4.3.2. Recentralization

In order to have the autonomy to develop policies that make sense for their own territory, issues and populations, cities need sufficient resources to fund and operationalize multilevel governance. shocks, such as pandemics, should be taken into account by federal and unitary states alike, in both developed and developing countries, because of their closer proximity to affected populations and greater potential to deliver fast, flexible responses to emergencies as they evolve. In this context, an enhanced allocation of resources to local governments and an improved top-down exchange of information should be promoted: in fact, in order to have the autonomy to develop policies that make sense for their own territory, issues and populations, cities need sufficient resources to fund and operationalize multilevel governance.

Nevertheless, while regional, metropolitan and local governments are best informed of local circumstances and well positioned to implement measures at the local level, national governments are often best placed to oversee the design and implementation of coherent and equitable action plans. A coordinated approach could combine these positive aspects and lead to the achievement of better results.

4.3.2. Recentralization

While decentralization has its advantages (such as allowing context-specific measures and promoting flexibility), in some contexts a more centralized approach may be more appropriate: a concerted national government response may reduce local powers in order to prevent fragmentation of actions and reduce potential inequalities in resource provision, thus supporting a rapid and uniform response across the country. A good example would be where the national government takes up the responsibility to purchase medical supplies and distributes them to local authorities based on the severity of the situation to prevent competition over limited stocks. In the context of the pandemic, cities and subnational authorities have also experienced a reduction of powers and responsibilities through reclamation by the national government.

In federal and quasi-federal states, recentralization occurred at two levels: transfers of power from the subnational to the national, and from the city to the subnational. In India, for instance, while a number of states invoked the Epidemic Diseases Act to introduce infection control measures within their jurisdictions, the national government subsequently used the Disaster Management Act to impose a nationwide lockdown, thus bypassing the authority of states.111 Some cities in the US also saw their powers pre-empted by subnational authorities: for example, the governor of Georgia issued an Executive Order that effectively annulled any prior local “stay at home” mandates, reopening public spaces such as beaches that had been closed by local authorities, with similar actions in Florida, Mississippi and Arkansas.112

It was not only federal states that saw some recentralization of powers and responsibilities: various unitary states also experienced a transfer of powers. Colombia issued a decree which stated that “instructions, acts and orders of the President of the Republic in matters of public order, within the framework of the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus will be applied immediately and preferentially on the provisions of governors and mayors”.113 This effectively meant that subnational governments and city authorities were restricted in their exercise of powers as they could be overruled or superseded by the President. In Norway, although public hospitals are owned by the national government, they are usually run by regional health enterprises with a significant degree of autonomy. The pandemic, however, compelled the Ministry of Health to step in and exercise a greater degree of control over the health facilities.114

Accordingly, both federal states and unitary states saw a transfer of powers from higher to lower levels of government, as well as reclamation of powers by the national government. The system of government, therefore, appears not to be a decisive factor in promoting delegation or recentralization. However, political relationships and affiliations between the various levels of government seem to have played a part in the extent to which local

US Army National Guards hand out food and other essentials to people in need during the COVID-19 pandemic, Queens borough, New York City. © Shutterstock

authorities were allowed to act independently. In the US, for example, most state-wide orders pre-empting local authority actions were from Republican-leaning states against local authorities controlled by the Democratic Party.115 Similar political divisions between different levels of government were also evident in other countries where control over the direction and management of the pandemic response were highly contested, such as the October 2020 confrontation between Spanish national government and regional authorities in Madrid over the imposition of a local lockdown there. The complex forces of negotiation, cooperation and conflict taking place within state power structures across the world, while often rooted in long-standing relationships between cities, regions and central governments, have been accelerated by the onset of COVID-19 and continue to evolve alongside the progress of the pandemic. At this point, it is not easy to predict what will happen once the health crisis is over and whether the new balances will be permanent or just temporary interventions. Legal frameworks in many countries today do not allow subnational governments to take on debt. Lack of creditworthiness at the local level is the major demand-side constraint to optimal decentralization, while shallow financial markets constitute a major supplyside constraint