Why are local authorities not compliant to central governments in the Asia Pacific region?

Citation

Dufour, Y. (2013), "Why are local authorities not compliant to central governments in the Asia Pacific region?", Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Vol. 5 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJBA-07-2013-0071

Why are local authorities not compliant to central governments in the Asia Pacific region?

Article Type: Editorial From: Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Volume 5, Issue 3

A cursory evaluation of event in the Asia Pacific region indicates that compliance with the national policies is not always homogeneous or automatically guaranteed at the local levels. This suggests that local authorities have significant potential influence and discretion for autonomous action over the character, volume, or distribution of the local services that they choose to provide. The discretion of the local authorities in implementing central policy has been part of the discourse, arising from a whole series of research studies and writings about the relations between the centre and the periphery. The clear message of these studies is that, in areas of agreement, both the centre and the local authorities move quickly together whilst, in areas of disagreement, the power of the local authorities will generally prevail. It does seem that local authorities are anything but the mere creatures of the centre. They have considerable independence and vitality which is due not only to the members and officers of the authorities, but also to the power of the various professionals providing the services. In terms of finance, the centre is usually most effective. The centre, through setting resource allocation and wage and price levels centrally, do possess considerable power. In terms of setting levels and quality of services, the centre is less effective. It is here there is greatest conflict. The centre can lead local authorities in the direction the centre prefers. However, if the periphery does not want to continue in such a direction, then it will usually prevaricate.

The evidence provided by many Asia Pacific countries often indicates that although the government policies are more than merely symbolic, little direct attempt is made by central government to induce compliance and impose its will on the local authorities. Most government policies are often permissive rather than mandatory. In other words, in many cases the government policies are primarily “contextuating” rather than prescriptive. Outside the field of major capital expenditures, central influence is largely geared to dealing with classes of local issues rather than with specific local issues. This means, the centre is primarily concerned with setting contexts for local operations through formulating generic policy positions. Furthermore, at the local level some government policy issues have a relatively low visibility. In some cases, the local officers are already much too busy dealing with major change in the provision of other local services to spend time on a central government issue of the day with managerial time and energy and any potential controversy with the staff involved as well as the local stakeholders. Perhaps the influence and discretion for autonomous action over the local services is not so evident in larger, more central change; local discretion might vary according to change. However, much of the analysis of change in public services has been, so far, “policy-free” in the sense of disregarding the specific subject matter and intention of policy as a factor affecting the process and outcome of implementation processes.

The preceding discussion has not sought to argue that environmental forces and top-down pressures for change are totally ineffective in securing change at local level. A close look at what happened in recent years across various the Asia Pacific at the local level, reveals a number of periods when, although change was not always successfully implemented, the government policies were concurrently on the active change agenda of all local authorities. From a central government point of view, these periods can be sensibly labelled as periods of a high level of change activity. Usually these periods can be associated with changes in the country economic fortunes and their effects upon public spending. They are often preceded by major economic shocks followed by increasing inflation, and take place against the back-drop of recovery (usually from recessions). More significant, the pattern of change between low and high levels of activity usually match ideological shifts between the more permissive or flexible local discretion exhibited on one side and the more controlled and firm central control on the other. Thus, the overall momentum for action is indeed influenced by environmental forces and top-down policy pressure. But, the trigger effect of those broad forces and pressures are, in themselves, insufficient to create the will for action at local level. In addition, specific local disturbances are also required; the local authorities move into action primarily in order to deal with specific local problems and to seize local opportunities, and not simply to comply with some central government desire.

The move at local level is usually reactive as opposed to proactive, meaning that the local officers usually attempt to deal with the issues after a local occurrence requiring action or a response which could not be avoided. The overall pattern is for action to be precipitated by local events bringing a renewed consciousness of some national policy, which is then mobilised by the local officers to enhance legitimacy for action. Thus, it is by no means clear that the strategies of the local authorities are primarily guided by any “shining star” of national policies. The conventional wisdom that local action is an automatic follow-on from central policy decisions is challenged. Rather, we are of the view that the local authorities have considerable power of discretion in implementing central government policies. Compliance with national policy is usually neither homogeneous nor automatic. This can be attributed to the power of discretion of the locals in implementing policy change, as well as to the “contextuating” rather than the prescriptive status of policies themselves. Environmental forces and top-down policy pressure for change are, however, insufficient to create the will for action at local district level. A mixture of such broad forces, and pressures, and specific local problems and opportunities is necessary to trigger off the implementation process. According to our experience the overall pattern is for implementation to be precipitated by local problems and opportunities followed by a renewed consciousness of the national policy which is then mobilised to enhance the legitimacy of the local service change proposals. As a result the depth, rate and pace of central policy implementation clearly differ across locals.

The first point made in this Editorial concerns the variability of local strategies. Following on from this, the second important point to be made concerns the variability in the processes of implementation across local jurisdictions; similar local authorities can adopt quite different service strategies, with differences in the rate and pace of change at micro-implementation level. This topic provides a great opportunity for further research. There is neither a strong social science tradition nor much empirical research, particularly in the Asia pacific region, that seeks to describe and explain differences in the rate, pace, and depth of change in the provision of local services in varying localities in the light of the centre vs periphery relationship.

Yvon Dufour and Peter Steane