Citizens\u2019 attitudes towards local autonomy and inter-local cooperation: evidence from Western Europe

Michael A Strebel,Daniel Kübler

doi:10.1057/s41295-020-00232-3

Michael A Strebel, Daniel Kübler

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-020-00232-3

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Abstract

Recent decades have seen a strengthening of local autonomy in many European states. At the same time, local governance capacities were strengthened through intermunicipal structures and territorial consolidation to prepare local authorities for additional tasks. In this paper, we assess what citizens think about strengthening local autonomy and strengthening inter-local cooperation. We argue that citizens’ attitudes towards local autonomy and inter-local cooperation are a function of their behavioural, emotional and ideological connection to the local. Using data from a population-based survey in eight West European metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, we show that local autonomy and inter-local cooperation supporters have divergent ideological positions concerning the allocation of political authority across state scales. Inter-local cooperation is supported by voters of new progressive left parties but opposed by right-wing nationalist partisans—who in contrast favour local autonomy. This suggests that the demarcation–integration divide which structures citizens’ attitudes towards international integration also matters for subnational and local governance reforms.

Highlights

In recent decades, many countries have decentralized authority from the national level to regional tiers and local governments (Hooghe et al 2010; Ladner et al 2019)
13 If we include measures of absolute attachment to the local and the national scale in the model, we find those with a stronger relative local attachment to be more in favour of local autonomy and more opposed to local cooperation which is in line with hypothesis H 2a and H 2b
In this paper we have assessed the attitudes of citizens living in eight West European metropolitan areas towards two of the currently most common tendencies in the transformation of local governance: strengthening local autonomy and increasing inter-local cooperation

Summary

Introduction

Many countries have decentralized authority from the national level to regional tiers and local governments (Hooghe et al 2010; Ladner et al 2019). Some earlier works on attitudes towards inter-local cooperation in the US (Gerston and Haas 1993; Mohamed 2008), as well as a more recent study on local governance perceptions in a Swiss metropolitan area (Wicki et al 2019), show that local ties (homeownership, residence duration, and commuting) as well as political ideology shape citizens’ support for interlocal cooperation and regional integration. The strengthening of both local autonomy and inter-local cooperation relates to the allocation of political authority across different scales.

Results

Conclusion