of legislative changes concerning the number of councillors, see for example Ryšavý (2006b).

For the purposes of calculation we categorise the population size of municipalities into ten categories, thereby limiting the influence of several extremely large cities on the results of the calculations.

From the above-mentioned analyses we know that in the 2002 and 2006 elections the number of candidates in approximately one half of municipalities did not exceed double the elected seats.

The data come from two waves of the survey ‘Changes of Municipal Assemblies in European Perspective’, which was part of the international project Municipal Assemblies in European Local Governance (www.maelg.eu). In 2008, council members of all towns with a population of more than 10,000 inhabitants were addressed, through mayors. One year later the study was expanded to include council members from one third of municipalities with populations between 3,000 and 10,000. A total of 629 completed questionnaires were collected from the towns with a population over 10,000 inhabitants; among the smaller municipalities we received reaction from 417 council members. The questionnaire return rate was low in both municipality size types (larger municipalities 17.4 per cent, smaller municipalities 22.2 per cent) but did not differ significantly from results in neighbouring countries (Poland, Germany, and Austria). The sets of answers from council members also closely correspond to well-known characteristics of council members elected in the 2006 municipal elections (municipality size; age, sex and political affiliation of representatives).

In the case of responses from 1991 this is the category 2 to 10,000 people. The second wave of the MAELG survey (2009) concerned councillors from municipalities with 3,000 to 10,000 people.

A shift from a minority to majority willingness between the first and second election terms was proven by Illner (2001) in the case of Czech mayors.

The most frequently mentioned option in 1991 (too much quarrelling) was not included in the 2008/2009 questionnaire. Similarly, the reason ‘I have done my citizen duty’ appeared only in the 2008/2009 version, and not in 1991.

Municipalities with ten to twenty thousand inhabitants stand out which show a greater degree of councillors' willingness to stand for re-election.

The declared willingness to stand for re-election grows with the size of the municipality in other European countries as well, such as in Italy, Spain, Austria and Sweden. Traditionally the highest degree of those who want to leave local politics after the end of their term in office, was recorded among Norwegian councillors (40%, cf. Aars and Offerdal 1998). The situation was similar in Swedish and Israeli municipalities with 37 %. On the contrary, in Austria and Greece only 18 % of respondents declared they would leave (MAELG 2010).

Strictly speaking, the number of those who do not stand for re-election can be greater than the volume of voluntary retirement. This could happen if a councillor cannot find a candidate list that would accept him as a candidate. These are obviously unique cases. Resignation may also occur if a candidate does not get to the front places on the candidate list. In such a case it is possible to stand for re-election for another electoral party. Kyloušek (2008) studied this phenomenon at the level of municipal quarters of the second largest Czech city of Brno.

A smaller number of ‘returnees’ can appear among challengers who were not present in the council for one or two terms. To ascertain all of these people in all Czech municipalities is very difficult and beyond the scope of this study.

In 1998 the social democratic party gained in large cities and the spectrum of right wing parties changed quite significantly. In many large cities the main right-wing and left-wing parties entered into ideologically heterogeneous coalitions which resulted in an increased success rate for these parties' incumbents.

Of 82 municipalities approximately 40 per cent had a population of less than 10,000, 40 per cent had a population between 10,000 and 50,000, and 20 per cent of municipalities had a population over 50,000 inhabitants.

On the contrary, since the time of Prewitt's research incumbents' re-election success seems to have increased in US cities. See for example Krebs (1998, p. 922)

In most small municipalities, the mayor is not even a full-time local politician. On the contrary in large cities, both the mayor and his deputies, but also other members of the executive board, are often full time politicians. The link between the level of professionalisation and so-called volunteerism, as well as other similar relationships, was analysed by Prewitt and Eulau (1970).

Local politicians in regional councils were studied, for example, by Ryšavý (2007). The high measure of ambition among mayors of many Czech cities was underscored by Kjaer (2006).

Ryšavý (2006c) points to the fact that both the structure of representatives and local ruling coalitions, as well as the attitudes of local representatives do not attest to a growing degree of politisation of local politics, which is something that scholars studying the recovery of local self-government in post-communist Europe were expecting.

Among representatives in municipalities with a population between five and ten thousand people, the ratio of agreement and not-agreement was almost equal (29 per cent: 32 per cent). In municipalities with a population between ten and twenty thousand, agreement clearly predominated (45 per cent: 24 per cent). In municipalities with more than fifty thousand inhabitants, more than half of representatives agreed (61 per cent: 6 per cent). The remainder to 100 per cent are the responses of those who did not opt either for agreement or disagreement (MAELG 2008/2009).