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Political Dictionary: local government
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A governing institution which has authority over a subnational territorially defined area; in federal systems, a substate territorially defined area. Local government's authority springs from its elected basis, a factor which also facilitates considerable variation in its behaviour both between and within countries.

Structure in Europe is generally multitier. In Federal Germany below the state-level Länder are commonly found two tiers of local government: the upper-tier Kreise and the lower-tier municipalities. Regionalized states such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and France echo such arrangements by having three levels of local government: the region; provinces or counties; and communes as the lower-tier basic authority. By contrast, many Scandinavian countries, Britain, and many of its former colonies eschew three-tier local government for two. In Britain the structure developed after 1888 was based upon lower-tier district authorities and upper-level county (in England and Wales) or regional (in Scotland after 1972) authorities. In the 1990s, debate in Britain reintroduced the idea of having only one tier of local government. In England some cities, and concise county areas with strong senses of community such as Rutland and the Isle of Wight, were given single-tier authorities, whilst other larger county areas retained two tiers. From 1996, the whole of Scotland and Wales was divided into single-tier authorities. Conversely, 2000 two-tier local government for London was restored with the creation of the Greater London Authority to oversee strategic functions, above a lower tier of metropolitan boroughs. In the United States, beneath the state level there is one common tier of local government—the county—but the existence of a second tier of municipalities is piecemeal, entirely dependent upon petitioning by local residents. Often a state will have two-tier local government in some mainly urban areas but only one-tier local government in other mainly rural areas. Furthermore, specific functions such as education, responsibility for which has been concentrated in the tiered local government structure in Europe, have usually been placed under single-purpose elected local bodies in US states.

Organization of the elected executive in local government varies primarily between the mayoral system and the committee system. In the former, long found in France and the United States, a mayor is most frequently separately elected as the political leader of a council (in some smaller US cities, the mayor is a figurehead and the city is run by an unelected ‘city manager’). In the latter, previously seen in the UK and Sweden, councillors are elected who then make decisions by committee. 2000 the United Kingdom introduced arrangements by which most local authorities could either be run by directly elected mayors, by elected mayors with an unelected city manager, or by a party group nominated mayor leading a cabinet. Other non-executive councillors took on purely scrutiny and representative functions. Only in small authorities with a population of 85,000 or less could the committee system continue. Historically, development of council workforces was based upon the building up of large functionally defined departments of permanent staff. However, since the 1980s, local bureaucracies have begun to be broken up in preference for the public contraction of work privately supplied.

Local government expenditure generally accounts for a significant proportion of GDP—between (in 1988) 11 per cent in Great Britain and 30 per cent in Denmark (see also local government finance). Large-scale expenditure in Scandinavia reflects the fact that costly social services, including social security, secondary education, and health care have been put in the charge of local government at the county/province level and public utilities such as water, gas, and electricity supply at the commune/municipalities level. In other countries this is not the case, but British local government, for example, retains significant responsibilities in education, planning and roads, environmental protection, and leisure service provision, and continues to expand its economic development role.

Local government's role in the political system has been considered primarily in terms of its relationship with central government. Observers from a liberal democratic standpoint have stressed two bases upon which such relationships have been formulated since the nineteenth century. First, local government has been considered important to the encouragement of political education and participation, and the basis upon which services could be provided according to local needs. Hence, relationships with the centre have been based on the partnership of free democratic institutions. Secondly, local government has been seen as rational from an administrative point of view as it allows for the efficient provision of public services at the point of service need under the direction of the centre. On this basis local government is seen as the agent of central government. France may be taken to typify the stress on both bases for the development of local government. Political participation has been maintained through the strong community identity underpinning commune local government, and a strong relationship between the operations of local government and the interests of the state has been maintained through the office of departmental prefect. Britain's leaning towards the utilitarian administrative efficiency purpose of local government is reflected in the fact that even its lowest-tier authorities may have bigger populations than some other countries' county/province level authorities.

Since the 1970s fiscal stress and changes in approaches to government have forced a reconsideration of relationships. Central governments have sought to control local government finance and expenditure, and where the community basis for local government has been weak, as in Great Britain, this has extended to the control of service policies. At the same time, in most countries the role of local government has been increasingly cast as that of the buyer of services on behalf of the public that can be provided best on a competitive basis by the private sector, and as a local governing institution which, having been overburdened, should have its responsibilities slimmed. Local government has also lost many responsibilities to non-elected local quangos, created or encouraged by central government, so much so that the local political arena has increasingly been conceptualized as local governance, in which local government is reduced to the status of one player among many.

On the European mainland where local government is strongly territorially based, and in North America and Scandinavia where there is a greater concern to reinvent government than to privatize it, continued autonomy for local government will remain, perhaps not in the role of providing services directly, but in defining the local needs which other providers must meet. In contrast, British local government during the 1980s and 1990s followed a model in which it was expected to diminish into a contractor of services within a straitjacket of regulations imposed by central government. The Blair Government after 1997 offered a continental style community leadership role, symbolized in the granting of a general competence power for the first time ‘to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of their area’. It also changed the duty of councils to that of achieving best value in local services, in which private contraction was only one option and not imposed. The practical capability to assert local leadership and discretion nevertheless remained dependent upon improvements in local service delivery and a willingness to work with a range of local partners. Indeed the implications of failure became more serious as central inspection multiplied and a local council that did not meet centrally set standards could see the wholesale removal of such services as local schools to a private contractor.

— Jonathan Bradbury

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US History Encyclopedia: Local Government
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Local Government is the designation given to all units of government in the United States below the state level. During the colonial period, the pattern of local government was not uniform throughout the thirteen colonies. In New England the town was the principal unit of local rule, responsible for poor relief, schooling, and roads. The primary governing body was the town meeting, an assembly of all the enfranchised residents, though the popularly elected selectmen seem to have assumed increasing authority over town affairs. In the southern colonies, the parish vestry and county court were the chief elements of local government. Appointed by the royal governor, the members of the county court exercised both administrative and judicial powers, supervising road construction as well as presiding over trials. The parish vestry of the established Church of England administered poor relief. In the middle colonies, local government was a mix of the New England and southern elements. Both county governments and towns were significant, sharing responsibility for local rule. In the middle colonies and in Maryland and Virginia as well, the colonial governors granted municipal charters to the most prominent communities, endowing them with the powers and privileges of a municipal corporation. Although in some of these municipalities the governing council was elected, in Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Williamsburg the city council was a self-perpetuating body, with the incumbent councilors filling vacancies. In marked contrast to the direct democracy of the town meeting tradition of New England, these were closed corporations governed by a self-chosen few.

Change After the American Revolution

The closed corporations, however, did not survive the wave of government change unleashed by the American Revolution. By the 1790s the electorate chose the governing council in every American municipality. Moreover, the state legislatures succeeded to the sovereign prerogative of the royal governors and thenceforth granted municipal charters. During the nineteenth century, thousands of communities became municipal corporations. Irritated by the many petitions for incorporation burdening each legislative session, nineteenth-century state legislatures enacted general municipal incorporation laws that permitted communities to incorporate simply by petitioning the county authorities.

Meanwhile, the newly admitted states west of the Appalachians were replicating the local government structure of the Atlantic seaboard states. Most of the trans-Appalachian South followed the example of Virginia and North Carolina and vested local authority in county courts that exercised both judicial and administrative powers. With the disestablishment of the Church of England during the Revolutionary era, however, the parish vestries lost all secular governing authority. The new midwestern states imitated New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, dividing local responsibilities between counties and town-ships. Nowhere west of the Appalachians was the town-ship as significant as in New England, but it survived as a major element of rural government in the states north of the Ohio River.

To administer public education, the nineteenth-century states added a new unit of local government, the school district. These districts exemplified grassroots rule run amuck. By the early 1930s there were 127,531 such districts in the United States. There was a district for virtually every one-room school, and in some districts the number of school board members exceeded the number of pupils. With an average of 118 districts per county, Illinois had the largest number of school governments. One Illinois district comprised only eighty acres.

Reducing Grassroots Power

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the nation's cities, however, were the most criticized units of local government. Although they were responsible for the creation of grand parks, well-stocked public libraries, up-to-date fire departments, and the world's most advanced water and sewerage systems, the major American municipalities fell short of the expectations of prosperous city dwellers who rallied behind a growing body of good-government reformers. Members of the urban elite resented the clout of plebeian councilmen representing immigrant constituencies and cited well-publicized examples of political corruption in their crusades for reform. To weaken the grip of the supposedly venal political party organizations, reformers called for the introduction of a civil service system and a nonpartisan municipal bureaucracy. Moreover, they urged the adoption of nonpartisan elections. They also sought to curb the power of ward-based politicians from working-class neighborhoods by introducing at-large election of council members and by strengthening the role of the mayor, who was usually a figure of citywide distinction chosen by a citywide electorate.

Some cities discarded the mayor-council scheme and experimented with new forms of government. In 1901 reformers in Galveston, Texas, introduced the commission form of municipal rule. Under this plan, a small commission elected at large exercised all legislative and executive authority. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, hundreds of cities adopted the commission option, but after 1915 it fell from favor and reformers rallied instead in support of the city manager plan. This scheme of government originated in Staunton, Virginia, in 1908 and spread rapidly until by the end of the twentieth century more than half of all American cities had adopted it. Its major feature was a strong, centralized, professional executive branch under a city manager who was hired by the city council. Council-manager government made little headway among the largest cities of the Northeast and Midwest, where voters preferred strong mayors with the political skills necessary to mediate clashing ethnic and economic interests. But many communities embraced the notion of a nonpartisan, expert administrator at the helm of government.

During the twentieth century there was also reform in those bastions of grassroots rule, the school district and the New England town. In an attempt to upgrade rural education, the states restructured school government, eliminating eighty thousand redundant school districts between 1940 and 1960. Consolidated school districts replaced existing minuscule units of government, and one-room schools yielded to graded institutions with students bused in from a five-or ten-mile radius. In twentieth-century New England a number of the largest towns deviated from the town meeting tradition and adopted an institution known as the representative town meeting. In these communities an assembly of usually over two hundred elected representatives determined town policy. No longer could every enfranchised townsperson vote in the town meeting; that became a prerogative belonging to the elected representatives.

Special Districts

Meanwhile, thousands of new special districts were adding to the complexity of American local government. Between the early 1950s and late 1980s the number of such districts rose from twelve thousand to thirty thousand. Most of these local governments were established to provide a single service or perform a single function. The functions included fire protection, water, sewerage, mosquito abatement, parks and recreation, airports, and a variety of other activities. In a few instances, special districts were created for multiple purposes such as water and sewerage, but all were limited in scope. The governing boards of special districts were often appointed rather than elected, and this gave rise to some concern over the degree of popular control possible in these governments. Two major reasons existed for the rapid growth of special districts. First, many potential service areas did not coincide with the boundaries of existing local governments, and special districts could be created to fit these service areas. Second, many local governments had exhausted the taxing and bonding authority granted to them by the state legislatures, and each special district could begin with a new grant of authority to tax and borrow.

Merged Government and Its Alternatives

The growing number of special districts in metropolitan areas as well as the proliferation of suburban municipalities gave rise to new concerns about duplication of effort and inefficient delivery of services. From the 1920s on, metropolitan reformers decried the multitude of conflicting governments and offered schemes for unifying the fragmented American metropolis. The most far-reaching of these proposals would have merged counties and city into a single unit of metropolitan government. During the 1960s this option, with some modification, was adopted in Nashville, Tennessee; Jacksonville, Florida; and Indianapolis, Indiana. Elsewhere, reformers proposed federative structures that would preserve existing municipalities but assign certain regional responsibilities to an overarching metropolitan government. Voters repeatedly rejected such schemes, though in 1957 something resembling a federative plan was adopted for Miami-Dade County in Florida.

Local governments and their citizens generally resisted sweeping reforms that would alter the basic structure of government in metropolitan areas. Instead, many local governments sought other means to avoid duplication and inefficiency in the provision of services. One increasingly popular device was the intergovernmental agreement. By utilizing contractual agreements, existing governments could band together to provide services that single units were unable to afford. In other cases, as in California's Lakewood Plan, cities could contract for services with an urban county that already provided such services to unincorporated areas. During the second half of the twentieth century, such agreements were popular because they permitted existing governments to continue operation and allowed local citizens to maintain mechanisms for local control of policy.

Americans have, then, opted to adjust to fragmentation rather than embrace consolidation or a radical restructuring of government. Thousands of school districts disappeared during the mid-twentieth century, but town-ships survived in the Northeast and Midwest, as did a myriad of little municipalities in metropolitan and rural areas.

Bibliography

Daniels, Bruce C., ed. Town and County: Essays on the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1978.

Pollens, John C. Special District Governments in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.

Stone, Harold A., Don K. Price, and Kathryn H. Stone. City Manager Government in the United States: A Review After Twenty-five Years. Chicago: Public Administration Service, 1940.

Teaford, Jon C. The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870–1900. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

Teaford, Jon C. Post-Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge Cities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Wooster, Ralph A. The People in Power: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Lower South, 1850–1860. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: local government
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local government, political administration of the smallest subdivisions of a country's territory and population.

Characteristics and Types

Although there are special-purpose local government bodies (e.g., school boards in the United States), more important are those that carry out a broad range of public activities within a defined area and population. Almost all such local government bodies share certain characteristics: a continuing organization; the authority to undertake public activities; the ability to enter into contracts; the right to sue and be sued; and the ability to collect taxes and determine a budget. Areas of local government authority usually include public schools, local highways, municipal services, and some aspects of social welfare and public order. An important distinction among types of local government is that between representative bodies, which are elected locally and have decision-making authority, and nonrepresentative bodies, which are either appointed from above or, if elected locally, have no independent governing authority. While most countries have complex systems of local government, those of France and Great Britain have served as models for much of the rest of the world.

The French System

The French system is among the most nonrepresentative. Its basic structure, codified by Napoleon I, developed out of the need of revolutionary France to curtail the power of local notables, while hastening government reform. It stresses clear lines of authority, reaching from the central government's ministry of the interior through the centrally appointed prefect of the department to the municipality, which has a locally elected mayor and municipal council. The prefect, being both the chief executive of the department and the representative of the central bureaucracy, provides the channel of centralization, with wide authority to overrule local councils and supervise local expenditures. Variants of this system are found throughout Europe and in former French colonies.

The British System

The British system of local government, which has been the model for most of that country's former colonies, including the United States, is the most representative of the major types. Largely reformed in the 19th cent. and extensively restructured in the 1970s, the system stresses local government autonomy through elected councils on the county and subcounty levels. This system was marked by less central government interference and greater local budgetary authority than in other systems. However, in 1986, six major county governments were abolished by Parliament, while the powers of others were restricted. A special feature of the British system is its use of an extensive committee system, instead of a strong executive, for supervising the administration of public services.

Despite differences among states, local governments of the United States follow the general principles of the British system, except that a strong executive is common. The county remains the usual political subdivision, although it has retained more authority in rural than in urban areas, where incorporated municipalities (see city government) have most of the local power. In both rural and urban areas the local government's relationship to the state is a complex one of shared authority and carefully defined areas of legal competence. Local governments are pulled two ways, increasingly reliant on state and federal funding to carry out their expected duties, while fearful of losing their traditional degree of local control.

Bibliography

See J. J. Clarke, A History of Local Government of the United Kingdom (1955); D. Lockard, The Politics of State and Local Government (2d ed. 1969); S. Humes and E. Martin, The Structure of Local Government (1969); R. D. Bingham, State and Local Government in an Urban Society (1986); N. Henry, Governing the Grassroots (3d ed. 1987); R. H. Leach and T. G. O'Rourke, State and Local Government (1988).

WordNet: local government
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the government of a local area

Wikipedia: Local government
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Search Wiktionary Look up local government in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state. The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or (where appropriate) federal government. "Local government" only acts within powers delegated to it by legislation or directives of the higher level of government and each country has some kind of local government which will differ from those of other countries. In primitive societies the lowest level of local government is the village headman or tribal chief. Federal states such as the United States have two levels of government above the local level: the governments of the fifty states and the federal national government whose relations are governed by the constitution of the United States. Local government in the United States originated in the colonial period and has been modified since then: the highest level of local government is at county level.

In modern nations, local governments usually have some of the same kind of powers as national governments do. They usually have some power to raise taxes, though these may be limited by central legislation. In some countries local government is partly or wholly funded by subventions from central government taxation. The question of Municipal Autonomy—which powers the local government has, or should have, and why—is a key question of public administration and governance. The institutions of local government vary greatly between countries, and even where similar arrangements exist, the terminology often varies. Common names for local government entities include state, province, region, department, county, prefecture, district, city, township, town, borough, parish, municipality, shire and village. However all these names are often used informally in different countries & local government is the legal part of central government.

Main articles on each country will usually contain some information about local government, or links to an article with fuller information. The rest of this article gives information or links for countries where a relatively full description is available.

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Afghanistan

Afghanistan was traditionally divided into provinces governed by centrally appointed governors with considerable autonomy in local affairs. There are currently 34 provinces. During the Soviet occupation and the development of country-wide resistance, local areas came increasingly under the control of mujaheddin groups that were largely independent of any higher authority; local commanders, in some instances, asserted a measure of independence also from the mujaheddin leadership in Pakistan, establishing their own systems of local government, collecting revenues, running educational and other facilities, and even engaging in local negotiations. Mujaheddin groups retained links with the Peshawar parties to ensure access to weapons that were doled out to the parties by the government of Pakistan for distribution to fighters inside Afghanistan.

The Taliban set up a shura (assembly), made up of senior Taliban members and important tribal figures from the area. Each shura made laws and collected taxes locally. The Taliban set up a provisional government for the whole of Afghanistan, but it did not exercise central control over the local shuras.

The process of setting up the transitional government in June 2002 by the Loya Jirga took many steps involving local government. First, at the district and municipal level, traditional shura councils met to pick electors—persons who cast ballots for Loya Jirga delegates. Each district or municipality had to choose a predetermined number of electors, based on the size of its population. The electors then traveled to regional centers and cast ballots, to choose from amongst themselves a smaller number of loya jirga delegates— according to allotted numbers assigned to each district. The delegates then took part in the Loya Jirga.

The warlords who rule various regions of the country exert local control. The transitional government is attempting to integrate local governing authorities with the central government, but it lacks the loyalty from he warlords necessary to its governing authority. More traditional elements of political authority—such as Sufi networks, royal lineage, clan strength, age-based wisdom, and the like—still exist and play a role in Afghan society. Karzai is relying on these traditional sources of authority in his challenge to the warlords and older Islamist leaders. The deep ethnic, linguistic, sectarian, tribal, racial, and regional cleavages present in the country create what is called "Qawm" identity, emphasizing the local over higher-order formations. Qawm refers to the group to which the individual considers himself to belong, whether a subtribe, village, valley, or neighborhood. Local governing authority relies upon these forms of identity and loyalty. i love you

Argentina

Argentina is a federation of 23 provinces and the federal capital of Buenos Aires. During the 19th century there was a bitter struggle between Buenos Aires and the interior provinces, and there has long been an element of tension regarding the division of powers between the central government and provincial bodies. The federal government retains control over such matters as the regulation of commerce, customs collections, currency, civil or commercial codes, or the appointment of foreign agents. The provincial governors are elected every four years.

The constitutional "national intervention" and "state of siege" powers of the president have been invoked frequently. The first of these powers was designed to "guarantee the republican form of government in the provinces." Since the adoption of the 1853 constitution, the federal government has intervened over 200 times, mostly by presidential decree. Under this authority, provincial and municipal offices may be declared vacant, appointments annulled, and local elections supervised. Between 1966 and 1973, all local legislatures were dissolved and provincial governors were appointed by the new president. A restoration of provincial and municipal government followed the return to constitutional government in 1973. After the March 1976 coup, the federal government again intervened to remove all provincial governors and impose direct military rule over all municipalities. Since 1983, representative local government has been in force again.

Until 1996, the President appointed the mayor of Buenos Aires, and by law, the president and Congress controlled any legislation that affected the city. Constitutional reforms that year led to an elected mayoral position, and a 60-member Poder Legislativo (legislative power). The members are elected by proportional representation to four-year terms.

Australia

Main article: Local government in Australia

Local government is the 3rd type of government in Australia, after Federal and State.

Canada

Main article: Local government in Canada

Canada has a federal system with three orders of government. The largest is the federal government, followed by the provincial and territorial governments. At the root level is the municipal (or local) government.[1] Municipal governments are controlled by the provincial (or territorial) order of government.

Egypt

Local government traditionally enjoyed limited power in Egypt's highly centralized state. Under the central government were twenty-six governorates (sing., muhafazah; pl., muhafazat). These were subdivided into districts (sing., markaz; pl., marakaz) and villages (sing., qaryah; pl., qura) or towns. At each level, there was a governing structure that combined representative councils and government-appointed executive organs headed by governors, district officers, and mayors, respectively. Governors were appointed by the president, and they, in turn, appointed subordinate executive officers. The coercive backbone of the state apparatus ran downward from the Ministry of Interior through the governors' executive organs to the district police station and the village headman (sing., umdah; pl., umadah).

Before the revolution, state penetration of the rural areas was limited by the power of local notables, but under Nasser, land reform reduced their socioeconomic dominance, and the incorporation of peasants into cooperatives transferred mass dependence from landlords to government. The extension of officials into the countryside permitted the regime to bring development and services to the village. The local branches of the ruling party, the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), fostered a certain peasant political activism and coopted the local notables—in particular the village headmen—and checked their independence from the regime.

State penetration did not retreat under Sadat and Mubarak. The earlier effort to mobilize peasants and deliver services disappeared as the local party and cooperative withered, but administrative controls over the peasants remained intact. The local power of the old families and the headmen revived but more at the expense of peasants than of the state. The district police station balanced the notables, and the system of local government (the mayor and council) integrated them into the regime.

Sadat took several measures to decentralize power to the provinces and towns. Governors acquired more authority under Law Number 43 of 1979, which reduced the administrative and budgetary controls of the central government over the provinces. The elected councils acquired, at least formally, the right to approve or disapprove the local budget. In an effort to reduce local demands on the central treasury, local government was given wider powers to raise local taxes. But local representative councils became vehicles of pressure for government spending, and the soaring deficits of local government bodies had to be covered by the central government. Local government was encouraged to enter into joint ventures with private investors, and these ventures stimulated an alliance between government officials and the local rich that paralleled the infitah alliance at the national level. Under Mubarak decentralization and local autonomy became more of a reality, and local policies often reflected special local conditions. Thus, officials in Upper Egypt often bowed to the powerful Islamic movement there, while those in the port cities struck alliances with importers.

France

According to its constitution, France has 3 levels of local government :

However, intercommunalities are now a level of government between municipalities and departments.

Paris (both a commune and a département) and Corsica are local government sui generis.

Germany

As a federal country, Germany is divided into a number of states (Länder in German), which used to have wide powers, but whose main remaining power today (2004) is their ability to veto federal laws through their Bundesrat representation. The system of local government is described in the article on States of Germany.

India

See also: Category:Local government in India

In India the local government is the third level of government apart from the State and Central governments. There are two types of Local Government in operation: Panchayats in rural areas and Municipalities in urban areas. The Panchayats are a linked-system of local bodies with village panchayats (average population about 5,000),panchayat samities at the intermediate level (average population about 100,000), and district panchayats (average population about 1,000,000).

Number of Panchayats and Municipalities in India, 2004

Panchayats Nos. Municipalities Nos. Gram (Village) 236,350 Municipal Corporations 109 Samities (Intermediate) 6,795 Municipal Councils 1,432 Zilla (District) 531 Nagar(Town)Panchayats 2,182 Total 243,676 Total 3,723 Source: India, Twelfth Finance Commission Report, 2005

The rural panchayats created in around 1959 were based on the soviet model (Yugoslav variety ) of tiering with hierarchical control to undertake mainly agency tasks of the states through earmarked funding, with limited civic tasks financed from assigned land revenue and local surcharge thereon. This resulted in overlapping functional jurisdiction and a mismatch of functions and taxes among the three tiers. The urban municipalities, created during the colonial days of mid-19th century, survived the ‘socialist’ experiment and retained their separate character as their English counterparts. In 1991, through two identical constitutional amendments, one for the Panchaysts and the other for the Municipalities, a number of changes were introduced to strengthen local governments in India ensure regularity of their ekection every five years and limiting their period of supersession or dissolution to six months, three sets of local local govetnments for the Panchaysta and the Municipalities, reservation of seats and chairpersons for women and scheduled castes and tribes, creation of independent state slection commission (SEC), state finance commission (SFC) linked with the central finance commission, and planning committees at the districts (DPCs) and metopolitan areas (MPCs). In addition, these amendments have indicated guidelines for the states to empower the local governments through increased devolution of functions and taxes to them- these are not been followed-up by the states. However, the CFCs have been allocating discretionary grants for local governments passed through the states. One lacuna in the existing arrangement is that the Panchatars do not have a statutorily delegated list of functions on which its revenues could be spent; this has created problems of financing their own activities rom their oen revenues or through general grants fron the CFC-SFC arrangements. Panchayats act mostly as agencies for implementing thr erstwhile soviet plan schemes and projects on cost reimbursement (around 96% of their activities) that do not have any maintenance component for transferred completed works. The major national parties are committed to improve the effectiveness of the Panchayats through further central action to remedy the situation.

Isle of Man

Main article: Local government in the Isle of Man

Local government on the Isle of Man is based around the concept of ancient parishes. There are three types of local authorities: a borough corporation, town commissions, and parish commissions.

Ireland

Main article: Local government in the Republic of Ireland

Local government in Ireland is mainly based on a structure of 29 county councils and five city councils. By far the main source of funding is national government. Other sources include rates on commercial and industrial property, housing rents, service charges and borrowing. The city and county councils suffer from a combination of a lack of power to raise their own taxes and a gradual and persistent erosion of their powers over time. Therefore, local policy decisions are sometimes heavily influenced by the TDs who represent the local constituency in Dáil Éireann (the main chamber of parliament), and may be dictated by national politics rather than local needs.

Israel

The Israeli Ministry of Interior recognizes four types of local government in Israel:

  • Cities: 71 single-level urban municipalities, usually with populations exceeding 20,000 residents.
  • Local councils: 141 single-level urban or rural municipalities, usually with populations between 2,000 and 20,000.
  • Regional Councils: 54 bi-level municipalities which govern multiple rural communities located in relative geographic vicinity. The number of residents in the individual communities usually does not exceed 2000. There are no clear limits to the population and land area size of Israeli regional councils.
  • Industrial councils: Two single-level municipalities which govern large and complex industrial areas outside cities. The local industrial councils are Tefen in Upper Galilee (north of Karmiel) and Ramat Hovav in the Negev (south of Beer Sheva).

Italy

The Italian Constitution defines three levels of local government:

  • Regions: At present 5 of them (Valle d'Aosta, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Sardinia and Sicily) have a special status and are given more power than the others. The constitutional reform of 2001 gave more power to regions.
  • Provinces: They mostly care to roads, forests, and education. They had more power in the past.
  • Communes: The Mayor and staff, caring for the needs of a single town or of a village and neighbouring minor towns or villages.

Major cities also have an extra tier of local government named Circoscrizione di Decentramento Comunale or, in some cities (e.g. Rome) Municipio.

Japan

Since the Meiji restoration, Japan has had a local government system based on prefectures. The national government oversees much of the country. Municipal governments consist from historical villages. Now merger and restoration of those municipal governments are undergoing for cost effective administration. In between are the 47 prefectures which are made up by area and population. They have two main responsibilities. One is mediation between national and municipal governments. The other is area wide administration.

Kenya

Main article: Local authorities of Kenya

Malaysia

Main article: Local government in Malaysia

Local government is the lowest level in the system of government in Malaysia—after federal and state. It has the power to collect taxes (in the form of assessment tax), to create laws and rules (in the form of by-laws) and to grant licenses and permits for any trade in its area of jurisdiction, in addition to providing basic amenities, collecting and managing waste and garbage as well as planning and developing the area under its jurisdiction.

Mali

In recent years, Mali has undertaken an ambitious decentralization program, which involves the capital district of Bamako, seven regions subdivided into 46 cercles, and 682 rural community districts (communes). The state retains an advisory role in administrative and fiscal matters, and it provides technical support, coordination, and legal recourse to these levels. Opportunities for direct political participation, and increased local responsibility for development have been improved.

In August-September 1998, elections were held for urban council members, who subsequently elected their mayors. In May/June 1999, citizens of the communes elected their communal council members for the first time. Female voter turnout was about 70% of the total, and observers considered the process open and transparent. With mayors, councils, and boards in place at the local level, newly elected officials, civil society organizations, decentralized technical services, private sector interests, other communes, and donor groups began partnering to further development.

Eventually, the cercles will be reinstituted (formerly grouping arrondissements) with a legal and financial basis of their own. Their councils will be chosen by and from members of the communal councils. The regions, at the highest decentralized level, will have a similar legal and financial autonomy, and will comprise a number of cercles within their geographical boundaries. Mali needs to build capacity at these levels, especially to mobilize and manage financial resources.

Mexico

Mexico is a Federal Republic made up by 31 states and a federal district. Each state is divided in municipios, while the federal district is divided in sixteen delegaciones. Twenty-nine states of Mexico were created as administrative divisions by the constitution of 1917, which grants them those powers not expressly vested in the federal government; Mexico's two remaining territories, Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo, achieved statehood on 9 October 1974, raising the total to 31. Each state has a constitution, a governor elected for six years, and a unicameral legislature, with representatives elected by district vote in proportion to population. An ordinary session of the legislature is held annually, and extraordinary sessions may be called by the governor or the permanent committee. Bills may be introduced by legislators, by the governor, by the state supreme court, and by municipalities (a unit comparable to a US county). In addition to the 31 states, there is also one federal district comprising Mexico City, whose governor serves as a member of the cabinet. Many state services are supported by federal subsidies.

The principal unit of state government is the municipality. Mexico's 2,378 municipalities are governed by municipal presidents and municipal councils. State governors generally select the nominees for the municipal elections. Municipal budgets are approved by the respective state governors. Until 1997, the president appointed the mayor of Mexico City. Political reforms allowed the first open elections in 1997. PRD candidate Cuauhtémoc Cardenas Solórzano was elected mayor. When he resigned to run for the presidency in 1999, Rosario Robles Berlanga became the first woman mayor of Mexico City. In 2000, PRD's Andrés Manuel López Obrador became the second democratically elected mayor of Mexico City. López Obrador's popularity as mayor has made him a prime candidate for the 2006 presidential election.

The Netherlands

Main articles: Municipal politics in the Netherlands and Provincial politics in the Netherlands

The Netherlands has three tiers of government. There are two levels of local government in The Netherlands, the provinces and the municipalities. The water boards are also part of the local government.

The Netherlands is divided into twelve provinces. They form the tier of administration between the central government and the municipalities. Each province is governed by a provincial council (Provinciale Staten). Its members are elected every four years. The day-to-day management of the province is in the hands of the provincial executive (Gedeputeerde Staten). Members of the executive are chosen by the provincial council from among its own members and like the members of the provincial council serve for a period of four years. Members elected to the executive have to give up their membership of the provincial council. The size of the executive varies from one province to another. In Flevoland, the smallest of the Dutch provinces, it has four members, while most other provinces have six or seven. Meetings of the provincial executive are chaired by the Queen's Commissioner. The Queen's Commissioner (Commissaris van de Koningin) is not elected by the residents of the province, but appointed by the Crown (the Queen and government ministers). The appointment is for six years and may be extended by a second term. The Queen's Commissioner can be dismissed only by the Crown. Queen's Commissioners play an important part in the appointment of municipal mayors. When a vacancy arises, the Queen's Commissioner first asks the municipal council for its views as to a successor, then writes to the Minister of the Interior recommending a candidate.

Municipalities form the lowest tier of government in the Netherlands, after the central government and the provinces. There are 458 of them (1 January 2006). The municipal council (Gemeenteraad) is the highest authority in the municipality. Its members are elected every four years. The role of the municipal council is comparable to that of the board of an organisation or institution. Its main job is to decide the municipality's broad policies and to oversee their implementation. The day-to-day administration of the municipality is in the hands of the municipal executive (college van burgemeester en wethouders, abbreviated to B&W), made up of the mayor (Burgemeester) and the aldermen. The executive implements national legislation on matters such as social assistance, unemployment benefits and environmental management. It also bears primary responsibility for the financial affairs of the municipality and for its personnel policies. Aldermen (Wethouders) are appointed by the council. Councillors can be chosen to act as aldermen. In that case, they lose their seats on the council and their places are taken by other representatives of the same political parties. Non-councillors can also be appointed. Unlike councillors and aldermen, mayors are not elected (not even indirectly), but are appointed by the Crown. Mayors chair both the municipal council and the executive. They have a number of statutory powers and responsibilities of their own. They are responsible for maintaining public order and safety within the municipality and frequently manage the municipality's public relations. As Crown appointees, mayors also have some responsibility for overseeing the work of the municipality, its policies and relations with other government bodies. Although they are obliged to carry out the decisions of the municipal council and executive, they may recommend that the Minister of the Interior quash any decision that they believe to be contrary to the law or against the public interest. Mayors are invariably appointed for a period of six years and are normally re-appointed automatically for another term, provided the municipal council agrees. They can be dismissed only by the Crown and not by the municipal council.

Water boards are among the oldest government authorities in the Netherlands. They literally form the foundation of the whole Dutch system of local government; from time immemorial they have shouldered the responsibility for water management for the residents of their area. In polders this mainly involves regulating the water level. It has always been in the common interest to keep water out and polder residents have always had to work together. That is what led to the creation of water boards. The structure of the water boards varies, but they all have a general administrative body, an executive board and a chairperson. The general administrative body consists of people representing the various categories of stakeholders: landholders, leaseholders, owners of buildings, companies and, since recently, all the residents as well. Importance and financial contribution decide how many representatives each category may delegate. Certain stakeholders (e.g. environmental organisations) may be given the power to appoint members. The general administrative body elects the executive board from among its members. The government appoints the chairperson (Dijkgraaf) for a period of six years. The general administrative body is elected for a period of four years. In the past the administrative body was elected as individuals but from 2009 they will be elected as party representatives. Unlike municipal council elections, voters do not usually have to go to a polling station but can vote by mail.

New Zealand

New Zealand has a local government system comprises two complementary sets of local authorities—regional councils and territorial authorities. There are currently 86 local authorities consisting of:

  • 12 regional councils which cover most of New Zealand’s land area
  • 74 territorial authorities (comprising 59 district councils and 15 city councils, ).

Five of the territorial authorities are unitary authorities, also have the powers of a regional council. They are the Nelson City Council, the Gisborne, Marlborough and Tasman District Councils, and the Chatham Islands Council.

Regional council areas are based on water catchment areas, whereas territorial authorities are based on community of interest and road access. Within a regional council area there are usually many city or district councils, although city and district councils can be in multiple regional council areas.

Norway

Norway's regional administration is organised in 19 counties (fylke), with 18 of them subdivided into 431 municipalities (kommune) per January 1, 2006. The municipal sector is a provider of vital services to the Norwegian public, accounting for about 20% of Norwegian GNP and 24% of total employment. Norway had 435 municipalities of varying size in 2003, each administered by an elected municipal council. They are grouped into 19 counties (fylker), each governed by an elected county council. Each county is headed by a governor appointed by the king in council. Oslo is the only urban center that alone constitutes a county; the remaining 18 counties consist of both urban and rural areas. County and municipal councils are popularly elected every four years. The municipalities have wide powers over the local economy, with the state exercising strict supervision. They have the right to tax and to use their resources to support education, libraries, social security, and public works such as streetcar lines, gas and electricity works, roads, and town planning, but they are usually aided in these activities by state funds.

Palestinian National Authority

Local government in the Palestinian National Authority-controlled areas are divided into three main groups: Municipal councils, village council and local development committees.

  • Municipality (Palestinian Authority): Depends on size of locality. Localities that serve as the centers of governorates and populations over 15,000 have 15-member councils. Localities with populations over 15,000 residents have 13-member councils and localities with populations between 4,000 and 15,000 have 9-member councils.
  • Village Council (Palestinian Authority): Localities with populations between 800 and 1,500 have 3-member councils while those between 1,500 and -4,000 residents have 7-member councils.

Paraguay

Paraguay is divided into 17 departments, which are subdivided into districts, which, in turn, comprise municipalities (the minimum requirement for a municipality is 3,000 persons) and rural districts (partidos). A governor, elected by popular vote, runs each department. Municipal government is exercised through a municipal board, chosen by direct election, and an executive department. In the principal cities and capitals, the executive department is headed by a mayor appointed by the minister of the interior; in other localities, the mayor is appointed by the presidents of the municipal boards. Police chiefs are appointed by the central government.

Philippines

Main article: Local government in the Philippines

For a description of the arrangements in force, see the section on Regions and Provinces in the article on the Philippines.

Spain

Spain is divided into 17 Autonomous Communities, which in turn are divided into 50 provinces. There are also two autonomous cities: those of Ceuta and Melilla. Finally, each province comprises a number of municipalities.

Each administrative entity is given powers, structure, and boundaries by a law that was passed by the President of the Government (or Prime Minister).

Law 7/1985[2], passed by the former Spanish President Felipe González Márquez (socialist), lays down the procedure of the Local Government. Every city in Spain used this Law until 2003. This year, the former Spanish President José María Aznar López (conservative), passed a Law (57/2003[3]) to modernize organic rules of those cities which had more than 250,000 inhabitants, and other important cities (like capital cities of Provinces with at least 175,000 inhabitants). Also, it exists two other important Laws for specifically Madrid (Law 22/2006[4]) and Barcelona (Law 1/2006[5]). The main governing body in every city is called The Plenary (el Pleno). The number of members that compose The Plenary varies depending on city's population (for example, since 2007 Valencia has 33 members and Pamplona has 27). The name given to the members of the Plenary is Councelor (Concejal). Those Councelors are elected between city's habitants every four years by direct vote. After being elected, Councelors meet in a special Plenary session to determine who will be elected, between them, as City's Mayor. In the next days after the election, the Mayor chooses some Councelors to set up the executive governing body (Junta de Gobierno). After that, and for the next four years, City's Mayor and the Junta de Gobierno will govern over the city according to their competences (urbanism, some taxes, local police, licenses for specific activities, cleaning services, etc.). Meanwhile, Councelors in the Plenary but not part of the Junta de Gobierno (the opposition) will oversee Mayor's rule.

Sweden

Sweden is divided into counties which in turn are divided into municipalities.

Ukraine

Main article: Local government in Ukraine

United Kingdom

Main article: Local government in the United Kingdom

The system of local government is different in each of the four countries of the United Kingdom. In total, there are 434 local authorities in the UK. 354 of these are in England, 26 in Northern Ireland, 32 in Scotland and 22 are in Wales.[6]

England

Main article: Local government in England

The most complex system is in England, the result of numerous reforms and reorganisation over the centuries.

England is subdivided on different levels:

The top level of local government within England are the nine regions. Each region has a government office and assorted other institutions. Only the London region has a directly elected administration. Only one other regional referendum has been held to date to seek consent for the introduction direct elections elsewhere—in the northeast of England—and this was soundly rejected by the electorate.

The layers of government below the regions are mixed.

Historic counties still exist with adapted boundaries, although in the 1990s some of the districts within the counties became separate unitary authorities and a few counties have been disbanded completely. There are also metropolitan districts in some areas which are similar to unitary authorities. In Greater London there are 32 London boroughs which are a similar concept.

Counties are further divided into districts (also known as boroughs in some areas).

Districts are added into wards for electoral purposes.

Districts may also contain parishes and town council areas with a small administration of their own.

Other area classifications are also in use, such as health service and Lord-Lieutenant areas.

See also:

Northern Ireland

Main article: Local government in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is divided into 26 districts. Local government in Northern Ireland does not carry out the same range of functions as those in the rest of the United Kingdom. The Northern Irish Department of the Environment has announced plans to decrease the number of councils to 11.

Wales

Main article: Local government in Wales

Wales has a uniform system of 22 unitary authorities, referred to as counties or county boroughs. There are also communities, equivalent to parishes.

Scotland

Main article: Local government of Scotland

Local government in Scotland is arranged on the lines of unitary authorities, with the nation divided into 32 council areas.

United States

Main article: Local government in the United States

Local government in the United States refers to the general-purpose governments at the county, city, town, or township level and special-purpose governments, which include special districts and school districts [7].

Foreign observers from unitary states may view the states under the federal system of the United States as local governments. This is not, however, the case because the states possess sovereignty within the federal union, while local governments are not sovereign even within their respective states. Local governments are municipal corporations chartered by (and whose charters may be revoked by) the legislature of the creating state.

Uruguay

Uruguay's administrative subdivisions consisted of nineteen territories called departments and governed by intendencias, which were subordinate to the central government and responsible for local administration. They enforced national laws and administered the nation's social and educational policies and institutions within their territories. These territories had limited taxing powers, but they could borrow funds and acquire property. They also had the power to establish unpaid five-member local boards or town councils in municipalities other than the departmental capital if the population was large enough to warrant such a body.

Executive authority was vested in a governor (intendente), who administered the department, and in a thirty-one-member departmental board (junta departmental), which carried out legislative functions. These functions included approval of the departmental budget and judicial actions, such as impeachment proceedings against departmental officials, including the governor. At the municipal level, a mayor (intendente municipal) assumed executive and administrative duties, carrying out resolutions made by the local board (whose members were appointed on the basis of proportional representation of the political parties). The governor was required to comply with and enforce the constitution and the laws and to promulgate the decrees enacted by the departmental board. The governor was authorized to prepare the budget, submit it for approval to the departmental board, appoint the board's employees, and, if necessary, discipline or suspend them. The governor represented the department in its relations with the national government and other departmental governments and in the negotiation of contracts with public or private agencies.

Like the governor, the members of the departmental board and the mayor were elected for five-year terms in direct, popular elections. A governor could be reelected only once, and candidates for the post had to meet the same requirements as those for a senator, in addition to being a native of the department or a resident therein for at least three years before assuming office. Departmental board members had to be at least twenty-three years of age, native born (or a legal citizen for at least three years), and a native of the department (or a resident for at least three years).

The board sat in the capital city of each department and exercised jurisdiction throughout the entire territory of the department. It could issue decrees and resolutions that it deemed necessary either on the suggestion of the governor or on its own initiative. It could approve budgets, fix the amount of taxes, request the intervention of the Accounts Tribunal for advice concerning departmental finances or administration, and remove from office—at the request of the governor—members of nonelective local departmental boards. The board also supervised local public services; public health; and primary, secondary, preparatory, industrial, and artistic education. Although Montevideo was the smallest department in terms of area (divided into twenty-three geographic zones that generally coincided with the electoral zones), its departmental board had sixty-five members in 1990; all other departments had thirty-one-member boards and a five-member executive council appointed by the departmental board, with proportional representation from the principal political parties.

Data as of December 1990

See also

References

  1. ^ Fact Sheet: Government in Canada
  2. ^ http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/l7-1985.html
  3. ^ http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/l57-2003.html
  4. ^ http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/l22-2006.html
  5. ^ http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/l1-2006.html
  6. ^ "2006 Carbon Dioxide emissions at Local Authority and Government Office Region level". Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 2008-09-18. http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2008/080918a.htm. Retrieved 2009-08-09. 
  7. ^ 2002 Census of Governments, U.S. Census Bureau

External links

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