West Midlands Action Research Group

A preliminary review of alternative approaches to regional governancE in the west midlands

Sarah Ayres and Graham Pearce,

Aston Business School

Preface

This paper has been prepared by members of the West Midlands Governance Action Research Group, an independent group of academics from West Midlands universities, whose interest lies in researching and informing on current issues relating to government and governance in the region. Its main objective is to chart those forces that have given rise to demands for devolution in England, examine alternative approaches which respond to these trends and compare devolved forms of government in the UK and elsewhere in the EU.

The researchers are grateful to the West Midlands Regional Assembly and the West Midlands Constitutional Convention for supporting their work.

Sarah Ayres and Graham Pearce

Aston Business School

Aston University

Birmingham

B4 7ET

March 2002

The right of S Ayres and G Pearce to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

6. Evidence from other EU states 32

6.1 UK and continental sub-national government 32

6.2.1 Constitutional status 33

6.2.2 Involvement in national and international policymaking 34

6.2.3 Control over other sub-national levels 34

6.2.4 Political competencies accorded to the sub-national and national levels 34

6.2.5 Financial autonomy 35

6.2.6 Functions 36

6.3 Summary 38

Bibliography 39

Appendices

Appendix 1: Partnerships, boards and cross-sectoral bodies in England 42

Appendix 2: Centre-region relations elsewhere in the EU 44

Appendix 3: Forms of regional governance elsewhere in the EU 45

Appendix 4: Responsibilities of Northern Ireland Departments 46

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

The devolution debate has raised fundamental questions about how the UK is to be governed, how resources are to be allocated and the legitimacy, democratic accountability and stability of the emerging institutional structures. The Government is pledged to devolution in England but, as yet, there is no clear route map for determining the shape of any final settlement. Indeed, the post general election reorganisation of government departments has thrown up fresh ambiguities over responsibilities for devolution within Whitehall.

The forthcoming White Paper may be expected to clarify the Government’s intentions. But there remains considerable ambivalence at the heart of government about the direction that devolution should take. Indeed, given its desire not to be over prescriptive, it seems possible that a range of solutions might emerge in different regions, ranging from tinkering with the status quo through to quite radical reform.

1.2 Objectives

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate about regional devolution in the West Midlands by:

· Briefly examining the concept of devolution,

· Assessing those forces that have encouraged renewed interest in decentralised, devolved and federal ‘solutions’,

· Examining alternative approaches that could be applied in response to these challenges,

· Outlining models of devolution already being applied in Britain,

· Investigating devolved approaches adopted elsewhere in the EU.

2. Devolution, decentralisation and ‘federalisM’

2.1 Rationales for devolution

Devolution is linked with notions of autonomy or 'self-rule’, as evidenced for example in Catalonia and the Basque country in Spain or in Belgium’s provinces. But autonomy is fickle and is dependent on the constitutional position of the autonomous institution, including its competencies, its capacity to control and develop relationships with other political institutions and its financial and other resources.

Loughlin (2000) identifies two key rationales in favour of greater autonomy:

· The right of individuals to dispose of their lives, according to a set of rights, and to choose their form of government and those they wish to represent them, or

· The right of communities - defined by territory, language, culture or religion - to govern themselves, so that their distinctive features are protected and promoted.

Such dispersion of power and authority may be regarded with suspicion - a challenge to state power and authority. Alternatively, the application of subsidiarity, accompanied by increased and more transparent forms of accountability can be seen as a pragmatic approach to securing the stability of the state, whereby the individual parts make up a diversified unit to the mutual benefit of all.

2.2 Forms of devolution

There is no simple definition of devolution; rather it can be seen as part of a spectrum that implies the diffusion from a superior to an inferior political authority of one or more of the following:

· Administrative or executive powers (government departments/agencies),

· Legislative powers (to a regional assembly/national parliament),

· Judicial powers (to a local court).

In the UK ‘administrative devolution’ has been practised for many years in the form of central government offices in Scotland, Wales and the English regions. But ‘political devolution’ signifies not merely the decentralisation of central government functions but greater independence and the exercise of discretion by national/regional/local politicians. However, it does not necessarily imply ‘federalism’, where the distribution of powers is enshrined constitutionally, rather than being under the ultimate control and direction of the central state.

Nonetheless:

“When Blair aims at a system that 'brings power closer to the people and is part of a wider process of decentralisation, which allows the centre to concentrate on the strategic needs of the whole country.' (Blair 1996,) then it might be argued that he talks in fact about federalism” (Schwand 2000).

3. Pressures for devolved forms of government

The arguments surrounding the merits, or otherwise, of devolved forms of regional government tend to focus upon four key areas:

· Democratic forces,

· Administrative/technocratic efficiency,

· Improved regional economic performance,

· Forces originating from within the EU.

3.1 Democratic forces

3.1.1 Globalisation

Modern communications and economic globalisation imply that the idea of national territory is far less relevant than in the past with barriers between countries and their economies being eroded by internationally mobile information, capital, technology and industrial capacity. Flow of goods, people and capital occur across boundaries with little recourse to nation-states and government is becoming increasingly international. In Europe this trend is reflected in the expansion of EU competencies and the blurring of national and EU policy domains (Schmitter 1996).

3.1.2 Subsidiarity

At the same time, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, there has been growing pressure from below to decentralise power from the centre. It is maintained that regions and nations within states should be provided with opportunities to establish a more independent role, both in terms of decision making over affairs within their own territories and by participating in international arenas.

These twin trends may appear paradoxical but are part of the same phenomenon (Bache and Mitchell 1999):

· The nation-state is no longer the embodiment of international politics, and

· Devolution is seen as offering the possibility of greater flexibility in policymaking and accountability for measures that directly connect with people’s lives.

3.1.3 Bewilderment about government

Pressures for greater autonomy also reflect a shift towards multi-level and more fragmented forms of governance, characterised by overlapping spheres of influence and competencies, involving different tiers of government (EU and domestic) and public, private and voluntary agencies. Faced with such complexity it is asserted that citizens have lost confidence in formal politics and government institutions.

‘Today, political leaders throughout Europe are facing a real paradox. On the one hand, Europeans want them to find solutions to the major problems confronting our societies. On the other hand, people increasingly distrust institutions and politics or are simply not interested in them’ (Commission of the European Communities 2001).

These claims have focused renewed attention on the relationship between citizens and their public administration, leading to a quest for approaches which balance the advantages of central control with decentralised decision-making. In the UK it is widely acknowledged that decision-making has become too centralised - the UK has no 'politics of place' (Barnett 1997). The low turnouts in recent UK local authority elections - half the average for other EU states - would seem to reflect this.

3.1.4 Reconnecting citizen and government

UK government has not been designed with devolution in mind; rather the accent has been upon the efficient and equitable delivery of universal services. Elected local government’s role as a provider of the majority of local services has been much diminished in recent years and is subject to far greater scrutiny by central government.

There has, however, been growing recognition that ‘top down’ approaches, designed on the basis of functional efficiency, fail to respond to the needs and expectations of communities (Sanderson 1999). The need for increased subsidiarity is discernible in several strands of government policy:

· The current modernising agenda for local government is intended to renew public confidence in local democratic institutions, by increasing the responsiveness and accountability of authorities to their communities,

· Policies to regenerate deprived neighbourhoods emphasis the need to mobilise community capacity,

· The Government’s ‘joined up’ agenda stresses the need to work across policy areas and for partnership and multi-agency working at both strategic and service delivery levels.

Each of these approaches points to the need for fundamental change in the way our communities are to be governed and in the culture of central and local government.

Fundamentally, those favouring devolved forms of government, whether at local or regional level, maintain that it cannot be in the interest of the state when the centre decides and communities and citizens have little influence over those decisions. The present government seems to acknowledge this in the significance it attaches to greater citizen participation in local government and community development, as a way of enhancing service delivery and democratic accountability.

‘I believe the renewal of local civic engagement is as important now as it was in the 19th century, when our great cities led national progress’ (Blair 2001).

‘We are moving away from the old Britain of subjects, where people had to look upwards to a Whitehall bureaucracy for their solutions - to a Britain of citizens where region to region, locality to locality we are ourselves in charge and where it is up to us’ (Brown 2001).

Historically, arguments favouring devolution often rested on the physical distances between decision-makers and citizens. Now, subsidiarity implies reducing the distance between decision-makers and the electorate. It stems from a general perception that modern government is often ‘out of touch’ and that measures are required to reconnect government and citizen.

3.1.5 Are England’s regions disadvantaged?

A more specific group of arguments in support of devolution in the English regions are associated with the political and economic spillovers of the devolution settlement in the ‘Celtic fringe’. The effect of these has been to create contrasting patterns of multi-level governance and a different balance of regional and national interests across the UK:

· Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland MPs are allowed to vote on English matters, while English MPs are excluded from voting on the affairs of the devolved territories,

· The Scottish Executive has been granted much greater powers than its Welsh counterpart, while the prospective elected English regional assemblies (if and where established), may have far less autonomy than the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly,

· The level of accountability of central government’s regional and local ‘quangos’ in England is far less than elsewhere in the UK.

The creation of a devolved body to serve Greater London also serves to emphasise the uneven way in which devolution is being rolled out across the UK.

One of the consequences of these emerging, asymmetric relationships is that public awareness of the diversity of governance in the UK is likely to increase. Moreover, competition between territories for resources seems set to become more explicit - residents in the West Midlands annually receive £1,000 less per head from central government than in Scotland.

The process by which domestic and EU funding was historically ‘negotiated and resolved behind closed doors by senior officials and ministers in Whitehall and Brussels, will now be subject to far greater openness and transparency…The hidden geographical trade-offs between different parts of the UK to secure the national interest will be exposed, making the resolution of these matters far more difficult from both a political and administrative point of view’ (Mawson 1999).

Long-standing debates about differences in the levels of territorial subsidies and support received from central government are likely to deepen and be subject to increasing public examination (Raines 2000, Midwinter 1999, Yuill, et al 1998).

3.1.6 Challenges to existing institutions

Those in favour of a resolution to the English regional ‘problem’ may have grown more assured given the Government’s commitment to devolution. But this would be to ignore advocates of the status quo or those favouring a more evolutionary approach, based upon empowering existing institutional structures at national and local levels, rather than creating an additional, untested and distant tier of government.

West Midlands Action Research Group

CONTENTS

Page

3.1 Democratic forces 7

3.4.1 The Regional Development Agencies and Assemblies 15

3.4.2 Regions as economic units 16

3.4.4 Implications for institutional design 17

5.4 Greater London 29

6. Evidence from other EU states 32

1. Introduction

· Forces originating from within the EU.

3.1 Democratic forces