Dr. Ricardo Bello-Gomez Discusses His New Book on Subnational Governments
Dr. Ricardo Bello-Gomez, assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University–Newark, recently published his latest book, Handbook on Subnational Governments and Governance. The book – edited by Dr. Bello-Gomez and Dr. Claudia Avellaneda from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington, and with contributions from over 20 scholars from around the world – analyzes the political, financial, administrative, and managerial dimensions of subnational governments.
We invited Dr. Bello-Gomez to discuss his new book, and tell us more about the relevance of subnational governments and governance for public affairs and administration.
Your book focuses on multiple dimensions of subnational governments. How do you define subnational governance?
We define subnational governance as the system of institutional arrangements that are put in place to organize governments below the national level. In other words, subnational governments include all local and state/provincial/regional governments. Therefore, these arrangements include the rules each country establishes for subnational governments to access financial resources, provide services, formulate and implement policy, as well as the degrees and conditions of their political and administrative autonomy.
What roles do subnational governments play in providing services to their communities?
Subnational governments perform a wide range of different duties depending on the country's specific governance arrangements. At the local level, these commonly include garbage collection, water provision, parks and recreation, urban planning, among others, but some are also in charge of education, healthcare, and other services. There is an even wider variation of roles at the level of provinces, states, and regions given their nature as intermediaries between the national and local levels. As such, each country devises a particular governance system that distributes roles, resources, and power across these different levels.
How does your book address this variety of subnational governance systems?
Our book is divided into a thematic section, which explores the key dimensions often used to study subnational governments, and a series of geographic sections composed of country case studies. The thematic chapters provide a common framework to understand the similarities and differences in governance systems across countries. Then, we invited scholars from 22 countries representing federal and unitary systems, different degrees of decentralization, political and fiscal autonomy as well as a variety of distributions of policy responsibilities. In each chapter, the authors provide a description of the country's subnational governance system. They also present a case that helps illustrate a particular feature or challenge of subnational governments in the particular country. Thus, these cases range from citizen participation to rural-urban divides, and from tax collection to minority rights. Overall, this approach allows us to identify key challenges that are commonly faced by subnational governments around the world.
What are some of these common challenges faced by subnational governments?
We identify that building and sustaining administrative capacity is a key challenge for the effectiveness of subnational governments. Several of the country cases in our book evidence substantial capacity gaps and differences within countries, for instance between urban and rural areas, that affect public service provision. A second key challenge relates to the financial constraints of subnational governments and their correlation to the assigned policy responsibilities. Finally, we identify that subnational governments strive to achieve a stable network of interactions with the public, nonprofits, and other governments, as a result of the changing nature of their role in governance systems.
Why is it important to understand how subnational governance is practiced worldwide?
Subnational governance has been on the rise worldwide in the last four decades. While people in the United States are used to the important role of local and state governments with high levels of autonomy, this was a rare case in many countries around the world, and in some countries still is. Therefore, many public functions are now provided by a multitude of governments that are the result of relatively recent institutional experimentation, that come in different shapes and that respond to different contextual characteristics. If we understand the nuances of subnational governance systems, we will better understand how services are provided and policies are implemented for very diverse communities across the globe.