Georgian Local Government Reform: State Leviathan Redraws Boundaries?

Abstract

Territorial fragmentation has been viewed as a problem in several countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Georgia is one of very few cases which has introduced an amalgamation reform dealing with this issue. The paper analyses the process of preparation and implementation as well as the consequences of the reform. It shows alternative reform proposals and discussions around them, which led to the selection of the most radical option of territorial consolidation. The paper briefly discusses the role of international aid programmes and especially of the Council of Europe (and the European Charter of Local Government) in structuring the discourse of the reform. On the basis of a public opinion survey and interviews, it shows that in spite of radical character of the reform it did not attract much of public attention, which is related to the fact that local government is not seen as an important element of the Georgian political system. In spite of initial declarations of the goals of the reform, the actual change was limited to the redrawing of administrative boundaries by the omnipotent (Leviathan) state and was not accompanied by parallel functional or fiscal decentralisation. According to some interpretations, the reform led to an even more centralised power structure. The price of the negative consequences of the amalgamation (such as local government being more distant from the citizens) has been paid, but the potential positive results of more capable and powerful local governments have not been achieved. Unreformed financial system has not allowed to reduce regional inequalities in capacity to finance local services either. Central government is afraid that decentralization may strengthen separatist tendencies undermining unity of the country and that is why the government is hesitant to introduce more decentralization.

Key Words:

• Georgia
• South-Caucasus
• Eastern Europe
• territorial-administrative reform
• decentralisation
• fiscal decentralisation
• public perception

Notes

1 The FGI was conducted by Gorbi-Gallup. The study was possible thanks to a grant from the Local Government and Public Service Initiative Programme of the Open Society Institute in Budapest.

2 Eighty rayons, including the territory of South-Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are not under control of Georgian government.

3 However, if we consider this figure in the regional context, it is substantially higher than in the neighbouring countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan, where the size of local budgets is almost negligible.

4 The Fiscal Decentralization Initiative was a project involving several countries of the former Soviet Union and South-Eastern Europe. It was managed by LGI Budapest, and co-financed by Local Government and Public Service Initiative (LGI) Programme of the Open Society Institute (LGI-OSI), USAID, World Bank, UNDP and the Council of Europe.

5 This mechanism is very similar to the one successfully applied in the Danish reform; see Karsten Vrangbæk in this issue.

6 The system is different in the five largest cities, which are not the main focus of this paper as they were not affected by the territorial change.

7 Or rather the wage tax, since it is paid by the employer, not by individual residents, and is allocated to respective local governments according to place of employment, not residence. This regulation favours big cities, since many workers commute from surrounding municipalities.

8 Calculations based on data provided by the National Association of Local Governments in Georgia.

9 By comparison, in Poland, a comparable ratio of the first quartile to median per capita revenues of local government is 1.1. Also, the equalisation system in Poland allows for relatively big revenue variations, as compared to many other European countries.

10 The term rcmunebuli means ‘representative’. It is used to describe both a government representative in the region (governor) and a gamgebele representative in individual villages of municipality.

11 Such as parishes in the UK, sołectwo in Poland, kmetstvo in Bulgaria or mesna zajednica in Serbia. See Peteri (2008).

12 However, the concept of sub-municipal councils that are appointed rather than elected is not unique. See, for example, the experience of appointed councils in districts of Scandinavian cities (Bäck et al., 2000).

13 How the position of village rcmunebuli is perceived by the local population was one of our field research questions, and could not be completed.

14 The actual turnout in 2006 was 47 per cent (Khomeriki, 2007).

15 This pattern of variation is very similar to that noticed in many other countries. See Swianiewicz (2002) for comparison with other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

16 The question arises of whether territorial reforms in other countries attract more public attention. An indirect opportunity for comparison was provided by the Polish 1998–99 reform which changed territorial boundaries at county and regional levels. The reform was so often discussed in the national media that nobody thought to ask such a general question in public opinion polls. But an indirect analysis of ‘don't know’ answers for more detailed questions suggests that the level of ignorance (not knowing anything about the reform) did not exceed 3–5 per cent (see Swianiewicz, 2001).