What is driving the resurgence of centralization? Lessons from Bermuda’s effort to abolish municipal elections
Michael Hooper (University of British Columbia)
Debates over decentralization date back to at least antiquity and remain some of the most contentious in urban politics. While a consensus favoring greater decentralization appeared to emerge in the late 20th century, centralizing tendencies are again on the rise. This has been observed in many contexts in both the Global North and South (Aksztejn et al. 2024), including in my home province of British Columbia, Canada. In BC, questions regarding how to effectively respond to a worsening housing crisis have led provincial officials to override municipal authorities around issues of zoning and land use. But the resurgence of centralization is perhaps most notably evidenced in Bermuda, where recent efforts have been made to entirely abolish municipal elected representation. Those efforts are the focus of my recent paper in Urban Affairs Review.
After centuries of debate, the late 20th century represented a high point for decentralization efforts. By that time, decentralization had become a “megatrend,” with a 1999 World Bank study noting that 80-100% of countries were undergoing some form of decentralization (Faguet 2021). Mirroring the sentiments of de Tocqueville two centuries earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon summarized the growing support for decentralization, writing: “Strong and effective local democratic institutions are an underlying basis for a healthy democracy. When state institutions and government are closer to the people, they are more likely to be responsive and held accountable” (United Nations 2009).
In sharp contrast to the trend towards greater support for decentralization summarized above, my paper in Urban Affairs Review focuses on Bermuda’s Municipalities Reform Bill 2019, which sought to “abolish municipal elections” (Government of Bermuda 2019). The changes proposed in the bill placed elected democratic local governance in the balance and call into question the triumphalist narrative that had held up decentralization as the natural victor in debates over scalar governance.
The paper makes a contribution by using this unique Bermudian case, notable for the extremity of the governance changes it proposes, as a lens for better understanding the perspectives of actors in debates over decentralization. While heightened in Bermuda, these same tensions lie under the surface of many, if not most, urban planning and policy debates worldwide. The paper draws on detailed interviews with individuals familiar with the Municipalities Reform Bill 2019 and its potential impacts.
The results show low enthusiasm, both on the part of most interviewees and the wider public, for Bermuda’s proposed changes to urban governance. The interviews reveal four dominant themes, each centered on critical differences of opinion between supporters and opponents of the reform bill. These differences relate to understandings of “efficiency,” the value of local autonomy, how best to respond to inequalities in governance, and whether incremental revisions to democratic institutions are preferable to more sweeping change.
Perhaps surprisingly, proponents and opponents of the reform bill both drew on the concept of “efficiency” to support their arguments. The paper discusses how this seeming contradiction can be understood in light of differences between allocative and productive efficiency. Allocative efficiency refers to the use of resources in ways that maximize community welfare, whereas productive efficiency refers to efforts to maximize outcomes for a given cost. The fact that the broad concept of efficiency includes these competing ideas helps explain how both sides of the urban reform debate were able to marshal the concept of “efficiency” in support of their positions. That both sides were able to deploy seemingly similar arguments, drawing on the capaciousness of the concept of efficiency, only added to the disorientation many members of the wider public felt when encountering debates over the reform bill.
Proponents and opponents of the bill held very different perspectives on the value of local autonomy, with proponents believing that expert, top-down decision making should be preferred over slower, more deliberative forms of governance. In contrast, bill opponents argued that the purported weaknesses ascribed to local democracy, which resulted from debate, contestation and dialogue, were actually its strengths, because these features serve as a check on bad decisions, allow better targeting of programs and services, and act as a guardrail against “tyranny.” The fact that many bill opponents spoke of tyranny shows how consistent debates over centralization have been, with their views echoing the arguments of de Tocqueville and Montesquieu and reaching back to classical rationales for independent local institutions and to the ancient prerogatives of guilds and towns as guarantors of local rights.
Reflecting their support for more rapid, expert-led decision making, bill proponents were comfortable with radical changes to institutions, even when they were unsure of the rationale for these changes or their consequences. In contrast, bill opponents preferred careful and iterative changes to institutions. Interviewees’ different perspectives on change can be understood in terms of risk aversion. Bill proponents and their supporters often felt excluded from the successes of Bermuda’s municipalities, drawing heavily on an anti-elite framing in their messaging, and saw the municipalities’ successes as losses to them. As expected by prospect theory, this meant that they were willing to take great risks to avoid such losses. Bill opponents and their supporters, who did not see themselves as facing losses and often felt that the country benefited from the success of its municipalities, were much more risk averse when it came to institutional change. This suggests that municipalities, like those studied in Bermuda, are likely to face a continuing threat from centralizing forces as long as people, and particularly those with political power, feel excluded from cities’ successes.
One particularly notable insight from the paper is that interviewees were generally unaware that other places have experienced, or are experiencing, similar debates over decentralization and urban governance. As a result, they often felt that they had to develop arguments for and against decentralization/centralization from first principles. They noted that the complexity of this undertaking meant that many people avoided engaging in discussions of the reform bill. This highlights a need to situate contemporary deliberations over decentralization in a broader contextual framework, highlighting that these debates have happened across many time periods and in many other places. Situating debates over decentralization in this way would lower the barriers to entry into these discussions and likely broaden the range of voices heard and perspectives offered.
Finally, the case of Bermuda provides a window onto progressive centralization efforts. As with moves towards greater centralization in other places, like British Columbia, the Bermuda case draws attention to the growing advocacy for centralization by progressive politicians and governments. Particularly when combined with anti-elite arguments, this can prove disorienting to members of the public who have, in past decades, been more used to progressive arguments for decentralization. Ultimately, the Bermuda case highlights how efforts towards centralization are on the rise and how these efforts may be led by, on first glance, surprising actors. It also highlights that the late 20th century equilibrium favoring local democratic governance is less stable than many assumed and that the values at the heart of urban democracy – including citizen participation, independent local institutions and deliberation – will have to be actively nurtured if they are to be sustained in the face of growing arguments that they are “inefficient.”
References
Aksztejn, Wirginia, Marta Lackowska, Joanna Krukowska, and Lukasz Mikuła. 2024. “The Multiple Faces of Recentralization: A Typology of Central-Local Interactions.” Journal of Urban Affairs 46 (7): 1329-1349.
Faguet, Jean-Paul. 2021. “Understanding Decentralization: Theory, Evidence and Method, With a Focus on Least-Developed Countries.” LSE International Development Working Paper Series, No. 21-203. London School of Economics.
Finighan, Gareth. 2022. “Court of Appeal Upholds Abolition of Municipalities.” The Royal Gazette, March 19.
Government of Bermuda. 2019. “A Bill Entitled Municipalities Reform Act 2019.” Bermuda Parliament.
https://parliament.bm/admin/uploads/bill/923b4aef47341a3a7f3250dff878a223.pdf
United Nations. 2009. “Guidance Note of the Secretary General on Democracy.” United Nations Digital Library.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/677649
Michael Hooper is an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on urban planning, policy and politics. He previously worked for the United Nations Development Programme in East Africa and New York and taught at Harvard University.