Does Devolution Increase Accountability? Empirical Evidence from the Implementation of European Union Cohesion Policy

Abstract

The period from the late 1990s to the early 2000s witnessed trends of decentralisation, deconcentration or devolution of competencies from the national to the sub-national levels in a variety of countries. Implicit or explicit in many of the discussions about devolution is the assumption that, by bringing the design and delivery of policy 'closer to the people', it increases accountability. The main proposition of this article is to test this common assumption. Focusing, as a test case, on the implementation of European Union Cohesion Policy in two meso-level territorial units with recent experience of devolution, the article investigates empirically whether the new, devolved institutional framework within which the policy operates is indeed more conducive to accountability.

Devolution and the regional health divide: a longitudinal ecological study of 14 countries in Europe

“…There has been a growing trend in Europe towards greater fiscal devolution (1) . Several studies have shown that greater fiscal devolution is associated with and this has led to decreased economic inequalities between regions within countries (3,(7)(8)(9)(10)(11).…”

“…In Europe there has been a growing trend in recent years towards greater devolution, resulting in the delegation of power and resources from central to lower levels of government (1). One key aspect of this devolution has been fiscal devolution where the proportion of public expenditure controlled by subnational levels of government has increased.…”

Financial Compliance in the European Union: A Cross‐National Assessment of Financial Correction Patterns and Causes in Cohesion Policy

“…Theoretically, the impact of regional autonomy on Cohesion policy implementation can also be positive (Tosun, ). Political decentralization could facilitate effective implementation if it promotes more accountability in policy delivery and may support financial compliance (Polverari, ). Moreover, the rationale underpinning Cohesion policy's multilevel governance model of decentralized delivery and its partnership principle is that tailoring the policy to regional/local preferences and conditions supports effective implementation by eliciting local knowledge and increasing ownership (Barca, ).…”

Metropolitan and city-regional politics in the urban age: why does “(smart) devolution” matter?

“…Scottish autonomy was newly conferred in a referendum in 1997. It was established by the Scotland Act and passed by the New Labour government in 1998, which led to the election of the first Scottish parliament in May 1999 and the formation of a new Scottish devolved government in charge of wide-ranging policy fields, including healthcare, education and energy (McLean, 2001;Heald and McLeod, 2005;Jones et al, 2005;Keating, 2005;McGregor and Swales, 2005;Leyland, 2011;Cairney, 2014;Hazell, 2015;Polverari, 2015;ICE, 2016). Thus, Scotland has been gaining political and policy devolution fuelled by the new Scottish Government (Scottish Government, 2013), which has established a smart city-regional strategic vision through the Scottish Cities Alliance (2017) to foster a bottom-up, participatory, and geodemocratic culture within city-regional stakeholders.…”

“…These strategies and policies provoke a new understanding of urban politics in which democratic deliberation and experimentation occur (Keating and McEwen, 2005;Economist, 2014;Hazell, 2015;Polverari, 2015;Paun et al, 2016;Randall and Casebourne, 2016;Scott and Copeland, 2016;Shaw and TewdwrJones, 2017).…”