Now that the Local Elections are approaching, I will dedicate the next Chronicles of the Peninsular Southwest to the reflection on the theme of the reform of the municipal power, all the more so as it is part of the current political agenda.
In the near future, we will most likely revisit the concept of “autarchic power”, in the sense of a more open and creative power, more lateral and collaborative, of a “pair in pairs”, acting simultaneously in real communities, digital platforms, social networks and online communities.
This opening of the municipal power will increase the space of freedom and the field of possibilities and solutions of the XNUMXst century municipality, towards the formation and composition of new territories in a network of highly variable geometry.
We will thus have a "borderless" and more cosmopolitan municipality, more interactive with its fellow citizens, with more green economy and blue economy in its concerns, more creative and cultural, perhaps less fiscalistic and more contractual in the financial sphere, in short, a increasingly inter-municipal municipalism towards 2nd degree municipal federalism.
As a result of this opening, its internal organization and its management will undergo a "small revolution", not only in the organic-functional structure and in the relationship between the back office and the front office, but, above all, in its relationship culture, that is, in the information, communication and interaction strategy in the face of the collaborative networks of which it will be part and which, henceforth, will constitute its new preferential welcoming environment.
Our revisiting of municipal power will not be limited, however, to the new culture of municipal management, more open and collaborative, it also extends to the reform of territorial power as a whole, at different political and administrative levels, within the framework of ongoing state-administration reform, without which municipal management loses clarity, brilliance and depth. In this first chronicle, I begin with a reflection on the “system of power” of local government.
The power system of the municipal power
As we already know, the plane of observation and the angle of observation change the nature of the thing observed. I refer to the micro, meso and macro perspectives of multi-level governance of local government and its special multi-scalarity.
As we also know, in a state with a unitary structure like ours, the regional level is a level of conformation and coordination and not a level of autonomy or self-government.
Furthermore, 25 years of multiannual programming of European funds was enough time to create “a system of power with several comfort zones”, alleged acquired rights and a convenient inertia in terms of managing expectations.
Thus, a kind of ritual was created that the whole country awaits with great expectation every 6 or 6 years, in such a way that one can speak of a system of power made up of accesses and codes, doors and corridors , which, over time, established three main analytical elements: political institutions and bureaucracy (the polity), the various public policies (the policy) and an activity of lobbying (a politics).
Moreover, this succession of 7-year cycles not only enshrined the restrictions and conditionalities imposed by the regulations on access to European funds, but also substantially changed the nature of the administration of this power system, in the sense that it is the programs that reinvent cyclically the territories, from the top to the bottom, and not the territories that format the programs and measures, from the bottom to the top.
As for the essential, which is its territorial organization, the country seems “an invertebrate being” who lacks a backbone.
On the one hand, an excess of centralism, on the other, an excess of localism. A bipolar country, therefore.
In the language of the nomenclature of territorial statistical units (NUTS), the country is based on NUTS I (central) and NUTS IV (local) levels.
On the contrary, the country should be based on the intermediate pillars, the NUTS II levels (functional regions coinciding with the Regional Coordination and Development Committees) and NUTS III (groupings and/or communities of municipalities), in order to create density, muscle mass, nervous system and spine.
So what's the problem? The problem is that these intermediate levels are not turntables, they do not deliver specific power of their own. The “power system” of local government is organized around three power distribution subsystems: two electoral constituencies (municipal and district), three levels of public administration (Central, Regional, and Local) and three levels of political organization. party (municipal, district and national).
Political parties, the privileged operators of the power system, try to optimize its implantation, its power system, its distribution of seats, in this three-dimensional system.
In 2017, 43 years after the 25th of April, in many Portuguese municipalities, local power is confused with municipal power, while “local political society” seems to have been captured by the suffocating omnipresence of the City Council. In other words, in many municipalities we are facing a true Local-State controlled by the autarchy. Under these conditions, the "power system" of the municipal power can be characterized as follows:
1) In a unitary government and administration structure, like ours, the local power system tends towards a “level of compatibility and inter-municipal conformation”;
2) The “deconcentrated system” works in “vertical and hierarchical mode”, from top to bottom; the “only original legitimacy” is the autarchic one, the “regional administration cannot invent”;
3) The system creates many “participation simulations” in order to function and create habituation and routine; personal and clientele relationships are there to facilitate;
4) The system works in a “declared utilitarian logic” of balance of flows, regardless of its evaluation in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and effectiveness;
5) The system does not have “sufficient multi-scalarity” due to the low autonomy of the intermediate levels;
6) The system suffers from an “excess of institutionalization”, either centralist or localist, which aggravates its bureaucratic vice and internal inefficiencies;
7) The system produces a lot of “discursive rhetoric about innovation”, almost out of duty, but fixed geometry territories such as municipalities are “generally conservative”; on the contrary, variable geometry territories are, by vocation, more innovative;
8) The system creates the “necessary and convenient opacity for its reproduction”, through its clientele and personal relationships in such a way that the municipal corporation does not see its putative reputation affected; and it does it well, by and large.
Arrived here, the great question in the coming years is whether we will witness the encroachment of this corporate autarchic power, or rather its "liberation" through greater social diversity and the creation of new socio-organizational formats, in which the municipal power it is a "pair in pairs” in close articulation with other powers, business, university, cultural, media, associative, etc.
At issue is the construction of networked communities, a collaborative local economy and new technological platforms that sustain these socially constructed communities.
This laboriously constructed “system of power” is, however, at risk of withering away. The country has growing portions of its territory in a state of need that seem more like real “reclusive territories”.
I am referring to entire municipalities with no economic activity worthy of the name, with a completely aged population and, above all, without a horizon of hope for the near or distant future.
We are in the fifth programming exercise of the European Structural Funds and nobody seems to be wondering why regional and territorial asymmetries have worsened in almost thirty years of local, rural and regional investment.
The risk is that, cyclically, due to deficit or public debt reasons, there will be severe adjustments and periods of austerity that cause us a devaluation of the territory's assets and, concomitantly, their passage into the hands of third parties, foreign to the territories in question .
This will be our main problem, now and in the future, that is, the destruction of the local productive fabric whenever there is a period of adjustment. Indeed, there will be no local, rural or regional development policy that resists stop-and-go macroeconomic adjustment policy.
Above all, I am thinking of this immense sea that is the “great country of the interior”, these “home councils” of remote rural areas, which grow every day, starved of hope and enterprising people.
There is no municipal power system that resists this transfer of resources outside its borders, and yet local authorities cannot be held responsible for the accumulated public debt.
We therefore need a major effort in territorial planning, programming, planning and implementation and, for this, more and better collective territorial intelligence. It is precisely here that “the revolution of local power” needs to be made.
We will return to the subject.
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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