INSTITUTE OF GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL ORGANIZATION POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES www.igipz.pan.pl www.geographiapolonica.pl EMERGING LOCAL AUTHORITY NETWORKS WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF LOCAL ADMINISTRATION REFORM IN HUNGARY EDIT SOMLYÓDYNÉ PFEIL Centre for Regional Studies of Hungarian Academy of Sciences H-7601 Pécs, P.O. Box 199, Hungary E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: Hungary is struggling with its fragmented local governmental system. The so called “public service reform” aimed to offer equal access to all as regards local public services, as well as to encourage effi ciency of activity at local administrative level. The government transferred to local actors the respon- sibility for the implementation of reform commissioned centrally. The organisational and geographical frameworks for the rationalisation of local public administration were in turn devised at micro-regional level. This paper mainly aims to analyse urban-rural connections, as co-operative networks of local authori- ties have already been created. The issue is the extent to which the horizontal cooperations created to organise public services can be effective if their vertical connections are very weak, and, further, if there is no mechanism to counterbalance regional differences. Key words: public administration reform, social cohesion, territorial cohesion, inter-municipal coopera- tion, network, public services, effi ciency. INTRODUCTION and its breakdown by size of municipalities. In the whole of Hungary, 54% of municipali- Hungary is a strongly centralised unitary ties have a population of less than one thou- (single) state, in which a liberally regulated sand, while the population threshold of 5,000 local governmental system was created in inhabitants (seen as an optimal number) is 1990. The local governmental system is only exceeded by 9.2% of all municipalities. built on the settlement network (following In a European comparison, Hungary is seen the principle of “one settlement, one local to be among those counties that have small authority”), and in consequence is extremely municipalities (Verebélyi 1995), with the lo- fragmented. Thank to the liberal regulations cal governmental level enjoying very strong of the Act on local governments, a part of political legitimacy. It is not surprising that, a settlement with at least 300 inhabitants may until a reform of local public services was request the award of local authority status. introduced in 2004, this system operated at Consequently the number of municipalities high cost and low effi ciency. It was simply (local authorities) has been growing steadily not suited to the high-quality organization of since the transition: between 1990 and 2007, local tasks. 94 new municipalities were born, while the This essay gives an insight into those number of local authorities reached 3,175 on changes that have taken place in Hungary as 1 January 2008. Fig. 1 demonstrates the frag- a result of the so-called micro-regional public mentation of the local governmental system administration reform. The integrated organi- 6 Edit Somlyódyné Pfeil 100% 2,6 4,6 90% 23,1 80% 36,6 70% 100 001- 20,5 60% 10 001-100 000 5 001-10 000 50% 1 001-5 000 21,4 501-1000 40% 201-500 33,3 1-200 30% 22,2 20% 10% 17,9 10,6 0% Pécs micro-region Hungary Figure 1. Size structure of municipalities in Hungary and in the Pécs micro-region, 2008. Source: Territorial Database, 2008; CSO Hungary. sation of local public services is demonstrated expectations of the EU also had an undeni- by the reference to the gravity zone of a city able effect. Although public administration is with a regional centre position, in which it one of the competences of the member states, was implemented through the networking of there remains a concept called European Ad- local governments. The basic question posed ministrative Space, in connection with which by the article is whether the horizontal coop- the Union has set and is still setting several eration which can be seen as a model to be criteria for public administration in the new followed can operate effi ciently if the local member states. Among the Administrative level has very weak vertical connections? Law Principles published jointly by the EU and the OECD, the principles of the effi cien- cy and effectiveness of public administration THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN should be mentioned as issues of special im- EUROPEAN TRENDS AND THE portance for the topic in question. Both offer HUNGARIAN REFORM a specifi c dimension to the accountability of public administration. If the state or the mu- The Hungarian reform fi ts in with a trend nicipalities provide services, the effi ciency of to be noted internationally. The modernisa- public administration is of utmost importance tion of public administration was mainly in- for the access of inhabitants to these services duced by internal national demand, but the (SIGMA 1999). As the Union defi nitely en- Emerging Local Authority Networks within the Framework of Local Administration Reform in Hungary 7 courages new member states and accession may be based on false ideology, as it is clear countries to strengthen their institutional and that a signifi cant part of the smaller munici- administrative capacity, it is also stated that palities are unable to offer even the very ba- the issue of administrative capacities is one sic services on their own. Political localism, of the central concepts of the Europeanisa- focusing on the community interests of the tion doctrine (Dragoş–Neamţu, 2007). municipal governments, is not far from the In line with the international approach, perceptions of the south European countries, we can also talk about another European either (Swianiewicz 2001). Mourtizen (2008) trend also affecting local public administra- points out that the homogenisation of living tion which started in the reconstruction period conditions, the professionalisation of local following World War II and has not yet been public administration and the information fi nished with. Within the development of the boom all decrease the positive correlation welfare state, as a consequence of rapid ur- between the size of municipalities and sys- banisation and the restructuring of the econo- tem capacity. On the other hand, this state- my, the rationalisation and reform of the local ment, which is valid for the advanced old and regional governmental levels took place member states, is far from being true as yet for the fi rst time in Western Europe. A central in several countries of the Eastern European issue in this process was the size and capac- region (Swianiewicz 2010). ity of the local authorities, and not least the We can agree with the opinion that ter- democratic character of the local authority ritorial reforms are usually not too often in- administration and the rights of participation troduced, as it is just the local elites that are citizens enjoyed (Council of Europe, 1995). the main obstacle to the integration of mu- In the 1950s and 1970s a debate started on nicipalities. On the other hand, the preserva- whether it was possible to identify an opti- tion of spatial fragmentation has far-reaching mum size for local authorities that could se- consequences. One of the most important of cure the minimum level of public services for these is that spatial fragmentation stops de- inhabitants. The surveys relating to this issue centralisation and the effective functioning of had different results in different countries: the the municipal governmental system (Swianie- South European states preserved the tradition- wicz 2010). A frequently applied method to ally established boundaries of municipalities, counterbalance the system of excessively while it was especially the North European small municipalities is cooperation among countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the them, i.e. via different associated institutions, UK, Germany etc.) in which the amalgama- a method that is also applied by the Hungar- tion of local authorities was carried out, and ian reform to be introduced here. territorial reform resulted in the founding of The starting point was that, in the one and large municipalities (Zehetner 1982). a half decades since the transition in Hunga- In the ECE region changing the political ry, associations were very rarely born out of system, the modernisation of the structure of bottom-up initiatives of the municipalities. If local public administration became a topi- it still happened, then the associations oper- cal issue in the early 1990s. The problem of ated and provided the basic functions on vari- the adequate size of municipalities is also ous scales in the case of each public service, a division line in this region: some states with ever-changing actors, with various insti- preferred fragmentation, while others in- tutional frameworks frequently overlapping creased the sizes of municipalities by means with one another, and with consequent zero of territorial consolidation. In countries with effectiveness (Fekete–Lados–Pfeil–Szobos- a fragmented municipal system – including zlai 2002). Hungary – the right of self-governance for Hungary in general belongs to that each municipality is seen by central politics group of transition countries (besides the as a political and democratic value of the Czech Republic and Slovakia) insisting on utmost importance. This concept, however, the preservation of a fragmented munici- 8 Edit Somlyódyné Pfeil Figure 2. A cooperation network as exemplifi ed by Pécs micro-region. Source: Compilation from the author on the basis of CSO (Hungary) data. pal structure. The so-called micro-regional OBJECTIVES AND OPERATIONAL administrative reform introduced in this MECHANISMS OF THE REFORM OF essay is thus rather contradictory. On the LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICES IN HUNGARY one hand, it tries to make us believe that the missing administrative capacities of the The reform targeting the primary level municipalities can be created by a bottom- of the local governmental system was actu- up building model, through the voluntary ally implemented as an isolated intervention; cooperation of the municipalities.