The local-government & decentralization : A comparison between France and Sweden

Thèmes abordés

Local government, decentralization, comparison, France, Sweden, Swedish local-government, French local-government

Résumé du document

France and Sweden are two Unitarian and European countries where the local considerations and abilities are opposite. Local government in Sweden is one of the most important element of the Swedish model. The system of local government in Sweden depend on the administrative and territorial division of this country. More concretely, it has two different levels: the local level, represented by the municipalities (kommuner), and in a upper level ,the region, represented by the county council (län). Their responsibilities are different : Swedish municipalities have the responsibility to take care of basic schooling, caring services for the elderly and child care amenities whereas county council responsibilities is mainly about public health and medical services. However, their goals are the same because they are all responsible for vital public services in a multiple variety of welfare sectors.

Extraits

[...] Concretely, the decentralization and the idea of a local government in France is different compared to Sweden. French regions seems to be less influential and powerful than Sweden. How the local government works in France and Sweden ? What are the political reasons that the territorial communities can't completely assume the role of counter-power which they would have play? The Swedish local government is a two-tiered system. The lower tier is occupied by the 290 Swedish municipalities and the upper tier is the 20 county councils. This kind of division is not new. [...]

[...] In Sweden, it seems to be obvious that the local-government can be easily distinguished by the central state outposts.[3] In France, the situation is clearly different compared to Sweden. In 1982, the decentralization Law (called Defferre Law) consisted to define the principles of the working of the three territorial communities (regions, departments, communes) to allow the State to transfer their competences and abilities to theses territorial communities. This law represents the main point of the french decentralization. However, after the law, the changes about french local governments weren't significant. [...]

[...] Then, France failed for the decentralization process because the State has never accomplished a real effort of deconcentration while it implemented the decentralization process. More precisely, the fact that there is no deconcentration in french decentralization process means that the local actors will always need the central administrations to practice their abilities because they are not able take decisions. To conclude, the success of Sweden about local-government mainly depend on the fact that the issues of local level can and should be solved by the local-government itself and not by the State authorities.[7]. [...]

[...] They have their own sources of income and they have the powers to establish the tax rates on individual income of the members of the community, the provision of social assistance and they are transparent and totally responsible of their decisions, which is guaranteed by the law.[6] France seems to follow the Swedish example by giving more responsibilities and transparency. In Sweden, the central and local government cooperate in several times and in numerous ways in order to achieve the best results in management. The Swedish Government and Parliament explain the main aspects for the social and economic development of Sweden and its regions. [...]

[...] On the other hand, French State has a stranglehold on the territorial community activities. French local- government are dependent of State, it's may be the reason of why the local politics in Sweden has worked and not in France. In France, it's obvious that the decentralization didn't grant what it promised, it has never succeeded to reduce the power and the omnipresence of the State. First of all, the main reason of the failure of the decentralization and the relevant french local-government is the entanglement of the abilities. [...]