TERRITORIAL PACTS IN EUROPE IN A MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE PERSPECTIVE

PROF. IDA REGALIA The following observations draw on the results of a study by the present writer on Territorial Pacts and Local Level Concertation in Europe. A Multi-Level Governance Perspective, conducted within the NEWGOV Project of the VI Framework Programme (Regalia 2007). Not only because I am not lawyer, but especially because of the structural nature of territorial pacts, the focus in what follows will be on facts more than formal norms.

Preliminary observations In general, Territorial Pacts (TPs) can be seen as modes of governance based on negotiated and/or deliberative methods within large, inclusive partnerships, open to the participation of all relevant, public and private, actors, at the local-territorial level. They consist of concerted mechanisms with which to address complex and critical issues in the economic and political arena and which act as alternatives to both authoritative-hierarchical regulation by the state and to impersonal regulation by the market. As such, they require little formal ex ante regulation. Rather, they are driven by an ongoing decision-making process constantly constructed and modified by the participants. The aims are twofold: a) to mobilize the joint strategic capacity of local political, economical and social forces around a shared project of territorial development and agreed solutions to critical development problems; b) to involve the recipients of economic and social policies from the outset, during the design phase of policies, in order to forestall objections and vetoes in the implementation phase. Facilitating factors include: a) the EUs increasing emphasis on the partnership method as a requisite for access to structural funds; b) the reduced regulatory and redistributive capacities of national governments; c) processes of administrative decentralisation that have recently affected the majority of EU countries; d) the failure of previous forms of development policy based on top-down intervention by the state; e) the weakening of the national-level functional interest organizations; f) opportunities, in a period of increasing exposure to international competition, to obtain greater benefits from policies shaped according to the differentiated needs of local areas and societies and designed to increase their specific local competitive advantage. Compared with solutions to problems concerted at national level (social pacts) or within workplaces (e.g. in-company pacts for employment and competitiveness), TPs have diverse features: a) a logic of action which in general is more explicitly oriented to the coordination of initiatives, the construction and consolidation of networks, and problem solving; b) involvement

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Prof. Ida Regalia

of a potentially very broad and heterogeneous array of actors; c) the indeterminacy of the actions ambit of reference, which is constantly defined and redefined (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. - Characteristics of economic-social concertation according to the level Logic and type of action Actors The actions ambit of reference Definite and stable

Negotiations with a view to reaching agreement on matters of general importance (social pacts) Local/territorial Concerted initiatives, based on contractual level and/or deliberative methods, to address critical issues and/or to implement policies and programmes at local-scale Company level Joint management of critical problems by means of formal or informal agreements (integrative collective bargaining) National level

Limited, usually three: government and interest organizations (social partners) Numerous, public and private (to be defined)

To be defined

The two private IR actors (management and workers representatives)

Definite (may vary within the company)

TPs can be distinguished according to numerous dimensions. Of particular importance are: a) the origin of the concerted initiatives whether they are predominantly exogenous and top-down or endogenous and bottom-up in their origin; b) the predominant reason for resorting to TPs whether they are predominantly a reaction to government (and market) failures, or an action positively oriented to grasping new opportunities. On combining these two dimensions, we obtain four analytically distinct logics or patterns of TPs as summarized in the Figure 2: Figure 2 Patterns of local concertation according to the predominant motivation and the origin of the initiatives Top-down 1 Reaction failures to Problem-solving coalitions empowered by higher-level Bottom-up 3 Partnerships for experimentation with concerted solutions to

Prof. Ida Regalia

institutions

critical problems

Seizing opportunities

Partnerships as formalised forms of access to resources and opportunities 2

Partnerships for innovation in local policy-making and policyimplementation 4

Lessons to be drawn from a case of particular importance: the Territorial Employment Pacts (TEPs) of EU origin A European territorial employment pact is an agreement among several public and private actors, reached according to a EU regulation, to undertake joint initiatives to improve the employment situation and development of the territory in which they operate and have access to European resources. It pertains to the lower-left quadrant of the above scheme (see Figure 2). TEPs are a case of deliberate institutional innovation and construction of a uniform model, initially of experimental type, for concerted action, in which local partnerships devised as both a method to implement social and development policies and as a criterion for access to structural funds are intentionally created/supported from the top-down. One may thus enquire as to whether this strategy has helped harmonize forms of in-the-field intervention. In light of the facts, however, the answer certainly does not seem to be positive. Rather, according to the available data (Staniscia 2003; Regalia 2007), two different analytical situations can be distinguished: a) at the local level, there already exist projects at a relatively advanced stage of development, which can be started up in concerted manner, as well as local coalitions even at an embryonic stage able to pursue them. In this case, the possibility of accessing European resources prompts implementation of some aspects of the projects, while at the same time strengthening or institutionalizing the already-existing local partnership. This is a situation which often characterizes TEPs in North European countries; b) no explicit project has yet emerged at local level, nor has a robust partnership developed (although there exist some forms of local leadership or political entrepreneurship, without which any concerted initiative would be impossible). In this case, the opportunity to access European resources is the immediate cause of the endeavour to devise projects and to create a local coalition, with an inversion of the expected relationship between means and ends. However, this is not to say that pacts of the former type will be systematically more successful than those of the latter. Also in the latter case, learning processes may be engendered which will 3

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lead beyond a purely acquisitive-opportunistic logic. Overall, however, it is most likely that the resources made available by programmes will be allocated more according to the ability of local communities or, better, local leaderships to mobilize themselves than according to a classification drawn up on the basis of needs. In other terms, in the case of TEPs, it seems that a particularly important role is played by the initial local endowment of social capital and/or political-institutional leadership and/or technical-planning expertise. We may therefore expect that pacts will be created mainly in already dynamic areas, at least in terms of local organizational resources. And this is a first paradox. More generally, the effectiveness of concerted programmes and their importance, in terms of social and political visibility, tend to vary, although differently, according to the characteristics of policies for employment and development of individual countries and the ways in which they are regulated at the moment when the specific programme is introduced: the better such policies are performing and the better they are regulated, the more TEPs may achieve the results foreseen, but on the other hand, with little or no visibility and even having to struggle to find a recognised role (Ecotec 2002). And vice versa. Which is a second paradox. Finally to be pointed out is that, where comparisons have been made between TEPs and similar territorial pacts promoted by national governments, as in Italy and Spain (Cersosimo and Wolleb 2001; Lope and Gibert 2006), territorial pacts of EU origin are generally considered to produce more satisfactory results, given that they have better endowments of procedural resources and technical assistance.

In conclusion To sum up, territorial pacts are substantially processes of governance based on the logic of wide, inclusive partnerships. As a matter of fact, the potentials, as well as the limits, of such pacts are rooted in the notable plasticity which characterizes this mode of governance. Plasticity as regards the actors involved, as regards the actions ambit of reference, as regards the issues addressed, which may be highly diverse, but with a preference for those of regulatory or acquisitive rather than redistributive nature, as regards the institutional form they can assume (temporary coalition, stable institutionalized forum for discussion and information exchange, stable partnership tasked with devising/implementing policies). Because of these characteristics territorial pacts are particularly appropriate for experimenting with new procedures/approaches to resolve new critical issues, for innovating outmoded routines, for remedying some failures in the methods traditionally used to deal with economic and social problems, for grasping to the advantage of local societies new opportunities which may arise externally and internally to them.

Prof. Ida Regalia

Hence, territorial pacts are valuable instruments, with a great deal of potential. Yet they require initial conditions which are not necessarily available immediately, and probably not where they are most necessary. Indeed, the real meaning of local partnership schemes cannot be appreciated externally to the specific institutional contexts in which they take place. On the contrary, there appears to be a sort of trade-off between the likelihood that these forms of decentralized intervention will develop and be successful and the extent to which public policies operate efficiently. Put otherwise, these solutions should not be viewed as intrinsically good in themselves. In many cases they are simply not necessary. They may be so closely in line with the consolidated tradition of the public policies of a given country that they simply cannot be distinguished from the standard practices of good administration, so that they seem of little importance. On the other hand, the realization of local concertation schemes requires (social, organizational, etc.) factors which are not always already in place, so that these schemes may therefore simply fail. Between the risks of irrelevance or of failure, the cases that may be most successful in which concerted initiatives can have at the same time a greater role and visibility seem to be those that are intermediary. That is, those in which on the one hand there is much to improve in the workings of the institutions (and the pacts can therefore perform the beneficial role of partially substituting for or integrating the shortcomings of public policies), and on the other, the preconditions are in place for a mobilization of local actors.

Some concluding remarks concerning the debate and action I have said that, in themselves, these forms of governance based on wide, inclusive partnerships at local level do not require much regulation. Moreover, it is highly likely that the existence of stringent norms, established a priori in rigidly uniform manner, has the effect of curbing their potential. We have also seen, however, that left to themselves these pacts tend to flourish in areas already endowed with resources, while they tend to fail in more marginal, deprivileged ones that is to say, in precisely those territories were they are the most necessary. This again raises the question some kind of formal regulation should be introduced in order to encourage their development where this is most difficult, but without dampening their particular potential. Moreover, it was noted earlier that European TEPs have often been praised because of their richer endowment of procedural resources, tight controls, technical assistance with respect to similar pacts promoted by national governments or of autonomous origin, which left more room to spontaneous unconstrained initiative. In other words, we might say that TEPs provided local partnerships with the beneficial constraints (Streeck 1997) all the more necessary in local situations where the initial conditions required for the successful development of participative forms of governance are not immediately available.

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It is likely that some sort of adequate i.e. at the same time sufficiently soft and sufficiently rigorous regulation may furnish the appropriate, motivating guidelines, may establish effective rules of conduct and criteria for access to funds, may define a not too stringent framework for action able to break the vicious circle whereby those that would gain more from a mobilization of local resources are those less likely to do so, or to be successful in trying to do so. This opens the way to a specific role for the Committee of the Regions, which could assume responsibility for activating experimental schemes at the regional/local level in cases where they are less likely to emerge spontaneously. This would be a role much more active and challenging than the traditional one based on exploitation of the best practices that come about on the initiative of resourceful actors, and on the process of diffusion through learning which this is expected to generate. In this case, by contrast, the Committee of the Regions would be expected to give help and methodological assistance in cases where there is scant capacity to take the initiative, to subsequently monitor the effects, and then furnish input for the creation of a more general normative framework.

References: Cersosimo, D. and Wolleb, G. (2001) Politiche pubbliche e contesti istituzionali. Una ricerca sui patti territoriali. In Stato e Mercato, 63, 369-412. Ecotec Research & Consulting Limited (2002) Final Report to Directorate General Regional Policy, Annex III: National and Case Study Reports. Lope, A. and Gibert, F. (2006) Catalonia: the difficulty of transferring locally concerted solutions into firms. In I. Regalia (ed) Regulating New Forms of Employment. Local experiments and social innovation in Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 173-201. Regalia, I. (2007) Territorial Pacts and Local Level Concertation in Europe. A Multi-Level Governance Perspective, NEWGOV-New Modes of Governance Report, 18b/D05b, EUI, August 2007. Staniscia, B. (2003) LEuropa dello sviluppo locale. I patti territoriali per loccupazione in una prospettiva comparata. Rome: Donzelli. Streeck, W. (1997) Beneficial Constraints: On the Economic Limits of Rational Voluntarism. In J. R. Hollingsworth and R. Boyer (eds.) Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 197-219.