Democracy and Local Governance 

Henry Teune

University of Pennsylvania, November, 1994

   Democracy and Local Governance is an ongoing international collaborative research program on the processes of democratization at the local level.  Its focus is democratic values of local political leaders.  Those values now have been assessed at one point in time in 15 countries.

   The primary purpose of this research is to examine change since the "democratic revolutions" in Central and Eastern European countries whose political stability is dependent on democratic values and practices taking root locally.  Comparisons are made with established democracies in western Europe.

   The main hypothesis is that democratic leaders are both more global and local in orientation.  Democratic values are defined cross-nationally on three dimensions: pluralism (acceptance of conflict), minority (vs. majority) rights, and political equality.  Each is measured by five value items and are combined into democratic value scores.  Globalism is measured by several questions: perception of foreign impact on the leaders' locality (trade, media, tourists, workers, pollution); countries mentioned as important for the locality and country, responsibility of the locality for "global" problems, and identification with political entities outside of the country.  The responses are aggregated into a globalism score.  Localism is assessed by several questions, including a localism value scale.

   In the summer of 1994 data collected between 1991-1993 were analyzed for 15 countries: Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzebekistan.  The data are taken from national samples of localities, cities and communes, ranging in size from 25,000 to 250,000, nationally adjusted.  About 15 political leaders--mayors, council people, and party activists--were interviewed in two hour face-to-face settings (excepting
Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland), nearly 6,400 local leaders in 420 localities in about 82 identifiable regions, including those crossing national boundaries.

Theoretical Parameters

  The three modalities of explaining forms of governance and their stability are economic, political institutional, and historical developmental.  This research stands in another tradition: the political culture as it has been evolved.  More than that, since the transitions and transformations of so many political systems during the past ten years, the fundamental question is how can different kinds of political systems explain economic growth and internal and external peace.  It is generally established that democracies are significantly less aggressive towards their neighbors.  What is less clear is how democratic institutions, today willfully established, provide the conditions necessary for general prosperity.

   What sets this research apart from almost all other empirical comparative studies is its focus on the local level, the impact of globalization, and its contrasts between new and established democracies.  Further, the nation-state, rather than the central organizing principle of observation and analysis, is but one of the "contextual" variables, in comparison with localities and regions.  Spatial analysis of the data shows the importance of regions and traditional political cultures in Europe.

FINDINGS

   There are about 450 variables derived from the questionnaire.  The analysis on individuals, localities, and countries support some of the following generalizations.  The research design allows for comparisons among individual leaders, communities, regions,  countries, and groups of countries.

--Democratic leaders, taken together without regard to country, are both more global and local.  Although their numbers varies dramatically across countries--over 90% in Sweden to about 5% in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan--this relationship follows a clear geographic west to east distribution.  Turkey stands out with about 70% of its local leaders being democrats, even though they overwhelming profess to be religious and Islamic.

--Authoritarian leaders, espousing the commitment that leaders should do what they believe is right despite the wishes of the people, follow a similar pattern, with Austria, however, having the highest percentage.

--"Old-timers", those believing that economic equality and government control of the economy are important values, are a substantial number in all of the countries of the former Soviet Union, ranging in percentages from a low of 18% in Lithuania to a high of nearly 40% in Uzbekistan.  Slovakia has about the same percentage "old-timers" as the countries of the CIS.

--Capitalism as a value, measured by some standard value items, is barely accepted, mostly rejected by the local leaders in the former Soviet Republics, with the notable exception of Lithuania, with
Turkish and Austrian leaders being similar to those in the former Soviet Union.

   Three distinctive political cultures are identified by combining the democratic and global orientations of local leaders and mapping them by localities.  The western countries score high, the Central European localities are mixed, and, moving eastward, the leaders manifest little democratic or global focus.  In Soviet Asia, where a special sample of leaders was selected, there is almost no identifiable pattern of local leaders.  Eurasia has three geographically defined political;l cultures, pointed to by political scientists long before the Communist Revolution could have taken hold.

   An ethnic mix of local leaders with one group which moved from the status of dominant group, Russians in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, to minority political position, indicates potential flash points.  The local leaders in those communities have divergent views on a wide range of values and beliefs, a seedbed for political cultures of violence.

   Differences between local leaders identified as political and appointed are blurred in Eastern Europe, somewhat distinct in Central, and sharply defined in the West. But despite some these differences there are noticeable similarities among the Alpine leaders in Austria, Slovenia, and Switzerland.

   One general hypotheses about democratic political changes in Central and Eastern Europe is that of a shift to political power from the post World War II generation to a new one.  There is little evidence for generational differences among local political leaders with the exception of the nationalist "youth" movement in Lithuania, since replaced.

Ongoing Research

   The research is now expanding to new countries (Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan); to gather the same data on eight "new" democracies after recent or scheduled local elections, a second point in time (Belarus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine); to complete research in other Western democracies; to collect aggregate data on economic social conditions of the localities as well as on local voting and party organizations and; and to construct an international data file for general use.  Completed data are now being entered from Iceland, the Republic of Korea, and a limited number of variables from the United States. Other Asian countries will join the research program in 1995.

Bibliography

Betty Jacob, Krzysztof Ostrowski, and Henry Teune (eds.). Democracy and Local Governance: Ten Empirical Studies. Honolulu, HA: Matsunaga Institute for Peace, 1993.

Krzysztof Ostrowski and Henry Teune, "Democracy, Globalization, and Local Politics," Paper presented to the XVI World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Berlin, 1994.

Henry Teune, "The Three Political Cultures of Europe," Paper presented to the XVI World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Berlin, 1994.

Please send all questions and comments to either Dr. Henry Teune, University of Pennsylvania 
or Tatiana Iskra, Pultusk School of Humanities, Pultusk, Poland.

This page was last modified on November 28, 2000