On the 5th of November, I spoke at the Public Library of Faro, a lecture on “administrative regionalization and local development”, at the invitation of the civic association CIVIS. I bring to readers the main topics of this lecture and the discussion that followed (2nd part).
1. The fourth note
I don't know if anyone still remembers the decisive argument for failing administrative regionalization in 1998. At the time, the argument was: “you're crazy, you're going to create seven regions like Alberto João Jardim”.
We were in the second half of the 90s, fulfilling the famous criteria of nominal convergence and preparing the country for entry into the eurozone.
It was in April 1999 that the euro/shield exchange rate was defined and, as a result, the criteria of nominal convergence forced us to be very strict in financial matters.
Hence the deficit in Madeira could not be an example for anyone. Are we going to create, now, seven Woods? This was the argument used at the time and we didn't have, neither near nor far, the deficits and the public debts we have today.
In other words, the situation of public finances at the time was relatively peaceful, there were conditions to dare to create the administrative regions, and we did not do it.
The question I ask now is this: twenty years later, in the state of Portuguese public finances, are there political conditions to create administrative regions and what model of administrative regions?
As you know, in the European Union there is the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and there is the Budget Treaty (TO) which limit us a lot in terms of public finances.
I am convinced that the Portuguese State, if it wants to, can create the administrative regions of the continent, coinciding with the current CCDRs, but doing the same as the European Union did with the member states, by creating the Stability and Growth Pact and the Budget Treaty.
In other words, the Portuguese State, the Ministry of Finance, would create a kind of “golden rules” of a financial and budgetary nature that would act as prudential rules and good behavior for the administrative regions, including imposing ceilings on debt and deficit of these regions, if they had financial autonomy, because it is even debatable whether they had financial autonomy. They are just administrative regions.
Be that as it may, the entire context of our regional problem would need to be the object of a framework law of political-administrative decentralization, with sufficient doctrine on the subject.
This is how I understand the emergence and eventual emergence of administrative regions today. It is necessary to have a framework law for political-administrative decentralization that contemplates the three levels of the republican administration, its operating system, under penalty of constant interference from the central power on the regional power.
It's because? Because the government of the republic and the central administration use local and regional finance to make economic adjustment when it is most necessary or convenient for them.
In this case, administrative regionalization and local administration would function as a kind of endogenous variables of the country's macroeconomic problems, that is, instead of having sufficient autonomy, they would have the possible or more convenient autonomy for the macroeconomic policy of the central administration.
And how does the central administration proceed in this matter? In the usual way. It makes captivations, makes tax pardons, delays payments, does creative accounting, to say that, at the end of the year, it fulfilled the deficit budget.
Therefore, both the local administration and the regional administration would have to respond and respect a framework of macro-financial conditionality when there was an adjustment program, a serious problem of deficit budget or public debt.
For all these reasons, I am convinced that we will not have administrative regions with financial autonomy. Administrative regionalization in Portugal will never be an autonomous regime, the Algarve will never be an autonomous region like the Azores and Madeira.
It will be “a conditional region”, that is, a region that depends on a strong macro-financial conditionality regime in the national and European framework.
This is also the reason why "cheap substitutes" are created that act as curtains, I speak of the intermunicipal communities, which will hinder, tomorrow, the emergence of a regional or regionalist movement, because the eventuality of a regionalist movement appears, if the problems get worse, it should not be underestimated.
Otherwise, the problems associated with regions and separatism are growing every day.
2. The fifth note
Another interesting facet of the regional issue concerns the participation of regions in the political decision-making process.
As an example, and recently, a region of Belgium, Wallonia, the southern region of the country, put the signing of a major European trade agreement with Canada on hold.
I mean, through the regions – and Spain is a good example – we can regain some sovereign powers that we have, in the meantime, transferred to the European Union.
Let's look at the transposition of European directives. When we have to transpose European law from Brussels to Lisbon, what happens? When a directive is transferred from Brussels to Lisbon, as the Portuguese Republic is a unitary state, this directive is equally transposed to Alentejo, Algarve, Centro and Norte, so there are often problems of adjustment and adaptation , because the regions are very different from each other and this transfer ends up being made in the same way for the entire national space.
Spain, a state formed by autonomous communities, does otherwise. Madrid sends this directive to the regional capitals and regional parliaments – this was also the case in Wallonia – which validate or not that directive through some proposals to central governments to adapt the transposition of the directive to the specific conditions of their region.
Now, in Portugal, as we are a unitary structure, we do not have administrative regionalization, we do not have contributions in these areas, so we are subject to the effective application of European law.
This is an advantage of existing administrative regionalization, as in some cases we recover sovereign attributions and in others we adapt European legislation to our reality. As there is no regional or federal structure, Lisbon makes “shoe-cat” with its territories.
The creation of inter-municipal communities is a timid step in terms of regionalization or, better, sub-regionalization.
We can even democratize the CCDRs by electing a president of the CCDRs, in an electoral college made up of mayors already in office, whether municipal deputies or the mayors themselves who are in the municipal chambers and parish councils.
And this electoral college what does it mean? It means the municipalization of regionalization. In the end, we will have CIM and CCDR, but we will not have Administrative Regions worthy of the name.
3. The sixth note
From a practical point of view, what I foresee, in terms of local development for the next few years, also has a lot to do with generational problems. we are of the generation baby boomer, some of you are from generation X, but the new generations that come back there, the Y and the Z, are the screener generations, they are the screen generations and there is a very important generational transition here, which, in terms of local politics and local development, will cause great headaches for citizens and mayors.
Local development is at a crossroads where four democratic forms or types converge. There is the so-called representative democracy, the best known, which relates the municipality with entities that are above the municipality, that is, with the regional administration and the central administration.
Then there is participatory democracy, downwards, towards citizenship, towards participation, towards participatory budgets, towards local councils, which are already there on the ground and working.
These two democracies I call the more conventional “vertical politics”. The traditional, more conservative, autarchic policy is carried out vertically. Now up and down, but vertically.
Now, to rebalance this vertical power we need to create "lateral power". And, for me, this is where the future of local government lies.
The “first side” is associative democracy or associationism, as Alexis de Tocqueville said a hundred and such years ago in the book “Democracy in America”: associative democracy in various types and modalities of municipal associations.
The "second side" and the most promising has to do with "network or collaborative democracy" and with the network territories of variable geometry that cross communities online e offline. These are not fixed-geometry legal-administrative territories as we know them. These are territories with a strong symbolic load and a lot of i factor, that is, with a very particular iconography.
4. The seventh grade
What we call regional policy and local development policy is aimed at particular clientele.
Many of the “destination territories” are arranged territories, they are marriages of convenience, they are not desired territories, they are not love marriages, they are interest marriages.
There are territories that we created several years ago and even today we have doubts that they are desired territories. Let's look, for example, at the community-based “CLLD” local development strategies of local development associations.
In the Algarve there are three CLLD: the Lower Guadiana CLLD, which is managed by an association based in Alcoutim, the CLLD which is managed by the Vicentina Association in Barlavento and the Central Algarve which is managed by the In Loco Association.
These low-density territories, which continued the old LEADER programs for the rural world, are territories of convenience, territories arranged, in which assistance programs in rural areas can be applied and managed. And since 1991, there have been financial programs for these territories. They are contained in the area of influence of these associations.
Evidently, in addition to the programs and their specific administration, there is the “autonomous constellation” and we know that most local development associations are extensions of the municipalities.
The municipal constellation, in general, has an arm called the municipal foundation, another arm called the municipal company, another arm called the local development association, another arm called the IPSS, another arm called the recreational and sports association, that is, the municipalization of local life is a fact and has become omnipresent.
In some municipalities, this omnipresence of municipalities is sometimes so obsessive that it almost becomes threatening.
Now, this state of affairs must be refreshed and the great innovation of the near future will be – this is my intuition and my desire – the separation between the broader local political society and the more circumscribed local political power.
It will happen. And it will happen because Generations Y and Z “washed their hands” of local politics and municipal politics as we know them today. These generations of the internet, social networks and technology platforms will bring about a radical transformation in the way municipalities are on the ground.
In my opinion, what's going to happen is a small revolution, a small big revolution between the front office and the back office of the municipalities. I am convinced that the front office it will be converted into a kind of Citizen's Shop. Generations Y and Z deal directly, online, with the municipality through the technological platforms that, however, the municipality was forced to create and the citizen through its smartphone will do all the routine operations using the applications at its disposal. The face-to-face relationship practically disappears and becomes a more impersonal relationship, a virtual relationship.
With regard to the back office, will not only be a back-up service but, above all, a set of itinerant and multipurpose community services whose fundamental principle is their mobility. the services of back office, in this sense, they will be mobile, itinerant and multipurpose services and will be essentially, in my opinion, services of a creative, cultural and social nature, that is, services that promote the “i factor” that I mentioned earlier. Intelligence, innovation, imagination, initiative, that's what the services of the back office.
The problem with all this is that this citizen online – and this for me became a big question mark – you don't know what a “community offline” because almost all of their relationships are impersonal.
Okay, they're going to make communities online, I have no doubts, but will they be diligent to “go down to earth” and build communities offline, real communities between concrete and non-virtual people?
It is just a concern, hence the fundamental importance of cultural and creative services, as these are areas that young people are more likely to adhere to and it is through them that we will have to seduce them. This seduction now involves cultural, creative and recreational services that will henceforth occupy a central place in the municipal and regional structure.
In my opinion, the future of municipalities will pass through creation, imagination and collective territorial intelligence.
(to be continued….)
Author António Covas is a full professor at the University of Algarve and a PhD in European Affairs from the Free University of Brussels
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