IMPLEMENTATION

National laws set standard with varying degrees of discretion for local authorities. The central government can supervise whether standards are met through benchmarks, tests and requirements that performance indicators be published, such as hospital waiting lists, school performance results, and so on. Here too an active press can play a role in exposing problems, and the central government, which is ultimately responsible politically, can intervene by setting stricter standards or transferring extra money to certain activities. Rhetorical action, such as shaming underachievers, can also be part of the strategy.

“National cohesion” is seen as a major target by all actors. This is the basis for a large number of national standards and rules that canalize local and regional policies. National standards are fixed by national regulations and guaranteed by the constitutional and administrative courts. Local authorities have very little regulatory power and prefects as well as citizens might challenge local measures or policies which would infringe their rights to equal treatment on the entire national territory. These standards are enforced legally by the administrative courts, politically through financial subsidies and incentives, and professionally through the powerful field administrations of the state which work very closely with the local sub-units.

The Ministry of Interior ensures control of the local administrations. As part of the territorial reform, the administration responsible for monitoring the municipalities’ finances will be integrated within the existing national Auditing Court.

Public services have been extensively decentralized over the past couple of decades with the decentralization of first and secondary education in 1989 and 1990 being the most prominent cases. Once services are transferred from central to local government auspices, safeguarding national standards and even defining and sustaining those standards becomes problematic. National agencies monitor closely the services delivered by local government. Thus, monitoring is largely done as performance evaluation, i.e. a sort of ex-post steering. Agency reports are posted on websites so that, for instance, parents planning which school they should send their children to can find ample information about the performance of different schools and local governments. This is a kind of “name and shame” performance control which may build on comparisons that are not always fair – schools in economically and ethnically challenged local governments may for instance perform less well compared to schools in more affluent local governments – but there is certainly monitoring and control that reflects the Swedish tradition of open information to all citizens.
One of the problems encountered by central government agencies in this monitoring process is that they frequently lack effective corrective instruments. Public services delegated to local governments become part of the local autonomy – indeed, adaptation of service to local needs and the local diversity was one of the reasons they were decentralized in the first place – which makes it difficult for central agencies to introduce new forms of steering. Local diversity has increased somewhat, but still Swedish governments guarantee high standards of uniform levels of quality throughout the country.

The Commonwealth has a strong commitment to providing uniform national services and considerable efforts are committed to ensuring that program delivery, particularly in health and education, are as uniform as possible across the country. This is necessarily complicated by distance, and the larger states (Queensland and Western Australia) are given additional funding to deliver their services, simply because of their huge geographic size. Recommendations on funding across the states, and the allocation of goods and services tax revenue, is the responsibility of an independent statutory authority, the Commonwealth Grants Commission.

A particular problem with relation to national standards, which has defeated all governments whatever their political complexion, has been the special problem of providing national standards of service to Indigenous communities.

In areas of provincial jurisdiction such as education, the federal government does not in principle have the authority to ensure that provinces meet national standards. However, in areas where the federal government transfers funds to the provinces, it has the leverage to insist on certain standards. The main area in which this occurs is health care. The Canada Health Act of 1986 requires provinces to meet five principles for health care; thus, care must be available to all eligible residents of Canada, comprehensive in coverage, accessible without financial or other barriers, portable within the country and during travel abroad, and publicly administered. All five principles must be met by the provinces if they are to receive full federal funding. The federal government has challenged certain provinces for failure to meet these standards. However, no funds have been withheld since 1993. The federal government recently announced that it is changing its formula for transfer payments to the provinces. The formula will not be based on a per capita distribution, which will favor the more heavily populated provinces.

A diverse set of special laws on local government services and activities is intended to set national standards. In most cases, these laws set minimal service standards. This is most apparent in areas such as primary education, child protection and social services. However, the central government does not seem to be able to monitor the extent to which these standards are met by local governments in all cases.

Japanese government authorities lay great stress on providing reasonable unitary standards for the provision of public services. The recent move toward decentralization makes it particularly important to raise standards for the local provision of public services. On the central government level, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is in charge of this task, which involves direct supervision, personnel transfer between central and local entities, and training activities. While direct administrative supervision has lost some importance compared to legal and judicial supervision, the result of a reform in the year 2000 that abolished local entities’ agency functions in a strict sense, other channels were still important during the period under review. On the local level, particularly on the level of prefectures, there is a rather elaborate training system that is linked in various ways with the national level.

It is not central government as such but a dense network of agencies that are involved with the development and monitoring of local government: the Minister of Local Government, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Local Government Commission, the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Their roles range from strategic development and policy, regulation and monitoring, to handling complaints about the activities and operation of local government. One illustration is the current measures to ensure environmental protection standards in Canterbury and the Far North District. Following from independent reports about water management problems central government has intervened. There are real issues surrounding water quality, for example, because central government is keen to have high standards for water quality in areas frequented by tourists; however, local residents do not feel they should be required to fund these high standards from taxes on property.

The Norwegian government is committed to providing public services that are as uniform as possible across the country. Given the large distances involved, and the remoteness of some regions, this implies that peripheral parts of the country receive large (and expensive) transfers, both direct and in the form of infrastructure investments.
Although services are reasonably uniform across the country, this has not been the case for local government performance in all respects. The global financial crisis has revealed shortcomings in finance management in many municipalities. A number of municipalities had, against warnings, invested spare funds in Icelandic banks, lured by high interest rates, banks that were the first to fail when the global bubble burst. Four towns in the north of Norway – Narvik, Hemnes, Rana and Hattfjelldal – made multimillion-dollar bets on complex, U.S.-linked financial products designed by Citigroup which they did not have skills to manage and sustained losses that destroyed most of the value of their investments.

A department in the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for overseeing subnational self-governments. Its concern is compliance with existing law and not assessment of efficiency, but laws extend across such issues as regular financial accounting, fair conduct of elections, avoidance of conflict of interest, compliance with rules on disposal of waste materials and freedom of information. Its annual reports show regular monitoring of all levels of self-government, as well as substantial efforts to inform councils of existing legal constraints. The number of breaches of the law, following consultation and advice from the ministry, has declined rapidly as new local authorities have become accustomed to existing law. Thus, in 2008, just 55 out of 10,516 municipality resolutions and proposals were found to be in conflict with the law.

Since local authorities have a right to fully make use of their constitutional scope of discretion, the central government has limited reach to ensure that national standards are consistently met on the municipal level throughout the country. Local government is separated from central government, and the municipal bodies are partly independent of the state. Appeals to administrative courts of decisions taken by local authorities are possible on grounds that the decisions were not made in proper order or were otherwise illegal. In certain and very few specific matters (environment, social care) or decisions by local authorities must be confirmed by state authorities. The ongoing reform of municipalities and services aims at a more effective provision of services also in periphery regions and at more sustainable municipal finances.

In Germany, public services are provided by different levels of government: the federal administration, the administrations of the individual federal states, communal administration, indirect public administration (institutions subject to public law with specific tasks, particularly in the area of social security), non-public and non-profit institutions (e.g. kindergartens or youth centers), and finally judicial administrations. While some standards have a national character and thus have to be respected by all levels, this is not the case for others in areas such as education.
The principle of federalism implies that the provision of public services will not be uniform across the country. This principle limits the ability to set binding standards. It is an essential feature of federalism that it respects differences in preferences, allowing for experiments and heterogeneity in the provision of public services.
The first reform of federalism, adopted in 2006, gave the states a number of new legislative competences, which they started to use in the period of observation. Since the states have adopted differing policies in some areas, this has led to a slight decrease in the national uniformity of public services.

In certain issue areas, the attainment of national (or, more usually now, EU) levels of public services is prescribed and monitored. This applies in particular to environmental matters such as the provision of safe drinking water, controlling air and water pollution, and so on.
In this area, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a central role. Within the EPA, the Office of Environmental Enforcement supervises the environmental protection activities of local authorities by auditing their performance, providing advice and guidance, and in some cases giving binding directions. It can assist the public in bringing prosecutions against local authorities found to be in breach of significant legislation. In other areas – the provision of social housing, maintenance of local roads, and other such issues – the attainment of national standards is largely constrained by the resources made available by the central government.

The quality of local government policy implementation and service delivery is generally fairly high. However, in spite of national quality control and accountability mechanisms, and a continued series of mergers of smaller local governments with a view to meeting minimum national standards for executive/implementation capacity (from just over 700 municipalities in 1993 to 431 in 2010), production of services is decreasing (-1.3% for 2002 – 2007), falling far behind the development of GDP (+2,3%) and population growth (+0.3%) over the same period. In addition, price per unit local service delivery increased on average 0.7% faster than the average cost per unit of GDP.
Local governments themselves also try to meet mutually agreed standards. Several studies of Local Audit Chambers involve comparisons and benchmarks for particular kinds of services. Local governments have, on a voluntary basis, for several years been organizing peer reviews of each others’ executive capacities. In 2009, the Association of Dutch Local Governments established the Quality Institute of Dutch Local Governments (Kwaliteitsinstituut Nederlandse Gemeenten, KING). Its purpose is to implement new information technology so as to learn from each other through better benchmarks and to have more informed peer reviews of administrative/executive capacity per local government.
Finally, it should be mentioned that experiences with environmental policy implementation show a lack of law enforcement due to staff shortages in subnational governments.

Economic and fiscal conditions at the subnational level differ, and so does the availability of professional staff. Central government has set national standards in order to guarantee a minimum quality of public services. In the regions, the centrally appointed head of the regional administration is responsible for ensuring that national policies are implemented, and that state institutions operating in the region perform their functions properly. More recently, EU funds and increasing cooperation between regional and local governments have helped subnational administration improve operations. As a result, more national standards are being met and developed.

The Swiss political system is one of the most decentralized systems in the world. Cantons and municipalities enjoy very substantial autonomy. Within the scope of their (large) competencies, it is up to the cantons and municipalities to decide which public services they want to offer, to what extent and at what level of quality. Therefore, there are no national standards for public services which could be met, except with regard to those parts of the administration that implement federal law. However, all public services have to comply with the rule of the law and the human rights set out in the constitution. In addition, there are some national standards set on the federal level, on issues such as social policies. These federal laws are implemented by cantonal administrations, and in these cases the cantonal administrations have no leeway, and have to follow the national norms.

The New Labour government has used the idea of setting targets to achieve national public service standards in many areas, including for local authorities and the National Health Service. However, the plethora of targets under strict central government oversight, resulting in audits and inspections, has drawn criticisms of Soviet-style administration practices. There is some evidence that this model has encouraged tactical behavior in the public sector.

In practice, what are known as “post-code lotteries” exist with respect to health care standards and school quality, generally because of differences in local areas’ social mixes and managerial styles. The central government push toward equal standards is thus often confronted by differences in implementation.

As noted under Constitutional Discretion, there are a limited number of instruments available to the federal government to ensure that the state governments comply with the federal government’s formal policies.
Formally, a right of oversight over the states’ activities exists regarding education and police policies as well as environment policy and international treaties. Municipalities, however, are effectively supervised by states and federal government.
Conflicts between state and federal governments have to be brought to the Constitutional Court.

National minimum standards are generally met at the subnational level, though to a large extent this is because many of the services are directly provided by the central government rather than being the responsibility of local governments. However, some discrepancies between the services provided by municipalities exist, notably in the culture and infrastructure sectors.

The Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MOPAS), created through a merger of predecessor agencies, is in charge of ensuring that local governments maintain national minimum standards. However, many local governments, particularly in rural areas, have a much lower professional standard than the city government of Seoul or the central government. While the provision of basic services is similar in all regions, there is a huge difference between rich (i.e., self-sufficient) and poor (i.e., dependant on transfer payments) in the provision of additional services such as recreation facilities.

Due to the dual nature of the U.S. federal system, this question overwhelmingly applies to co-financed federal programs, where the federal government is entitled to set standards. Here the central government asserts its rights to set and monitor compliance with national standards. This applies also to civil rights. The national government has asserted standards of civil rights to most of its grant programs in health, education and welfare. However, there is also a strong movement to give subnational governments more discretion in the delivery of services. The bulk of public services are delivered by the respective local and state agencies, and standard-setting and compliance are carried out local levels with minimal intervention at the hands of the federal government. The most ambitious effort to set standards has been observed in education policy under the “No child left behind” act initiated by the Bush administration. This act mandates various measures including a teacher and schools evaluation process tied to test scores and sanctions (e.g., closing schools or turning them into charter schools). The Obama administration continued this policy by re-authorizing the act.

Formally the national government has no authority over regional governments, but it can impose some criteria. Local governments cannot, for instance, deviate from the national constitution. Also, local governments have to abide by budgetary constraints set by the central government. Finally, responsibilities for several policy levers are shared by different government levels, in which case the central government has partial authority over regional governments’ course of action. Altogether, the central government does not have the tools to enforce or control more detailed standards in terms of performance figures, as just one example. The government can only try to maintain influence through more general (legal or budgetary) levers.

The Act on Local Government stipulates 26 basic public functions for all local governments. The large number of small municipalities is often overburdened by the wide range of responsibilities to be performed, including primary education, water supply and various forms of health care. In order to limit local and regional disparities, the central government has set certain quality standards. The implementation of these standards has largely rested with the districts and the counties, that is, the higher tiers of subnational government.

The central government, as is likely the case in all federal and decentralized countries, would like more power over subnational governments than it has. This is particularly the case with respect to municipalities. There are indirect ways by which the central government tries to control municipalities, but these do not always outweigh the effect of the variance in local political cultures. There are a number of policy areas in which local government has performed poorly, but in which the national government has found it advisable to look the other way. For example, consultation requirements, which are supposed to be mandatory in order for local governments to qualify for central government financial transfers, are often incompletely complied with in practice. Sometimes, too, participatory systems put in place at the local level can lead to naive decision-making. An important issue here is the ban on reelection at the municipal level. The result is that each municipality has a new government every three years, and the resulting turnover of qualified staff is very high. Another issue is one of rising expectations. There have been improvements in municipal governance, but the people often respond to these by demanding more than the system can afford.

The Spanish central government is in principle committed to ensuring that regional governments meet uniform national standards for public services, but it is not completely effective in this aim. In some cases, regional governments design and implement their own public policies without following clearly defined national standards. As a result, there may be some variation in the quality of public services offered by Spain’s regions. In general, minimum standards are set by basic national legislation, but are not afterward enforced. In fact, instruments of enforcement vary greatly according to policy field, with education and the pension system perhaps being the best defined areas, while housing, family policy and social care are among the most heterogeneous. The formal administrative method for monitoring the provision of services by the autonomous regions through supervision (the so-called Alta Inspección) has not been effective.

Minimal standards for decentralized public services (such as public health) are agreed upon and set at the national level in a number of areas. The main forum in which national standards are discussed is a permanent conference for relations between the state, regions, provinces and cities (Conferenza Stato-Regioni ed Unificata). However, the implementation of these standards is not fully satisfactory: In practice, standards can differ substantially from one region to another.
National standards have increasingly been adopted for utilities (water, electricity, telephone, etc.), but in most cases, independent authorities are responsible for their definition and implementation. Implementation in this field is fairly adequate.
The North-South divide, especially in public services, shows that many efforts since national unity some 150 years ago have failed to produce equality of living conditions in Italy. Obviously, it is the national government’s political responsibility that significant gaps still exist, and have even tended to increase instead of decrease.

There are only poorly defined standards of public services, especially with regard to the independent functions of subnational governments. Moreover, the monitoring of standards is often fragmented. In the case of health care, for instance, the Health Care Supervision Authority, the Public Health Authority, the National Health Information Centre and State Institute for Drug Control are all involved in supervision. Despite its inclination towards centralization, the Fico government did not tackle the issue.

Due to the different financing structures at the regional and municipal levels, the national government can only guarantee services at an adequate standard at the regional level. The central government has clearly failed to establish national standards at the municipal level. In addition, relatively poor municipalities and those in rural regions often lack the capacity to meet national standards for public services, especially in the fields of health care and education.

The central government, and specifically the Ministry of Interior Affairs, closely monitors the structure and quality of the services in municipal governments, through the action of its own local agencies and the power of administrative trusteeship (using as tools internal audits, external audits and audits by civil service inspectors). The Union of Municipalities of Turkey also offers training and technical support for the municipalities in this respect. There are also regional unions of municipalities which provide similar services to their members. Turkey is a signatory to the European Local Self-Government and Autonomy Charter, which obliges Turkey to fulfill some requirements. Additionally, the UNDP Support to Further Implementation of Local Administration Reform in Turkey project (LAR PHASE 2) is ongoing. It is hard to say that these standards are same everywhere, but they are improving gradually on an individual regional basis. Major issues in standardizing the public services at the local level are financial, technical and personnel-driven.
The huge disparities in the degree of development of the different regions were not addressed consistently in the period under investigation. Regarding physical infrastructure, to a significant degree outcome of the resources and performances of local governments, the ratio between the capital Ankara and the most underdeveloped region Muş in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of the country was 100 to 5.4. The weakest eight provinces are located in the mostly Kurdish (and Arabic) southeast, and the top 19 provinces are located in the northwest, including Ankara (and, as the only geographical exception, the tourist center Antalya).

The central government has difficulty ensuring that various ministries, semi-autonomous agencies and state-owned enterprises meet national standards of public services even at the central level. It goes without saying that the central government has even greater difficulties ensuring the same thing when the decentralized provision of public services is concerned. Both at the central and the decentralized level, there is an uneven allocation of resources (e.g., staff, infrastructure, funds), which is irrational and inefficient. Rules are bent to serve clientelistic and sectoral interests, while performance figures are all but unknown as a tool of policy evaluation and planning in many quarters of the central and local administration.