Local Government in Sweden, Denmark and Latvia

Latvia is going through the local government reform. As in many other things our people are looking at Scandinavian countries to find an example how to organize structure, finance and tasks of the local government. All Eastern European states have had experience of centralized political system, therefore they are now trying to create independent, democratic local authorities. Sweden’s and Denmark’s local authorities occupy an important position in the society and respond to the basic ideas of local government:

1) the concept of community;

2) self-government;

3) representative government;

4) unitary authority.

The reason why I turned my attention to this question was my own experience with Latvian local authorities. I found the situation no normal and I wanted to find out how does the structure of local government in Scandinavia look like. My purpose was to indicate problems which have to be dealt with in the nearest future.

Historical background.

Local government in Europe has the same background - it’s rooted in the village communities of the Middle Ages and later eras, where the land was farmed collectively and orphans, sick and old people were cared for in turn by the farmers. Later the local self-government was extended to Church affairs. Only at the end of the 19^th century was established the line of demarcation between ecclesiastical and secular affairs. After the World War Two Scandinavia and Latvia had different ways of development. And that has made today’s situation: Denmark and Sweden have had several reforms of local government and as a result the number of local authorities was reduced. I think that Latvia will have the same process, if Latvia wants to develop a democratic system. Its territory is too small to divide it in many local units which have power to decide matters regarding the local community. In future this can cause conflicts with central government. Another argument for reducing number of local authorities is that problems, with which every authority has to deal with, become too complex and authorities have to combine their efforts.

Size of municipality and number of representatives

Size of the local community is very different in every country. In Denmark the basic unit of the local government has about 19 000 people. In Sweden the communes have on average 30 000 inhabitants. Latvia has about 5000 inhabitants in each community, but 30% of all communities have less than 1000 people living on their territory. The size of community is directly related to the scope of power. It is proved that the larger the number of local communities in the country, the less their autonomy; and the larger the country, in territory and population, the stronger the local community authority.

Another measure of the local community authority is the proportion of local residents who are involved in the sample of decisions. If we look at the simplest kind of involvement - elections, number of elected representatives shows the different conceptions: Sweden - 51, Denmark - 15, Latvia - around 11 representatives. But these figures do not show all. If we calculate out the number of inhabitants each member of local government represents, we get another result: Denmark - 1000, Sweden - 600, Latvia - 500. Of course, this does not mean that Latvia has the most democratic system of local government. It depends on many other factors. For example, Latvia has very strong restrictions for voter. If in Denmark and Sweden entitled to vote are all citizens above the age of 18 and aliens above the age of 18 and who have lived in country for at least 3 years, in Latvia only citizens may vote. Some changes have to be made here, because it is not a normal situation that a great part of Latvian population has no access to political system even to express its needs. There is a source for the future conflicts.

Tasks of the community authorities

The local authority is the public authority closest to the ordinary citizen. Therefore the local councils are responsible for most of services which are carried out for local population. The most important field of work is social welfare. It is the duty of a municipality to pay social assistance and to render other assistance to everybody in financial or material need. The only difference between Scandinavia and Latvia is the number of people the municipality financially is able to help.

Another important function of the local council is education, it is responsible for general primary education and in Sweden and Latvia even for secondary education. In Denmark some of these functions are given to county authorities, for example, upper secondary education, administration of hospitals, public health insurance etc. This situation originates maybe from the process how these counties were formed. Danish counties were made not so long time ago, but Latvia and Sweden have had this division traditionally. So in Sweden and Latvia there is a tendency to reduce the functions of county authorities. Whereas Danish division rests with rationality and the 14 county authorities undertake functions which deal with larger geographical area and are too comprehensive to be undertaken by the individual authority.

Of course, many differences in local governments are determined by different levels of technological development. For example, Latvian local government does not take care of environment, does not control the buildings and planning because of the lack of knowledge how to do it.

Local government management and structure

Denmark. In principle, Danish local government is based on local popularly elected administrators. In practice, local government functions are administered by the local councils, the Standing Committees, the Finance Committee, the Mayor and the local administration. There is a trend towards the administration deciding an increasing number of individual cases, whereas the local council lays down the general lines and supervises the administration on behalf of the citizens. Danish local councils occupy a strong position - they have the full responsibility for the government and administration of the local authority. The Mayor can be both chairman of the local council and political leader of the administration and it is the way it has to be if the responsibility for the administration rests with the local council.

Sweden. The supreme decision-making body in the municipality is local council. Business is drafted and decisions are put into effect by executive committee. These various bodies have administrative offices and staff at their disposal. The elected representatives who sit in the committees are responsible for administration, implementation and the drafting of decisions. Swedish local government is thus controlled by politicians at all stages.

Latvia. Popularly elected representatives form the local council and elect the chairman. Executive committee is responsible for carrying out the decisions of council.

In Denmark and Sweden administrative staff of the town hall provides citizens with a number of services, i.e., social security benefits, adjustment of tax income rates, and many more. Whereas in Latvia popularly elected representatives often sit in the town hall and have office hours for ordinary citizens to come with their questions. From one side it is good that representatives are really accessible for inhabitants, but from the other side local council has to deal with general matters, not with the individual cases.

Revenues of local authorities

A municipality council can derive its revenues from the following sources:

· local taxes;

· tax equalization grants;

· block grants from the state;

· special-purpose state grants;

· fees;

· borrowing.

The greatest part of revenues make the local taxes: in Sweden 55%, in Denmark 33.5%. State grants are 20% in Sweden and 50% in Denmark. Capital and current revenue of local authority makes only a smallest part of all revenues: 14% in Denmark and 17% in Sweden. I have also facts about Latvian local budgets: state grants are 60% and taxes - 35%.

According to the data Latvian local authorities are more dependent on Central government than Swedish and Danish ones.

Expenditure

Unfortunately, I have no data about Latvia, I can compare only Danish and Swedish local authorities’ expenditure and there is a great difference:

	Denmark	Sweden
Administration and planning	8%	16%
Technology and environment	12%	19%
Education and culture	16%	31%
Social services and health care	64%	34%

This difference follows from the division of functions between local authority, county authority and central government. In Denmark the main task of local authority is social services, whereas in Sweden the main areas of responsibility of local council are education and social services.

From this analyse I wanted to draw conclusions about the development of Latvian system of local government. As it follows from the abovementioned Latvia tends to copy the Scandinavian system of local government and now the transformation from former soviets to new democratic local authorities is taking place. This new system is not working effectively because of different circumstances: small communities, large state grants, short period of office do not provide for autonomous local authorities. But this situation can change in some years. First of all we have to change our mind and accept new ideas.

Literature:

· Gustafsson A. Local Government in Sweden, SI, 1988

· Häggroth, S., Kronvall K., Riberdahl C., Rudebeck K. “Swedish Local Government”, Falköping, 1993

· “Local Government in Denmark”, Kopenhagen, 1985

· Clark T.N. “Community Autonomy in the National System: Federalism, Localism and Decentralization”

· “Paðvaldîbas Latvijâ”, Rîga: Izglîtîba, 1994

· “Likumâ “Par paðvaldîbâm” noteiktâs paðvaldîbu funkcijas”, Diena, May 1994

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