Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Councillor’s Dilemma between Strong Mayors and Citizens’ Needs

Abstract

Councillors appear to suffer from a legitimacy crisis vis-à-vis a stronger and more professionalised executive on the one hand and the new challenges presented by participatory democracy on the other. Since the early 1990s several reforms in Europe have fostered strong local executives and introduced directly elected mayors, envisaging for laymen councillors a role of steering and scrutiny. This has often translated into a weakened role whereby councillors often feel bypassed. By the same token new participatory initiatives have gained much popularity, often reinforcing the direct relationship between the mayor and the local community, while councillors struggle to renew their role vis-à-vis the citizens. This paper examines the case of Italy to draw conclusions on how councillors perceive their role after the reforms. Findings are based on data from four medium-sized Italian cities characterised by different socio-economic contexts and political culture: Trento in Trentino-Alto Adige, Prato in Tuscany, Sassari in Sardinia, and Lecce in Puglia. The paper argues for a rethinking of the councillor’s role by increasing the influence of council committees. Participatory processes could represent an important opportunity for councillors to strengthen their role of steering and scrutiny and re-engage with the local community, as they reinvent themselves as caseworkers, advocates, or facilitators.

Key Words:

• Participatory democracy
• councillors
• mayors
• professionalisation
• local politics

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ed Page, Colin Copus, Karin Bottom, Jonathan Hopkin and the anonymous LGS reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am indebted to all the people in Trento, Prato, Lecce and Sassari who kindly agreed to be interviewed and supported this research.

Notes

1. The European Charter of Local Self-Government reiterates that public policy-making should, whenever possible, be devolved to public authorities that are closest to the citizens (art.43), following the principle of subsidiarity.

2. These cases are part of a larger study on SP, based on findings drawn from interviews with 175 institutional, private and social stakeholders who were involved in the process. This paper is based on interviews with political stakeholders only (i.e. majority and opposition councillors and mayors) to highlight the councillors’ perception of the participatory process and their understanding of their ‘new’ role of steering and scrutiny.

3. Council and executive resolutions (available online or through the local council’s archive and covering the period from the start of the participatory process to its conclusion) helped to assess the involvement of the council in the participatory process as well as in other administrative decisions during the same period. Local newspapers helped to assess councillors’ visibility during the participatory process and more generally on local issues. Interviews were designed to elicit information on how councillors perceived their involvement in the participatory process but they also explored their relationship with the executive.

4. In Trento and Prato both the current and former mayors were interviewed, since in these two cities it was the former mayor that introduced the participatory initiatives under study. All interviews were on average one hour long and were conducted in Italian.

5. This method represents a mixture of the most similar and most different analysis, or J.S Mills’ joint method of agreement and difference (Seawright and Gerring 2008).

6. Some of the German Laender under American occupation after WWII (notably Bavaria) introduced elected mayors after the restoration of local government in 1949, under the pressure of the USA that tried to replicate a similar system as the American one.

7. Direct elections of mayors were introduced in Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, and Ukraine in the early 1990s, in Hungary in 1994, in Poland in 2002, and more recently in Croatia, in 2009; Czech Republic opted for mayors appointed by local councillors, but with extensive executive powers (Baldersheim, Illner, and Wollmann 2003; Denters and Rose 2005; Fenwick and Elcock 2005).

8. The municipal executive (giunta comunale) under Italian law (267/2000 art.36) includes the mayor, who is also the president of the giunta and a number of assessori (local ministers) appointed by the mayor. The number of assessori has to be one-fourth of the overall number of councillors with a maximum number of 12 members, including the mayor. Under art.28 267/2000, the giunta carries out all the functions of government, while the council exerts functions of steering and scrutiny.

9. When a councillor is appointed assessore, she has to resign her council seat. The mayor’s resignation also entails the dissolution of the council. The law introduces run-off voting and the majoritarian rule as the lists linked to the elected mayor win 60% of the seats. If the mayor is elected at the first round the coalition needs to have at least 40% of the votes in order be entitled to the majority premium (law 120/1999).

10. ‘If they exercise their office on a full-time basis, public sector employees may choose which type of remuneration they prefer – either their preceding salary or the compensation system that is linked to their office’ (Guérin and Kerrouche 2008, 190).

11. Under the two Bassanini laws (59/1997 and 127/1997) ‘administrative federalism’ is introduced, whereby the mayor appoints public service managers. As in other western European countries, these laws followed new ideals of public management (Baccetti 2008), whereby the common narrative held that institutional changes could give local leaders a more clear-cut role in setting strategies and a vision of local development (Rao 1993; Berg and Rao 2005).

12. In Italy, the figure of the ombudsman (difensore civico) was first introduced at the local and provincial level by law 142/1990 art. 8 and later strengthened with laws 1997/59 and 1997/127 (the so-called Bassanini laws), as a mediator between citizens and the public administration. Several cities have recently abolished this figure at the local level, claiming that it was redundant vis-à-vis the same role at the provincial and regional levels.

13. The steering committees (commissioni consiliari) are defined under Law 267/2000 as an instrument to facilitate the Council’s work. They carry out preliminary examination of issues for discussion in the Council (i.e. planning; culture and education; social care and health services; environment; budget; statutory regulations). Committee members are nominated by the council according to proportional criteria, so that every political party/group in the Council is represented. The president and vice-president are elected by the Council.

14. The appeal of participatory arrangements as a way of increasing legitimacy (as well as accessing regional and EU funds) is widespread across the political spectrum: in Lecce the right-wing administration encouraged several participatory processes; in Prato the new right-wing administration that took power in 2009 engaged local civil society (traditionally left-wing voters) in a bottom-up participatory initiative in order to increase its support base and tap into the expertise of local civil society (Bussu and Bartels 2014).

15. Councillor when the SP was launched, currently assessore for social policies.

16. A more experimental approach could further the comparative field through a comparative gesture that helps us move (Robinson 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonia Bussu

Dr Sonia Bussu is a researcher at Involve, a London-based think tank working on strengthening democracy. Her PhD in Local Governance from the London School of Economics was a comparative study of SP with a focus on different forms and resources of leadership within local governance processes. Her work on facilitative leadership has been published on the IJUR.