Finance and local freedom
The finances of local authorities have a bearing upon their administrative freedom. Two of the crucial points are: (1) their authority to raise revenue and (2) freedom of budget making. Revenue may be raised by authority of general codes or special statutes. In Great Britain and the United States, the principal financial limitations are on loans. In the former, previous administrative authority is required; in some states of the United States, limitations of total indebtedness are prescribed. German cities have wide financial freedom, though loans require higher sanction. Local budgets generally need no superior approval. Grants from the central authority and the form they take are instruments of control, regulation, and stimulation.
Organization
Local government statutes generally prescribe certain kinds of internal organization: mayor, chairman, aldermen, and committees and commissions for executive and legislative operations and management of the permanent staffs. In the U.S. system there are four conspicuous forms of organization: the town meeting, the commission system, the council and mayor system, and the city manager system. In the first, the meeting of taxpayers settles main lines of policy, chooses selectmen and officials, accepts the budget, controls administration and checks expenditures. It is unwieldy for large cities. These then may be administered by a small number of commissioners who are elected simultaneously as heads of the executive departments and are collectively the general government of the city. Elsewhere a council and some officials and the mayor are elected at the same time.
In the city manager system, an elected council appoints an executive, a career official, to energize, manage, and appoint other officials and to co-ordinate and make the budget. This official operates side by side with the elected mayor. The city manager serves the council, and the local statutes give the office a strong status, but it cannot be stronger than the authority of the council. In general, the United States system is distinguished by its use of the initiative and the referendum, especially necessary in the commission form.
In the Soviet system the local soviet elected a presidium or executive committee from its members. This body was the formulator of policy as well as being the executive; the council discussed and ratified. The presidium was assisted by experts or interested citizens co-opted onto its committees. This practice of co-option was originated in Britain, and many other countries subsequently adopted it. In the post-Soviet era, city councils, mayors, and administrators replaced former local soviets, but the amount of power wielded at the local level varied widely from region to region.
Central control
The intensity and techniques of administrative control by central authorities are indexes of the limitation of local self-government. General tutelage, characteristic of Germany, operates through continuous organized hierarchical vigilance and intervention downward from the designated central department to the lower levels of local authorities. In Great Britain statutory rules and orders made by the designated central department are parts of tutelage.
The sanction of administrative schemes is a more severe and specific form of central control. It is strong though not fully comprehensive in England. In Germany it is more comprehensive, and in Russia it is almost total through the agencies and structures already mentioned. In the U.S., higher sanction is rare; it applies to welfare and public works schemes assisted by the federal authority and occasionally to highways, education, and hospitals financially assisted by the states.
Submission of periodic reports is universal. The growth of standards, scientific definition, forms, and statistical analysis after the middle of the 19th century was a powerful instrument of centralization, since both local and central officials can be of one mind in reporting and deciding answers to governmental problems. Audit of local accounts by central officials is severe and important in England. In Germany it is hierarchical, going finally in each case to the special courts of accounts. In the U.S., though accounting and fiscal practices are in some cases state-regulated and the election of local auditors required, external and compulsory audit hardly exists.