Abstract
After a discussion of local self-government and its measurement for Switzerland, this chapter adopts a sectorial perspective, considering the decision-making competencies in nine tasks perceived by municipal actors. It shows that because of the increasing complexity of tasks, the cantonal reforms of functional allocation and the rise of federal and cantonal regulations, the degree of local self-government has generally decreased in recent decades, and that more and more municipalities are choosing governance arrangements. Furthermore, logistic regressions reveal that a lower degree of perceived political discretion leads to service delivery under a governance mode instead of in-house delivery by the municipality. These results question the understanding of local self-government as a territorially defined concept, since governance schemes exceed both territorial and representativeness scopes of local government.
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Notes
- 1.
This “Local Secretary Survey 2017” was sent by the Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaft (ZHAW) and the Institut de Hautes Études en Administration Publique (IDHEAP) at the end of 2016 to the municipal secretaries of all Swiss municipalities, with a response rate of 88 per cent.
- 2.
The perception of local self-government is based on the following question: “In general, what is the degree of local self-government of your municipality in relation to the Confederation and the canton on this scale? (1 = no autonomy; 10 = high autonomy)”; the average scores are 4.60 in 2017 (N = 1780), 4.62 in 2009 (N = 1317), 4.78 in 2005 (N = 2003) and 4.83 in 1994 (N = 1549).
- 3.
The selected functions represent different “competence profiles”, such as social, economic, town-planning and police, which can be more or less characteristic of a country’s local authorities (Marcou 2010, p. 48ff.). The empirical assessment for Switzerland is based on subjective data for feasibility reasons, since the distinction between tasks delegated by the canton or Confederation and own municipal tasks would have required a thorough legal examination for each canton by specific task.
- 4.
The Pearson’s r and p values between decision-making competencies and local self-government are the following: Primary school (r = 0.209, p<0.01), Spatial planning (r = 0.168, p<0.01), Building permit delivery (r = 0.177, p<0.01), Public transport (r = 0.144, p<0.01), Police (r = 0.060, p<0.05), Social assistance (r = 0.245, p<0.01), Elderly care (r = 0.193, p<0.01), Culture (r=0.64, p<0.01), Sport (r=0.89, p<0.01); implementing is not significantly correlated with local self-government in police and financing in primary school, police and culture.
- 5.
Political activities (also shown e.g. by the results for municipalities’ left-wing and language) make it possible to express local identity, which is also constitutive of local self-government (see Vakkala et al. in this volume for the third insight of Pratchett’s (2004) trichotomy).
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Keuffer, N. (2021). Local Self-Government and the Choice for Local Governance Arrangements in Nine Swiss Municipal Tasks. In: Bergström, T., Franzke, J., Kuhlmann, S., Wayenberg, E. (eds) The Future of Local Self-Government. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56059-1_6
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