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Project: Issues of scale and decentralisation in cities: lessons from the Antwerp case (2010-2011)
Research issue
This research project is framed in the everlasting debate about the optimization of local government scale. On one side of the debate there is a movement towards larger municipalities, based on the assumption of economics of scale. On the other side of the debate, arguments are raised for downsizing local government scale. These arguments stem from the general feeling that there is a growing gap between government and citizens and that local governments need to play a central role in restoring confidence. However, in oversized local governments, the distance between local governments and its citizens is said to become too great. The holy grail of this debate is the point of balance between the capacity required to render public services and between the need to engage citizens in the governmental processes. In order to deal with this challenge, local governments take varying initiatives to bring the citizens closer to local policy making and vice versa. One possibility in Flanders is to set up directly elected district councils (officially called intra-municipal decentralisation) for cities with over100.000 inhabitants - only the city of Antwerp has done so. The case of Antwerp is therefore an experiment worth studying, however linking it to other ways of balancing administrative effectiveness and political involvement.
Content
The main goal of the research is to learn from the experiences in Antwerp, other Flemish cities and abroad, namely how they deal with coordination challenges to keep a balance between up- and downscaling. These lessons should be useful for Antwerp but also contribute to a wider knowledge and use of the instrument of intra-municipal decentralization in Flanders in the future.
Research team
KU Leuven, Public Management
Institute
Supervisor: Prof. dr. Koen Verhoest
Researcher: Dries De Herdt
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