Regional Authority

A regional authority is an administrative body responsible for governing a geographically defined region. Its responsibilities may be general or limited to a given sector of activity, and its autonomy may range from almost autonomous to directly controlled by an upper level of government.

A renewed interest in the regionalization of the state's responsibilities in the 1980s and 1990s at the international level spurred the creation of many new regional authorities and the reinforcement of existing bodies' functions.

Regional authorities are generally established as intermediary governance bodies between local institutions or service providers on the one hand and national or provincial governments on the other. Regional authorities' existence can be explained according to the subsidiarity principle regarding the optimal equilibrium between centralization and decentralization of governance functions. The subsidiarity principle states that each governing task must be carried out at a level that is close enough to production or delivery levels to have a good understanding of local conditions, while controlling enough resources to maintain integration of services, coordination, and economies of scale. The creation of regional authorities may thus constitute a mix of centralization and decentralization, as power and responsibilities are transferred downward from central governments to the regional level, while functions previously performed by local authorities or organizations are shifted to the regional level.

While regional authorities can have broad responsibilities, they are often in charge of sector-specific responsibilities (for example, in health care or education). As intermediate governance bodies, regional authorities' autonomy is never absolute. They can only exist in equilibrium between complete centralization and total decentralization. In a totally centralized governance system, regional authorities would disappear, while they would become privatized organizations—or, at an extreme, autonomous states—in an absolutely decentralized system. In between, their autonomy can range from a simple deconcentration of an uppergovernance-level's powers to a complete devolution. In a deconcentration scheme, the regional authority is limited to the regional implementation of centrally established policies and decisions without significant decision-making autonomy. In a delegation scheme, the upper level of government transfers some decisional [Page 806]power to the regional authority. These powers are usually sector specific and limited to a capacity to define the modalities by which policy objectives set by the upper level will be met at the regional level. Both in deconcentration and delegation, regional authorities' legitimacy is mainly, if not entirely, derived from the upper level of governance's own legitimacy. Last, in devolution schemes, the regional authority has its own electoral system and the capacity to levy its own taxes: Thus, it can rely partially on autonomous sources of legitimacy. Devolved bodies are often in charge of multisectoral responsibilities.

At the administrative level, regional authorities are generally accountable to a board of directors. Regional boards can be appointed, elected, or a mix of both. Regional authorities having a devolved status are expected to have a mainly elected board, while deconcentrated regional authorities are expected to have no boards at all or a centrally appointed one.