‘In wealth and in poverty?’ The changing role of Spanish municipalities in implementing childcare policies
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852315576707 |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| Author | Carmen Navarro,Francisco Velasco |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2016, Vol. 82(2) 315–334
‘In wealth and in poverty?’
! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315576707
municipalities in implementing
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childcare policies
Carmen Navarro
Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid, Spain
Francisco Velasco
Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid, Spain
Abstract
In the context of more than a decade of economic expansion that ended in 2008,
Spanish municipalities were active in expanding their functions through vigorous
policy-making in numerous areas. The crisis meant that town halls had difficulty
in providing these services and, in 2013, the central government approved a re-
centralization policy driven by the belief that local governments had brought about
unsustainable patterns of expenditure. Using a neo-institutionalist theoretical perspec-
tive, this article analyses the phenomena of expansion of municipal involvement in
childcare policies and the impact of these processes on the functioning of local govern-
ments. We observe, as an unintended positive effect of the reallocation of tasks, that
local governments have legitimized themselves through action in fields not initially fore-
seen in the formal decentralization arrangements, and are highly valued by citizens as
welfare providers. However, they have not overcome the structural lack of autonomy in
which the legal system places them and, so far, they have been able to meet citizens’
expectations only when economic conditions have been favourable.
Points for practitioners
The study may be taken to show that we can only understand the decentralization
dynamics if we pay attention not only to the implementation of formal rules, but also to
other aspects of the functioning of communities such as general favourable financial
circumstances, particular citizens’ demands at one point in time and strategic behaviour
of political actors. Furthermore, the outputs of decentralization are not only changes
Corresponding author:
Carmen Navarro, Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid, Department of Political Science, Edificio de Ciencias
Jurı´dicas y Polı´ticas, Marie Curie 1, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Email: c.navarro@uam.es
316
International Review of Administrative Sciences 82(2)
in the reallocation of tasks but also in legitimacy of local governments that can be
strengthened with good performance.
Keywords
multi-level government, public sector reform, regional and local government
Introduction
The distribution of public functions between levels of government designed in the
1978 Spanish Constitution focused almost exclusively on the decentralization pro-
cess to the new regions; little attention was paid to municipal-level government
functions. The subsequent 1985 national law regulating allocation of tasks to
municipalities set an open framework whose actual implementation in the follow-
ing years would determine the scope of local competences.
Decentralization’s implementation within this open framework evolved into
intense activity of municipalities in several fields of public action. Although they
had only been granted implicit authority to act, local governments multiplied their
activity in the context of economic expansion and sufficiency of financial resources
that the country experienced up until the economic crisis. This trend can be
mapped in a vast array of public policies, but the local provision of childcare
services for children under 3 years illustrates particularly well the phenomenon.
While regional governments focused on other priorities and neglected demands for
such services, municipalities started the building of their own network of nursery
schools that gradually but unquestionably increased enrolment levels. Regional
governments also became involved in the provision of these services later on, but
the initial impulse and the political vision had come from the local sphere. The
expansion in local activity slowed only with the onset of the economic crisis; and
the approval of the Rationalization and Sustainability of Local Administration
2013 Law reform1 led to a re-centralization of tasks towards the regional and
provincial levels.
Based on the study of childcare policies, this work aims to explore the logic of
allocation of public functions among different levels of government in Spain and to
examine how the implementation of such policies has impacted on local institu-
tions. What is the actual functioning of the Spanish decentralization model? What
intended and unintended effects did it produce in the local governments’ perform-
ance? How did the decentralization process to regions and municipalities occur on
reference to early childcare policies? Our analysis – guided by a neo-institutional
theoretical perspective – builds on two main arguments. First, more than formal
rules, it is the combination of the ‘actual organization of political life’ (March and
Olsen, 1984), favourable financial circumstances and citizens’ demands that have
determined the implementation of the decentralization process in the Spanish
multi-level system. Second, although local governments have reinforced their legit-
imacy through their role as welfare providers and as institutions closer to citizens,
Navarro and Velasco
317
the foundations continue to be weak. Through these years, local governments have
not managed to overcome the structural lack of autonomy and they remain vul-
nerable to national authorities’ re-centralization attempts. Methodologically, we
conduct an analysis of selected laws, reports, surveys, our own previous research
and secondary literature.
The article begins with a general review of the decentralization process from
the enactment of the 1985 Local Government Act to the adoption of the 2013
Act on the ‘Rationalization and Sustainability of Local Administration’. It then
analyses the implementation of childcare public services by subnational authorities,
exploring more in depth the cases of the Catalonia and Madrid regions during
a decade (2002–11) that started with high economic expansion and ended with
the first effects of the financial crisis. Finally, it discusses the positive and
negative impacts of the local provision of services on the actual functioning of
institutions.
The implementation of the constitutional model of
decentralization
In 1978 a twofold process began in Spain: on the one hand democratization,
after almost 40 years of authoritarian rule, and on the other intense decentraliza-
tion. Democratization spread through all levels of government, including to
the more than 8000 Spanish town halls. Decentralization, however, was unevenly
distributed, as it was more focused on the new regions (the so-called Autonomous
Communities) than on the local level of government. Significant public func-
tions were given to the regions as a response to one of the great challenges of
the democratic transition: the demand for self-government from some territories.
While an extensive section of the Constitution was devoted to the powers and
capacities of the Autonomous Communities, it only referred to municipalities in
two brief sentences, exclusively to acknowledge their autonomy and financial
sufficiency.
By means of distinct Autonomous Laws (Estatutos de Autonomı´a) approved by
the national Parliament between 1979 and 1983, the regions undertook numerous
responsibilities that up until that time had been the domain of the state. Although
the system grants the central government responsibility for basic regulation in some
sectors, political decentralization has been intense and the new regional govern-
ments have been required to structure and deliver key services – such as education,
health and social services – with the material and human resources transferred from
the central government (Figure 1).
For local governments, the new constitutional regime brought about a more
marked change in terms of democratization than in terms of decentralization.
In 1979 the first local elections were held and, since then, Spaniards have elected
every four years the mayors and councillors that would carry out the governmental
strategies for their communities. Decentralization, by contrast, was considerably
more discrete.
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 82(2)
112.5
90.
67.5
State
Regions
45.
Municipalities
22.5
0.
1980
1990
1995
2000
2005
2007
2009
Figure 1. Evolution of public expenditure by level of government (%).
Source: Ministry of Economy (State budget includes social security).
Throughout the twentieth century up until the democratic regime, municipalities
had gradually taken on a wide range of responsibilities (Ordun˜a-Rebollo, 1988)
and had increasingly delivered key public services for the functioning of local
communities (e.g. water purification and supply, waste collection, the paving of
streets, lighting, etc.), but the central administration maintained broad powers of
intervention and control. With democracy, local governments gained political deci-
sion-making power over sectors they already administered (Mir-Bago, 1991). The
new system also entailed a considerable recentralizing shift of responsibilities in
such areas as health, education, urban, infra-structures and social services, from
the second-tier (provincial) governments to the regions.
The distribution of public functions was settled with the 1985 Local
Government Act,2 which allocated the following tasks to the municipalities:
a. The...
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