1The obstacles to a comparative analysis of patterns of local government and/or local administration in France and Nigeria are formidable and emanate from different sources. The first is contextual. Both countries represent radically different political configurations, no matter what variables we employ to measure this (type of political culture, authority and influence patterns, policy processes and performance levels, level of institutional stability and development, etc.). To the extent that the functioning of local level political and administrative structures is directly or indirectly influenced by constraints and advantages that come in from the national environment, the marked disparities in the structural as well as behavioural characteristics of both countries, significantly complicate any comparative analysis of identical political institutions.

2A second source is juridical. Local-level structures in the two countries are not informed by similar or comparable legal dispositions. Whereas, at the institutional level, the multi-purpose single-tiered local government structures in Nigeria are influenced by British-inherited values of "local self government"1 the multi-tiered local government structures in France function under a more integrational framework.2 It is therefore difficult to establish conceptual equivalence in the discussion of patterns of local government and/or local administration in both countries. Logically, this poses a problem for a study such as ours.

3A third source is in the level of organized information that exists on various aspects of local government in both countries. Whereas there exist very rich materials on most of the important aspects of local government in France (local elections, relationships between centre and periphery, financial management at local level, local personnel management, etc.), corresponding materials on similar aspects in Nigeria remain sketchy, approximate and badly organized. This lack of corresponding data on identical aspects of local governance in both countries, both in a qualitative and in a quantitative sense, constitutes a problem in comparative analysis in two related and particularly important ways. First, it prevents conclusive analysis of the aspects of local government chosen because, in the absence of adequate corresponding data, one can only engage in hypothesis building. Secondly, it complicates the choice of aspects of local government that should be analyzed since, in attempting to systematically confront situations in both countries, one is forced to choose those aspects on which there is minimal significant information for both countries, and this is not always easy.

4Notwithstanding these and other obstacles to comparative local analysis in Nigeria and France, we maintain that such a venture is useful on both substantive and methodological grounds. First, only by a detailed and systematic analysis of the real workings of local structures in both countries can one learn to what extent and under what circumstances hypotheses on the differences in the nature of local government in both countries hold true. Secondly, comparative analysis does not, in our opinion, have well defined boundaries or what we may describe as an outer limit. Even though it is usually desirable to compare political events and institutions in political contexts that share a number of common characteristics (in the thinking of Martin Heisler, this serves a useful pre-theoretical data collection and data classification function), this does not mean that every comparative study must be between similar political systems.3 According to James Bill, comparative analysis is fundamentally the study of political forms and political processes in two or more political contexts.4 It is thus the pattern of political behaviour and the workings of political structures rather than political contexts that form the major focus of analysis.

5We intend to examine forms and patterns of local governments in France and Nigeria. Even though we will touch on the basic philosophies of local government in both countries, we intend to go beyond the purely descriptive juridico-institutional approach that informs most comparative analyses of local government. Our major focus will be on the real capacity of local government structures to participate in authoritative decision making. In other words, rather than compare de jure local power in both countries, we shall be concerned more with de facto local power. In this respect, we hope to generate rethinking on traditional approaches to the study of decentralization and on the parallelism made between unitarism and centralization on the one hand, and federalism and decentralization on the other.

National environment for local government in France and Nigeria

6To effectively discuss the extent to which state power is territorially dispersed to local level political institutions in the two countries, we feel it is necessary to first take a look at the global national political and institutional contexts within which their local government structures function. We believe that the real latitude which states in general give to local level political institutions is determined by the level to which state structures are themselves institutionalized. It is clear, for example, that states which suffer from incessant crises of authority, measured especially in terms of legitimacy and penetration, would be very cautious in the spatial diffusion of their powers for fear that established local political institutions become transformed into centres of local counter-power.5

7In trying to find out to what extent state structures are institutionalized in both France and Nigeria, we will take the three stages that are usually used to describe the political modernization process, that is, political fragmentation, political consolidation and institutional hdifferentiation. We define a fragmented political system as that in which there is relatively low territorial and political solidarity between its constituent elements. Conflicts of interests in such a system are usually conflicts between well constituted territorial groups. In a fragmented political system, therefore, the global community lacks internal organic unity, the source of which might be found in one or several of the crises of development identified by the developmentalist school.

8On the other hand, a consolidated political system is a well integrated, internally coherent political organization. There is relatively high territorial and political solidarity between its constituent elements such that conflicts of interests are not necessarily between well constituted territorial groups but between other more functionally organized groups. In a consolidated system, state structures are effectively institutionalized and there is usually convergence between the "state" and the "nation".

9A differentiated political system is one in which the problem of the territorial self preservation of the state no longer constitutes the major objective of the state. In such a post-consolidated system, attempts are made to distribute state power to several organs and layers of decision making and management. Various forms of institutions are built and established through which a system of division of labour and powers obtains so as to allow the state to react in an effective manner to various demands (economic, social and political) that accompany its modernization.

10The degree of fragmentation or consolidation of a political system determines the level of internal political consensus in given states. Among other equally important factors, the degree of internal political consensus determines the extent to which power is spatially diffused to sub-national levels of political and administrative activity. In this regard, we observe enormous differences between Nigeria and France. In Nigeria, there is more of divergence than convergence of opinion on the basic values which the state should pursue through its constituent elements. The entity called Nigeria is yet to be internalized by all its inhabitants – Don Roven describes it as a state that is functionally rather than politically integrated.6 In this respect, the declared "objectives" of the state and its declared rules, norms and values are only fleetingly adhered to for several reasons, including the fact that there is usually opposition between the state, as a level of political identity, and other more important primary levels of political identification (the village, the Local Government Area, the Region).

11In France, on the other hand, there is complementarity rather than opposition between the national and sub-national levels of political identities. There is thus in France the idea of an established French community. According to Jacob and Teune, the dominant factor in political integration is the idea of community – inhabitants in the political unit share "mutual ties of one kind or another which give the group a feeling of identity and self-awareness".7

12This factor of relative degree of internal political consensus which is linked to the level of national integration in both countries, is of direct relevance to the real powers that are given to local governments in several significant ways. First, it determines the political constraints that are placed on the expression of local politics by the state. Our hypothesis is that, in a more integrated political system (France), local politics is allowed to assume its own proper dynamics and to obey local social, economic and political variables, whereas in a less integrated system (Nigeria), local politics is directly controlled by the centre through various mechanisms. Secondly, we believe that this variable also determines the major systemic roles which local government structures perform. We identify two major systemic roles. First the mobilizational and participative role, where local governments exist as bulwarks of local political energies, designed to give expression to various local forces. Secondly, the instrumental and penetrative role, local governments being used as instruments of political control by the centre at the periphery. Our hypothesis is that, in relatively well integrated states (France), local governments serve more mobilizational than penetrative functions, whereas in less integrated, fragmented states (Nigeria), local governments serve more penetrative than mobilizational or participative roles. Before we proceed to test these two major hypotheses, however, we feel it is important for us to examine briefly the institutional principles that inform local governments in both countries.

Legal principles that inform position of local government structures in France and Nigeria

13Nigeria is usually classified as a federal system while France remains, according to most typologists of modern political systems, the prototype of a unitary state. The major variables that are used to distinguish between unitary and federal systems include the relative dependence of infra-national, regional and sub-regional levels of political and administrative action on the state, as well as the type of balance that is maintained between state authority and local liberties in the territorial distribution of power.

14A commonsense analysis of the French and Nigerian political systems would describe France as a centralized entity and Nigeria as a decentralized state. According to Rivero, the criteria for centralization is the constitution of local authorities by the state, the limited nature of their power, their extreme dependence vis-a-vis the state, and the fact that the actions of such authorities are on behalf, and for the benefit, of the state.8 On the other hand, federalism, and therefore decentralization, is defined as a pragmatic method of orgnazing government so that sovereignty and political power are combined within a single nation of several territorial units but are so distributed between national and unit governments that each, within its own sphere, is institutionally independent of the others.

15The implications of these various legal or institutional contexts on the position of local government structures in France and Nigeria are clear. In France, the unitary principles that obtain lead, at the institutional level, to the establishment of a vertically integrated territorial system; local government institutions being considered as internal organs of state administration rather than as autonomous political and administrative units outside the same state administration.9 What we shall attempt to develop in this essay is the idea that, in practice, local level actors have been able to exploit the minimal institutional resources which this integrated framework offers local government structures and to establish themselves as very active rather than passive participants in the public decision-making process.

16On the other hand, the Nigerian federal system, which, in principle, places more emphasis on territorial pluralism and less on integration, allows local level structures to exist as semi-autonomous political entities, armed with the necessary institutional resources to react in their own right to specified functions and problems.10

17These are just legal principles which give the position of local government structures in the global territorial systems of both countries. A more in-depth examination of the real functioning of both territorial systems however displays some interesting phenomena. In France, for instance, one observes that, irrespective of the unitarist principles to which we have made allusion, public decision making is far from monopolized by one single centre, Paris, with all other centres (Regional, Departmental and Communal) being subjugated by this centre. In reality, and we shall amplify this in the succeeding sections of our analysis, public decision-making is territorially shared between the different layers that exist, each layer controlling some source of incertitude with respect to the performance level of the global decision machinery and each layer exploiting this control to strengthen its influence over the general decision-making process.11 On the other hand, one notices that, irrespective of its federalist principles, decision making in Nigeria is far from territorially fragmented. In actual practice, power is concentrated in one overriding centre, Lagos, and limits placed on the exercice of initiative at regional and sub-regional evels.

18What this simply means is that, in respect of their influence on the position of local governments, we can qualify both the French and Nigerian territorial systems as semi-decentralized in different degrees. We borrow the concept of semi-decentralization from Eisenmann.12 Semi-decentralization refers to a mixture of state control and local liberties in the territorial distribution of state power. A semi-decentralized state is one in which the establishment of societal norms, the definition of major political values, role making and the authoritative solution of public problems is shared in different equations between a powerful centre (the state) and less powerful sub-regional levels of decision making which might exist in dependent or independent relations with the centre. The type of equation that exists in this general cadre is a function of the historical foundations of the state, the major problems that occupy political attention at a given point in time, and the formal system of government.

19The capacity of local governments in both France and Nigeria to authoritatively react to local problems is influenced by this environment of semi-decentralization which in reality signifies a division of labour between centre and periphery. The capacity of local governments to exploit this division of labour to their advantage is a function of several factors, including:

1. the openess of the centre to influences from the periphery or local levels of decision making in the management of public problems, i.e., the localistic nature of central political action or inaction;

2. the capacity of local governments to extract resources from central government for their use, which in turn depends on

3. the access that local political actors have into the major institutions of the state responsible for decision making; and

4. the quantity and quality of political, administrative, economic and social resources that local governments dispose of, the importance of these resources to the state (this increases the relative openness of the state to local influences) and the ability of local actors to use these resources to expand their margins of manoeuvre.

20Apart from these factors which influence the level of de facto local power, there remains a major, if not the most important factor, which is the type of authority pattern which obtains in given states.

Authority patterns in Nigeria and France as they influence local governments

21The most important "national" variable that influences the relative margins of manoeuvre of local government institutions in the two countries is the type of regime which obtains at the national level. Two variables appear to us to be very important here. The first concerns the forms and mechanisms of political recruitment (at all levels of public decision making). This has a great bearing on the relative independence of local policy actors and of the type of relationship that exists between them and state actors. The second concerns the major style of management at the national level. We distinguish between two dominant styles: the open decision system where national decision making is flexible and is the result of negotiations between various socio-political and economic forces situated at different decision levels, and the closed decision system where there is the monopoly of the powers to conceive and define policy options by one dominant centre – the state.

22On the basis of these variables, we can place Nigeria and France in two different clusters of authority patterns or national regimes. First, in Nigeria there is a very highly authoritarian regime. Public policy-making is monopolized by one single and dominant centre, the national centre, which is usually manned by individuals who are not recruited through democratic processes. The three-layered territorial system (federal, state and local governments) functions in such a way that policy making authority is tightly centralized, while restricted decisional authority in specific functional areas is assigned in different degrees to the regional and sub-regional levels.

23Secondly, and this applies to France, there is a flexible liberal democratic regime. Most political actors at all the levels of decision making are elected through open elections – the decision-making structure and process is ’’open" rather than closed and policy making, even if dominated by an overriding centre, is shared into different levels of political and administrative activities.

24This factor is a determinant of the potential powers and position of local governments in the architecture of public decision making in several ways. In Nigeria, the authoritarian regime has two major effects on the position of local governments. The first is the establishment of a hierarchically organized territorial system with local governments, as the third tier of governmental activity, occupying the third (and last) position in terms of importance on the scale of government. In actual fact, local governments appear to be regarded as instruments designed to implement decisions taken by the first (federal) and second (state) tiers of governmental activity. The second is the open and undisguisea nationalization of legally defined local functions. The commitment to decentralization which one might observe in several local government reforms in Nigeria appear illusory when measured against the gradual displacement of local government structures as centres of initiative, even in those functions that are described as theirs, such as the administration and management of primary education. There is therefore ambiguity in terms of the exact position of local governments since the balance of power in the working of political institutions in the country is heavily tipped in favour of central institutions and elites.

25In France, one observes that almost the reverse is the case. Irrespective of the integrated model that informs French local government, one notices that policy formulation and public decision making in France is a cooperative process requiring active local participation. Certainly, this local participation is severely constrained by the advent of the interventionist state, with the centre being increasingly called upon to assume direct responsibility in the major areas of political, social and economic crises that have accompanied recent French modernization. Direct state intervention notwithstanding, local governments are not regarded as only serving to implement the commands of national leaders, as is the case in Nigeria. The real powers of local governments in both countries thus differ radically.

De facto local power in France and Nigeria

26There thus obtains in both France and Nigeria certain constraints (political, institutional, etc.) which are placed on the exercise of local powers and which therefore restrict the initiative of local-level actors. However, our discussions which follow lay bare an irrefutable fact. Local governments have been better able to expand their margins of manoeuvre within the existing system of constraints in France than in Nigeria. The level of local power is thus higher in France than in Nigeria, despite the fact that conventional analysis qualifies the workings of local level structures in both countries in term of local administration and local government respectively.

27What this means simply is that local governments in France have relatively higher capacity than their Nigerian counterparts to exercise initiative to solve local problems and to define local policy options in an authoritative manner. This is so because the resources (political, social and administrative) available to local-level political and administrative structures in France are higher (quantitatively and qualitatively) than in Nigeria. Local governments in France have several sources of power which are hardly obtainable in Nigeria. We can briefly identify some of these sources.

28First there is the political source of local power. This source has two major elements. The first is the direct political legitimacy of principal local policy actions which liberates them psychologically and gives them the authority to assume reponsibility without unncessary guidance from the centre. This has a great bearing on the types of relationship that obtain between local and state actors: whereas in France local policy actors are not directly answerable to the centre (since they are elected by the people), in Nigeria, they are because, until recently, most local policy actors were state appointees and nominees. Because of these differences, the approach and the relative liberty with which local policy actors attempt to protect the local interest against encroachment by the general (national) interest differs markedly between Nigeria and France. The second major element of the political source of local power in France, which is absent in Nigeria, is the easy and direct access which local policy actors have into major national centres of decision making. This easy access is greatly facilitated by the possibilities which exist for the vertical accumulation of elective offices by local/national political actors. This system does not obtain in Nigeria. Thus, whereas in France, principal local policy actors (urban mayors, presidents of departmental councils, and presidents of regional councils) are more often than not national (legislature and executive) policy actors as well, in Nigeria, Local Government chairmen are circumscribed to their respective local political jurisdictions.

29This factor of easy access to national centres of decision making is a potent weapon for local autonomy and local power in several significant ways. First it facilitates centre-periphery communications and ensures that local governments obtain necessary advantages from the centre in a quicker manner. Secondly, the presence of local actors at the national level (in France) allows them to reduce the type and range of constraints that the centre might wish to place in the way of the exercice of local powers. What this signifies is that, in a political system such as the one obtaining in France where there is that direct access and face-to-face contact between local and central policy actors, the tensions between the demands of central control and local independence are more easily managed to the advantage of local governments than in countries such as Nigeria where the range of interpretation between levels of government is limited. The balance between local autonomy and central control thus tilts more towards central control in such countries, with a negative effect on the claims to independence of local government institutions which is too obvious to necessitate additional arguments.

30The second source of local power available in France and which is less observable in Nigeria is administrative. The entire state machinery in the periphery in France is left at the disposal of local governments. With the 1982 decentralization reforms under the socialist government, several conventions passed between the state and relevant Departmental and Regional levels of local government effectively transferred well qualified state manpower to these respective local decision units. This is in addition to the several deconcentrated units of important state Ministries (Equipments and Public Works, Agriculture, Sanitation and Social Affairs) which furnish local governments with the relevant technical inputs for effective decision making.

31In Nigeria this close relationship between local government and relevant state Ministries is hardly the case. The only state Ministry that has regular and continuous relationship with local governments is the Ministry of Local Government. Even though this Ministry has important roles in local government manpower planning and manpower development, it hardly puts at the disposal of local governments the relevant technical and professional expertise which these require for the effective performance of their functions. Because of the absence of qualified manpower at the local level, major decisions, once taken, cannot be implemented.

32A third and final source of local power in France, which is relatively absent in Nigeria, concerns the level of citizen support for local government institutions and for local government activities. The apathy which is characteristic of the approach of the average rural Nigerian citizen to questions that border on local government (the choice of local decision makers, the performance levels of local government, the accountability and level of responsibility of local government actors) differs markedly from the relative drive with which local citizens in France attempt to participate in local government related activities. Citizen participation and support is a source of local power to the extent that it improves the information base of local decision making and therefore has a direct bearing on the quality of decisions taken. It is necessary, however, to note that lack of adequate citizen participation in local government affairs in Nigeria is the result of the absence of regular local elections in the history of Nigerian local governments. The political culture of the rural people has thus not been allowed to develop sufficiently for it to reinforce their commitment to local government. Even when local elections are held, the turn out is usually lower than for state and federal elections.13

Constraints on local government administration in France and Nigeria

33Even if the capacity of local government structures to exercise initiative and to make authoritative decisions is higher in France than in Nigeria, there are a number of constraints which hamper the effective exercise of decision-making powers at the local level in both countries. We can categorize these constraints into three in Nigeria (the systemic, the political, and the economic). In France, the constraints can be equally categorized into three (the juridical, the political, and the economic).

34The major systemic constraint to the effective exercise of local decision making powers in Nigeria is the military-dominated political system. It is this military domination that has made the workings of local governments to obey an integration model, as different from the autonomous model that informs its existence. In a military-dominated political system which functions according to the principles of central command and unified control, a sub-system of autonomy is usually low and minimal if not non-existent. Therefore, even if at the juridical level local governments have wide powers (their installation as the third tier of government activity attests to this), they are inextricably integrated into the centralized political and administrative machine which has accompanied long military rule in Nigeria.

35The political constraints flow from this. Local governments cannot exercise their powers specifically because there is no decentralization of powers pari passu with the decentralization of functions. Several political and administrative limits are placed on the expression of local politics within duly constituted (even elected) councils. These limits are placed because the dominant political elite at the national level, whose political legitimacy is relatively fragile, fear the local unknown should local government actors be granted unlimited powers. Consequently, local governments are used to satisfy needs for political penetration by the centre rather than those of political participation at the periphery.

36The third constraint is economic and relates in essence to the lack of adequate financial resources to back up the workings of established local councils. In particular one observes the very small percentage that internal resources of revenue contribute to total local government funds. Dependence on "external" sources affects local government autonomy as well as the latitude in determining programmes and in choosing specific policy options. In this respect, even recent suggestions in certain quarters that the share of local governments from the National Account should be increased from 10 % to 20 % would hardly solve the problem of local autonomy and financial self-solvency.14 For this to be adequately catered for, it might be imperative for local governments to exploit hitherto untapped internal sources of revenue (commerciad undertakings, property tax, etc.).

37In France, the first major constraint to the effective working of local government institutions is juridical. We made ample reference to this earlier on in our analysis. There is a limit to which local power can be exercised outside state supervision and control specifically because of the unitary and jacobinist principles that inform the workings of the French political system. Even if local governments have been able to, through different strategies, establish forms of reciprocal dependence between themselves and the state, there is no doubt that they are still subjugated to it. It is therefore correct to continue to talk of. local administration rather than local government in France, notwithstanding their relatively wider margins of decisional manoeuvre compared with the Nigerian situation.

38The political constraints flow from this. They concern a motley of forms of political, administrative and technical control which the state exercises over local decision-making. The executive at both the Departmental and Regional levels is, for example, bicephalous. Presidents of Councils at these respective levels are constrained to interact directly with the representative of the state – the Commissioner of the Republic – in the exercice of their decision making powers. These state representatives control the legality of local government decisions and ensure their parity with state norms and regulations. Technical control finds expression in several technical norms which are developed and designed to serve as reference points in the making of local decisions. However, most local political actors, especially at the Departmental level, have been able to establish a very close working relationship with the representative of the state such that some of these technical norms are waived to facilitate local decision making. This refers to the famous couple of die prefect and his notables, whose dynamics have been well analysed by Jean Pierre Worms.15

39The major economic constraint to local government in France is not only the relative paucity of local revenue but the extreme control which the state exercises over local finances. Such financial control is both a priori and a posteriori.16 This form of control gives the state the direct opportunity of checking local government accounts and indirectly increases the dependence of local governments on the centre.

40Irrespective of these and other constraints that limit the exercise or decision making powers, we have observed that French local governments have been better able to establish themselves as more active centres of local decision making than their Nigerian counterparts. This situation finds explanation in at least two areas. First, whereas the workings of the French territorial system is based on a game of give and take between local government and state actors, in Nigeria there is a very rigid distribution of powers and roles between all the levels of decision making, with the national centre only reluctantly making occasional concessions to local and regional decision units.17 Secondly, whereas in France there exist relations of mutual dependence and therefore interdependence between local and national actors (this ensures that national actors are constrained to have the support of local actors if they wish that their decisions be enectively implemented at the local level), in Nigeria, this relation of dependence is not reciprocal.18 Local actors exist at the mercy of state and national actors who can bypass them without any appreciable damage to the successful implementation of state-conceived decisions. These major differences in the level of local power in Nigeria and France provoke some major questions on traditional analyses of the issue of decentralization.

Rethinking decentralization

41Orthodox thinking on decentralization appears to be limited to the symbols that accompany decentralization, rather than to the actual capacity of decentralized units to exercise their powers in an authoritative manner. Such symbols, even if they more often than not indicate the institutional as well as legal contexts in which decentralized units operate as well as the principles that inform their establishment, do not however display the real place of such structures in the political and administrative territorial systems of given states. Aside from such principles, which are not totally insignificant, four major factors determine the level of real or actual decentralization of powers in given states, using the French and Nigerian situations as test cases.

42The first is the relative openness of the global decision-making machinery to local influences and to inputs from local government institutions. The more a political system is open to localistic political influences, the greater the level of actual decentralization and the greater the power of local level structures determining the content, direction and type of public policies.

43The second is the situational legitimacy of local level political and administrative institutions. This relates to the extent to which citizens identify with local government institutions and look up to these as strong and important centres for the solution of their problems. In a political system where the level of citizen support for local government institutions is relatively high, our hypothesis and thinking is that local governments adopt a more aggressive approach in the relationship with higher levels of government. Such support forms an important political resource at the disposal of local governments.

44The third factor is the level of interpretation of levels of government and the channels of communication that exist between local governments and higher levels of decision making. Where inter-organizational penetration is high, and where this is accompanied by the establishment of informal person-to-person mechanisms of communication and inter-organizational contact, the relative capacity of local governments to master the constraints in their external environment is high. This has a direct bearing on their margins of maoeuvre and their capacity to take decisions.

45The final factor is the real, as different from the symbolic, role that local governments play in the workings of the global political system. Our discussion on the real place and position of local governments in the Nigerian and French territorial systems confirms the hypothesis we had made in our introduction, i.e. that, in relatively integrated systems such as France where the demands of nation building no longer dominate the agenda of government, local govenments serve more mobilizational than penetrative roles while, in fragmented states such as Nigeria where there is usually divergence rather than convergence between the state and the nation, local government institutions more often than not serve penetrative rather than mobilizational or participative functions. Even if the norms which accompany the establishment of local governments cannot be regarded as irrelevant, we opine that the roles which are assigned to local government institutions determine in no small measure their relative powers.

Conclusion

46Decentralization can thus be discussed in reality at two different levels – the symbolic and institutional level (de jure decentralization), and the level of actual political and administrative practice (de facto decentralization). These two levels might correspond or might diverge in many significant ways. Our analysis of decentralization in France and Nigeria shows more of divergence between the two levels of decentralization in both countries. Whereas, at the institutional level in France, local governments exist as local extensions of the state, in actual practice these have established themselves as very active rather than passive participants in the general public decision-making process. On the contrary, whereas the principles which inform local government in Nigeria lay emphasis on local autonomy and local discretion, one notices that these are highly marginal actors in the management of public problems, which is effectively monopolized by higher state and federal levels of government. Thus, in order to effectively determine the range of powers which local governments possess in any given political system, it is usually advisable to go beyond the legal principles that inform their existence.