The World: Scotland is not alone in asking important questions about local government, but our starting position is unusual compared to global norms.
Scotland is not alone in asking important questions about local government, but our starting position is unusual compared to global norms.
Despite the wide range of alternative systems in place around the world, key similarities emerge when different governmental frameworks are compared - particularly with regards to the size, power, and remit of administrative units.
With an average population of slightly fewer than 160,000 people per local authority, Scotland benefits from neither the micromanagement that is possible under the tiniest administrations, nor the efficiency and economies of scale afforded by larger groupings.
Compared to their international counterparts, Scotland's local authorities could be seen as awkwardly middling in size.
In France, authority is divided between 96 "departements", each covering a population of just over half a million people - approximately the scale on which Scotland would operate under a 10-council system.
Existing within 22 larger regions, the "departements" are responsible for social housing, transport, and some public schools, similar to their smaller counterparts in Scotland. French government is further broken down to a municipal level, however, comprising more than 36,000 distinct bodies with direct jurisdiction over towns and villages.
In Switzerland, too, the administrative units are larger than the Scottish hierarchy allows at present. Split into 26 cantons, Switzerland has districts of nearly 300,000 people but gives far more individual authority to its component parts. Swiss cantons retain powers over taxation, law enforcement, and healthcare, as well as education and public services of the type run by Scottish councils.
Like many other countries around the world, the United States also delegates powers of taxation from national government to state and county authorities. Joined within a federal framework, the degree of freedom enjoyed by each state is on a par with those in other federal countries, such as Germany and India. Some laws vary from state to state, with cross-country discrepancies comparable in scale to the differing laws in Scotland and England.
However, authority in the US is also enacted at far more local levels than in Scotland, with units ranging in size from the smallest villages to New York City, which has more than eight million inhabitants. The US system, if applied in Scotland, would see towns the size of Paisley or Falkirk electing mayors.
Dr Tom Lundberg, an expert in local government at Glasgow University, said the majority of people were unaware of Scotland's unusual status in the global scale. He said: "People don't realise Britain is a bit of an outlier' compared to other democratic countries. Scotland is a small country, but the 32 local authorities cover relatively wide areas, and the number of councillors is relatively high too.
"Local authorities in Britain are very weak compared to their counterparts in other democratic countries, mainly down to their inability to raise money. In the US, local government can do things to raise revenue, for instance by putting a surcharge on sales tax. Most cities or councils can collect revenue at the point of sale, and property tax is used too."
The trend towards larger, stronger administrative districts is particularly evident in Italy, where there have been calls for a federal system to give each of the country's 20 regions more internal power. Despite similar plans being rejected in 2004, proposals will be debated in Italy's parliament this year.
Closer to home, recent developments in England and Wales have cast issues of local governance into still more uncertain territory. While the introduction of an elected mayor in London has been hailed largely as a success, in the shape of Ken Livingstone Boris Johnson, and the system has proved less popular in other areas of the country.
Citizens of Stoke-on-Trent voted by a comfortable margin to scrap their elected mayor in October last year, suggesting that an American-style system may sit uncomfortably with British voters.
In Northern Ireland, the population of around 1.75 million people is governed by 26 small local authorities, though the individual councils have only a fraction of the power of even their Scottish counterparts.
Administrative bodies in Northern Ireland have no control over education, planning permission or local economic development.
