The OECD Territorial Review of Småland-Blekinge Chapter 3: Governance Carlos Icaza Lara Regional...

The OECD Territorial Review of Småland-Blekinge

Chapter 3: Governance

Carlos Icaza LaraRegional Development Policy Division

Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial DevelopmentOECD

Ronneby, 10 November 2011

Summary

• Chapter divided in 3 main sections:

1. Governance Structure of Småland-Blekinge.

2. Arguments to be considered when assessing the regionalisation reform.

3. Multi-level governance arrangements to contribute to promote a better governance framework for regional development policies.

10 November 2011 Ronneby Seminar 2

GOVERNANCE STRUCTUREPart 1


Excessive fragmentation• Large number of public actors involved in

regional development…

• Regional development largely influenced by the national and municipal level.

– Central Government agencies+ CABs.

– Regional Development councils indirectly elected.


Central

government

County administrative

boards

County councils

Regional development

councils Municipalities

Regional development

Shared Shared Shared

Financial support to companies and rural areas

Shared (national programmes that aims at single companies)

Shared in Jönköping, Blekinge and Kronoberg

Shared in Jönköping, Blekinge and Kronoberg. Exclusive in Kalmar

Public Transport

Shared in Blekinge; Exclusive in Kalmar and Jönköping4

Exclusive in Kronoberg

Shared in Blekinge

Increasing need of co-operation• Why is it co-operation required?:

– Mobility of people and businesses across administrative borders;

– Many policies (transport infrastructure; innovation) require a broader geographic focus than the county;

– Search for efficiency in public administration in a context of reduced fiscal resources.

• What are the potential benefits?

– More efficient and better targeted policies/ initiatives:

• co-ordinating complementary measures that can generate synergies.

• Co-ordinating different county/ municipal interventions that can have a stronger effect if they are planned/ carried out together.

• Have a stronger voice…

• Avoid duplication or overlapping of efforts and resources



Size of counties in Sweden

Pop 2010 ('000) Land area (Km2)

Stockholms 2054.3 Norrbottens 98249 Västra Götalands 1580.3 Västerbottens 55190 Skåne 1243.3 Jämtlands 49343 Östergötlands 429.6 Dalarnas 28197 Jönköpings 336.9 Västra Götalands 23956 Uppsala 335.9 Västernorrlands 21685 Hallands 299.5 Gävleborgs 18200 Örebro 280.2 Värmlands 17591 Dalarnas 277.0 Kalmar 11219 Gävleborgs 276.5 Skåne 11035 Värmlands 273.3 Östergötlands 10605 Södermanlands 270.7 Jönköpings 10495 Västerbottens 259.3 Örebro 8546 Västmanlands 252.8 Kronobergs 8468 Norrbottens 248.6 Uppsala 8208 Västernorrlands 242.6 Stockholms 6519 Kalmar 233.5 Södermanlands 6103 Kronobergs 183.9 Hallands 5462 Blekinge 153.2 Västmanlands 5145 Jämtlands 126.7 Gotlands 3151 Gotlands 57.3 Blekinge 2947 Average Sweden 448.4 19 538.8 Average OECD TL3 Regions 695.0 19 543.6 Average OECD TL2 Regions 3 587.9 98 649.4

Source: Statistics Sweden.

Co-ordination Challenges

• No clear structure for facilitating co-ordination of regional development efforts:– Deficiencies in vertical co-ordination among many

national, regional and local authorities.

– Deficiencies in horizontal co-ordination at county level

Lack of regional leadership: no single institution capable of co-ordinating the different regional development actors and policies in each of the counties.


Co-ordination Challenges

• Different inter-county co-operation initiatives

– Health; infrastructure; innovation; tourism…

• But, cross-county co-operation is still weak:

– More the sum of individual county priorities than an analysis of regional complementarities and joint opportunities.

– Normally not result in concrete plans (e.g. common infrastructure projects) using joint financial resources.

– Difficult to reach political agreements.


ARGUMENTS FOR THE REGIONALISATION REFORM

Part 2


Elements to be considered (i)

• Regional reform processes are context-dependent.

• But, some common elements can be identified:

– Guidance from the centre is required to clarify the purpose and direction of the process.

– But stable reforms also require a certain degree of political consensus among the stakeholders involved.

– This requires setting clear goals and objectives of the reform


Elements to be considered (ii)

– In-depth cost-benefit analysis must be conducted…• Economies of scale/ efficiency;• Transaction costs;• Economies of scope;• Stronger voice;• Democracy and accountability

– Regionalisation reforms may involve trade-offs among outcomes: e.g. economies of scale vs. closeness to the local government.

– Importance of agreeing on the weights assigned to each of the criteria in cost-benefit analyses

– The focus should be on assessing and communicating the benefits of the reform: why the reform is needed; which benefits it will bring?


Other options should be considered

• Option of strengthening co-operative arrangements:– It may bring some advantages: economies of scale.

– And allows for flexible interaction: different borders for different objectives.

• But reaching agreements between administrative units is complex:– Special-purpose institutions (such as health-care regions)

help.

– This work for single purposes but not solve structural territorial failures.

• Assessing the pros and cons of co-operation arrangements vs. administrative mergers is crucial.


But, whatever the structure of public authorities, they will require the involvement and co-operation of

different kinds of actors at different levels of government


MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCEPart 3


Strengthening MLG co-ordination (i)

– Clarifying the roles of the different actors dealing with regional development.

– Ensuring regional leadership

• Move towards directly elected bodies dealing with regional development, and strenghtening the role of regional directors.

• It would need adequate financial and human resources and enough institutional support to carry out its task efficiently.

• It will hep to give a regional focus to regional development instead of the sum of local perspectives.

• Municipalities would still play a central role: strong regional actors could exist in parallel and in co-operation with strong municipalities.

– Promoting a better definition of the role and organisation of central government agencies.


Strengthening MLG co-ordination (ii)

– Strengthening regional development programmes as a main framework for guiding regional development efforts:

• Develop more tangible strategies, including concrete targets and measurable outcomes.

• Linking investment priorities with the objectives of the regional programmes.

• Better integrate rural development strategies and general development programmes in a comprehensive regional strategy.

– Strengthening inter-county and multi-level planning.• To be effective, joint strategies should include concrete initiatives

and funding and implementation modalities.

• The framework of regional “contracts” may help: agreement between national and sub-national, public/private units concerning their mutual obligations. It allows sharing the design and financing of concrete initiatives


Strengthening MLG co-ordination (iii)

– Further involving the business community and universities:

• It requires public encouragement.

• And concrete regional development strategies viewed by private sector actors as concrete, relevant and capable of generating tangible effects.

• Institutional frameworks for public- private co-operation may help: public-private development agencies; industry advisory groups…

• Public-private co-operation for infrastructure development could go further.

• Enabling the legal framework for public- private co-operation


Inter- municipal co-operation

– Increasing need for municipal co-operation:• population ageing, specialisation of public services, need of recruiting

specialised staff, interdependencies of labour market areas

– Inter-municipal co-operation has been developing actively.– But faces some challenges:

• Legal constrains for buying or selling services: e.g. municipal inspection.

• Reaching consensus among administrative units and local political leaders on which activities to carry out jointly and how to do.

• Lack of incentives: it can be difficult to show measurable impacts in the short term.

– How to overcome these obstacles:• Incentive policy to encourage municipalities to co-operate.

• Regional institutions can also encourage municipal co-operation.

• Support for municipal co-operation should go beyond county borders:– Bordering municipalities ]with limited capacities and resources .

– Border municipalities with large commuting flows


Relocating municipal competences?

– In-depth assessment to decide if some competences could be recentralised to regional or national institutions: e.g. municipal inspection.

• This process could be asymmetric: bigger municipalities could have certain competences that smaller municipalities would not have.

• Any process of recentralisation of competences should be made based on a comprehensive dialogue in which representatives of the main parties involved agree on the rationality of moving up a devolved competence.


TACK!


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