Territorial administration systems are no longer an exogenous variable in the more general process of modernization of political institutions. In the XNUMXst century, the “political technology” of the State-administration is subject to constant pressure and obsolescence, if we think, for example, of the movements of globalization, supranational integration and infranational decentralization, as a whole, what the literature designates today as processes of “multi-scale or multi-level governance”.
This also means that, definitively, the reform of the municipal power is not independent from the reform of the State-administration. Before referring to regional and local authorities, I leave here some general principles that should inform the reform of the State-administration.
I - General principles of the reform of the State-administration
1) There is no reform without a deep recomposition of the missions and structure of the central government, which is responsible for essentially performing prospective, normative, regulatory, inspection and contractual functions and, in this way, also to guard against the excessive corporate bias of ministerial structures .
2) There is no reform without the formation of a “polycontextual government”, that is, a government that considers framework laws, the planning system, zero-based budgets and program contracts as privileged instruments for framing the administration public and, in particular, of a polycentric architecture for the administration of the territory that, in this context government, would become the main “executive column” of the country.
3) There is no reform if we do not invest more in "delimiting the public interest", in the positive discrimination of the most disadvantaged, in the organization of diffuse interests and in the economy of organizational forms of this same public interest, that is, in innovative and efficient ways of administering common goods and public goods.
4) There is no reform if we insist on the analytical confusion between “customer and citizen”, lightly accepting that management methods and techniques can overlap and replace political deliberations in the public administrative and territorial space; nowadays, and increasingly, the perception of the citizen does not confuse the functioning of the administration with the fairness and justice of local and regional public policies.
5) There is no reform, no matter how inventive, regardless of the process of economic growth; if we “discontinue” the territorial cohesion policy, we are not only blocking the future, we are also destroying the achievements of the past and, ultimately, a question of regionalization of the territory can become a more serious problem of political regionalism .
6) There is no reform if we give up on accrediting the “territorial agreement and certifying interest organizations”, associative or otherwise; it is about giving genuine content to participatory democracy and avoiding the media and party manipulation that only the pressure of demand is a real loci of political responsibility may caution.
7) There is no reform without a great effort of political-administrative modernization at the intermediate level of regional administration; this new territorial rationality is the mainstay for reforming regional and local administrations, and relocating their missions and functions, while preventing the peripheral administration of the State from being easily captured by the territorial implantation of party apparatuses and their respective clienteles and voting unions.
8) There is no reform without a healthy balance between fixed jurisdictions in the territory, autarchies and their derivatives, and functional jurisdictions corresponding to the “variable geometry of interests”; it is necessary to create accredited consultation bodies between the two levels of jurisdiction.
9) There is no reform without a harmonious balance between the various forms and devices of public administration, from the more traditional administration to virtual platforms, passing through consultation administration and the various types of administration "under contract", always with the objective to promote universal but differentiated access and thus avoid the info-exclusion of some segments of the population of senior society.
10) There is no reform without a careful consideration of the self-esteem of political-administrative agents, that is, it is an ethical and deontological imperative to review the statute and condition of public interest and service, of delimitation and realization of the common good, of stability career, the system of incentives, sanctions and corresponding remuneration.
This decalogue of the reform of the State-administration transports us to the new public space of the participatory, contractual and digital society where the concepts of the “old order” political-administrative of a hierarchical, authoritarian and unilateral nature will gradually give way to the concepts of the “new order”, more decentralized, communicative, polycentric and polycontextual of an open society.
In this new societal architecture will certainly reside the areas of greatest innovation of the future State-administration whose positive externalities will benefit, in the first instance, municipalities and regions.
II. The principles of a reform of regional and local power
On a political-doctrinal level, I am convinced that the reform of regional power, within the framework of State reform, precedes and frames the reform of local power.
This does not mean that a reform of local power cannot be undertaken, but, in this circumstance, it is more legal and regulatory, with a lot of political balance in the mix and, almost certainly, ineffective.
One need only look at the Algarve, a region of 430 inhabitants, and at its 16 municipalities, to immediately understand that the reform of regional power must precede and frame the reform of local power.
My position in principle, in this regard, is simple: the only regional and local development strategy about which there is no reason to doubt, in the context of the current programming period (2015-2020), is the one that states that it is possible to “do more and better with fewer resources”.
On the other hand, it is true, in any strategy it is necessary to distinguish between regional policy, that is, the system of positive and negative stimuli to regions and municipalities, and the political autonomy of the "desired territories", which is necessary to carry it out successfully. this regional policy, in conditions of effectiveness, efficiency, equity and effectiveness (4E).
Here is my modest contribution to the urgent debate on this compromise, that is, the political and financial compromise between the regional policy models (top-down) and the political regionalization model (bottom-up) that are best suited to this phase of our collective life.
1) I am convinced that it is very rewarding to carry out the political-ideological debate regarding this political commitment, at least in two versions: the more ideological debate between Unitarians, regionalists and municipalists about the conceptions of the State and public administration, and the debate more utilitarian and pragmatic about the experimentalism of a regionalization policy and its various moments; the political-pedagogical and practical effects of these debates would be of indisputable utility;
2) I am convinced of the indispensability of a framework law for political-administrative decentralization to frame all sectors that count for the regionalization process: we are talking about districts, municipalities and their associations, inter-municipal communities, metropolitan areas, groupings European territorial cooperation, cross-border working communities, territorial and urban networks of all kinds, which will congest the territory if there is no framework law that clarifies the gradualism of the process and the transactions (attributions, competences and means) between levels of government and administration;
3) I am convinced that, in the information and knowledge society in which we live, without “regional self-esteem” there will never be enough brand image and territorial mobilization; it is imperative that regions have a positive and assertive image of themselves, that their positive energy is mobilized in the right direction, that they can enjoy their full freedom to think for themselves, taking all the risks and consequences that such assertiveness can entail and imply; in this context, the motto “doing more and better with fewer resources” can be a strong stimulus and an added motivation for an innovative regional development strategy, especially in the domain of its “foreign relations policy”;
4) I am convinced that the need to move up in the value chain of regional programming and planning is imperative, based on a global and consistent idea of regional development, which is not a mere sum of applications without any connection between them in space and in time; in particular, we urgently need to review the dichotomy between cohesion and competitiveness that has caused so many misunderstandings, since regions, in their diversity, are obliged to convert this diversity into an advantage;
5) I am convinced that the more the country internationalizes, the more urgent the need to create strong regions becomes; in view of the scarcity of financial resources, the regions need freedom so that all their human and material capital is adequately valued through a more autonomous, competitive and relational model of government; there is no need to be afraid of the regions thus constituted, the laws of the republic and the multilevel regional policy will continue to be the regulators of the “new society”;
6) I am convinced that it is imperative to undo the mistake that confuses centralization with centrality and rationalization with rationality; we created a “pendular country” that has been balancing for thirty years between the central and local levels, without realizing that regional territories can be excellent centers of rationality and centrality of public policies; we need to demonstrate to ourselves that regionalization can correct this old and anachronistic pendulum country;
7) I am convinced that it is essential to recognize, in order not to be surprised, that the success of the regionalization process is, above all, an essential question of political culture in its noblest sense, which delves deep into the ancestral macrocephaly of the country, always renewed by new imaginative formulations (institutes, agencies, observatories, commissions, etc.), on the one hand, and in the “municipalization” of the territory on which the entire political-electoral structure and, as well, the party-political structures are based; if the process of regionalization is “politically correct” we will perhaps have made a decisive contribution to a substantive and substantial change in political culture in Portugal, without ignoring that it can also be an impertinent and conflicting process, according to conjunctural policies and of most occasion;
8) I am convinced that the CCDRs are an excellent starting point for the policy of regionalization and political regionalization, as they constitute a reference “interface” for all regional services of the State and have a functional and operational legitimacy for conducting regional policy; different ways, shorter or longer, can be tested to convert CCDRs into regional government and administrative bodies;
9) I am convinced that it will be difficult to consolidate an internal regionalization policy if “contextual benefits” are not created by the regional policy system within the framework of the European Union's territorial cohesion; we talk about the functioning of a “multi-level system” which encompasses “European regional policy”, “national regional policy” and “regional regional policy” and their respective governance and administration structures, as well as their distinct and complementary modes of financing;
10) I am convinced that it is imperative to rebalance cross-border cooperation in the peninsular framework and eliminate the misunderstandings that result from the existing institutional asymmetry, as well as the arsenal of “soft policy” available regional that is not used in depth and which already includes decentralized interregional cooperation, the formation of Euroregions and Euro-cities and the more convenient use of the figure of European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation.
Final grade
This argument in favor of the reform of regional power and regionalization policy does not ignore and does not escape the influence of some emerging conflicts, what we call here “the new conflicts of regional policy and regionalization policy” as a result of the increase in the number of actors and their “regional demand”, motivated by the launch of new policy instruments by the European Union.
These two sets, instruments and actors, result in new interactions, but also new conflicts of jurisdiction and interest. One of these interactions and/or conflicts concerns the competition between networks of municipalities, inter-municipal communities, region-states, city-regions, euro-cities, city-regions, euro-regions, city networks, European groupings of territorial cooperation, etc. .
Finally, we are somewhere between administrative regionalization and political regionalism. Containing the most radical identities and multi-territorialities will be the greatest challenge of regional policy, that is, accepting the profusion of different territorial identities and motivations and putting political order in the different jurisdictional conflicts, precisely through the constitution of a regional regulatory and politically legitimated.
It is not an easy task, but it is here that the added value of political-administrative regionalization will be more acutely felt.
Having arrived here, we already have the necessary and sufficient framework to present what we consider here as the emerging features of the XNUMXst century paradigm of local power and municipality. We'll get back 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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