Local Dynamic Structures (LODYS) -

Basis for the Implementation of Democratic Transition and Decentralization

by Dr. Detelin Dachev

Secretary,

Student Town District Council, Sofia

Giovanni Sartori, the prominent researcher of democratic processes, once said: One of the features of democracy which we least remember, is that the wrong ideas about it divert democracy itself. To us, the Bulgarians, his thought is even more valid, having in mind the thick layer of pseudo-democratic ideologies instilled in our conscience during the last several decades.

Many of us, employees of the municipal administrations, still have a vague idea about the restructuring of local self-government to democratic models. Lately we often hear Western experts in this area saying, that The processes of democratization and decentralization of local self-government are unified!

In a historical aspect, some European countries started along the way of democratic changes not so long ago. Even being of a different kind, the former totalitarian regimes in Portugal and Spain, for example, also had destroyed the right sense for democracy in their people. However, looking at the experience of the other Western countries, the democrats on the Iberian Peninsula started implementing the whole specter of democratic reforms.

At this initial level, at which we too are now, in Spain the issues of democratic changes and of the decentralization of local government have been reviewed together.

The seminars and conferences, organized during the last year by the Foundation for Local Government Reform, clarified to a great extent the means by which the different levels of decentralization in the countries of Western Europe were reached. A short review of the information gathered on these topics during the last years will yield interesting allusions on the peculiarities of the Bulgarian ways of making effective democratic changes. If we focus on some aspects of this information, we could outline several interesting moments, which are especially important to the management mechanisms and structures, such as those in the cities with district division.

Above all, an extremely important fact is that big cities with district infrastructure, similar to that of Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna, can be seen maybe only in Spain. Maybe, because there is some data for similar infrastructure in Vienna, but according to the available information it is not identical with ours. Evidently the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces has raised the question of effective district division in big cities during the first years of the democratic changes. The Spanish representative to the European Union, Mr. Villanova, specifically underlined at the Management of the Cities with District Division International Conference (Plovdiv, November 28 - 29, 1997) that the decentralization processes in Barcelona have started together with those of democratization in the city, and that so far they are successfully progressing together.

Another very important, both to us and our Western colleagues, conclusion was reached at the conference: in cities and districts with a population over 80,000 it is difficult to solve the specific social and economic problems of the citizens altogether. It also became evident that the big European cities without district infrastructure have actually found other ways to effective local self-government. A detail of interest to us is the fact that the fiscal decentralization of local government in all big European cities has been legislatively provided for tens, and in some case - hundreds of years ago! For the quoted model of district local self-government which is closest to ours - the one in Barcelona - the financial independence of each district has been legislatively predetermined immediately after the fall of the Franco regime. This has allowed the autonomous development of district mechanisms and structures to be achieved in stages, without any stumbling blocks, and to free the development of other democratic features in the city districts, such as:

• the territorial division of the big city to move gradually towards defining the districts on the basis of historical and social principles (as we will state later, this is of great significance for our Student Town District);
• limitation of the centralized power of the Greater City Hall and concentration of real local self-government in the district city halls;
• the participation of the citizens of each district in the mechanisms of self-government is more active and allows for making politically balanced decisions;
• real opportunities for decentralization of the administrative and information services (bureaus in every neighborhood), as well as of other peculiarities, and for the acceleration of the democratic processes in the districts.

Speaking of fiscal decentralization, we need to again look at Spain where, despite the evident autonomy of the city districts, in all other fields, such as for example the subsidies, only one model, dependent on the national authorities, has been adopted. There the general subsidies are allocated by a department of the Ministry of Finance - the Department for Coordination of Territorial Finance. The target subsidies are paid to the municipalities and the districts by the respective ministry - of education, transportation, etc.

As we already underlined, the fiscal area in local self-government is very specific in every country, according to the national and local peculiarities, needs and legislative framework, and it is worth to make an in-depth analysis aimed at rational use of the Western-European experience for the need of future decentralization in our country.

The Deputy Mayor of the Sofia Municipality, Mr. Vetzeslav Nikolov, rightly stated at the conference, that the process of transition towards a logical district division of the Capital Municipality will inevitably be a long process and that in the conditions of harsh economic crisis, it is unthinkable to implement long-term policies for development of an autonomous city structure of the individual districts in the budget sphere .

The aspiration towards fiscal decentralization is based on the need for significant improvements in the legislation.

Our experience in local self-government lead us to another conclusion: it is necessary to start with the decentralization of the social and educational areas.

The specific peculiarities of the Student Town District in Sofia impose the necessity of autonomous government and of finding solutions to educational and social problems.

My conversations with representatives of government both from other districts and at national level, as well as the opinions expressed in the media, show that a large-scale information campaign on the specifics and the future of the Student Town District needs to be conducted. The primitive level of the badly structured conglomerate of several neighborhoods has been overcome long ago, and now the Studentski grad is an integral part of the district in housing, communication and functional aspect. Now our task is not to go back by disintegrating the individual neighborhoods, but to look for flexible forms of local self-government.

It is also perfectly clear that the structure of the district local self-government does not correspond to the dynamic processes in building civil society in the country, and specifically in Sofia. Actually, even a slight overview of the specifics of the social, urban and economic structures in the districts would be enough to convince us of the need for an alternative approach to decentralization at local level.

We could hardly talk about real democracy (G. Sartori) and decentralization of local self-government, when in practice are applied the principles of the democratic centralism and pyramidal structures. We believe, that the subordination of local government does not exclude the effective implementation of parallel and supporting, with their information and controlling functions, local dynamic systems.

We offer our view on the processes of restructuring and decentralization of local (municipal, district) self-government and are convinced that this might become at least a cause for serious and useful discussions.

We believe that first of all (based on the Western experience), we should encourage the establishment of neighborhood NGOs and provide support for their activities. These need to be structured (after a short period of organizational structuring) as organizations that assist and rectify local self-government. Currently, the Bulgarian Women s Union is proving to be such an organization in the Student Town District; in these years of crisis we depend on the assistance of this organization of the Bulgarian mothers, working women and growing number of business women.

Decisive is the question of true decentralization of municipal (district) administrative and information services. Nothing can obstruct this idea from being implemented in our three neighborhoods (Fig. 1). To make these bureaus efficient, it is imperative for them to be flexible and to provide opportunities for feedback.

Here arises the question for a not so much legislatively predetermined, but more institutionally encouraged decentralization. What we have in mind is releasing certain subordination dependencies of the local public institutions (LPI - community centers, schools, polyclinics and other units) of the local administration (Fig. 1). This is where, in our opinion, the legislative problems of decentralization need to be initially considered! Even at our level of democratization, it is intolerable to allow the existing triple subordination of local public institutions for salaries and repairs - to ministries, to central municipal departments, and to the District Administration.

In short, the three elements of the new system, which needs to be applied, the system of LOCAL DYNAMIC STRUCTURES (LODYS), are the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the local public institutions (LPI) and the neighborhood administrative and information bureaus.

For the Student Town District, we can firmly state that we have, above all, the moral and social motivation to implement this system of local self-government. There is a need for organized and administratively encouraged support to the consolidation of the District, i.e. to establish an unified cultural, social and economic environment. This is what could bring us closer to the Western models of municipal and district local self-government. We depend a lot on the youth potential of our district. In the sector of NGOs, as element of LODYS, we expect a significant activity on behalf of such established organizations like the Federation of Independent Student Associations, the National Student Council, etc. It is well-known that these is no power that can stop the implementation of a progressive idea, when it has become a goal of the young people.

The restructuring and decentralization of district self-government according to the LODYS model will be the Bulgarian contribution to the development of the democratic principles in the transition towards civil society.