Local Self-Government: Nordic, Indian and Pakistani Lessons

Local self government is where democracy touches daily life: clean water, street lighting, schools, sanitation and the safety of a neighbourhood. Mian Ashiq Hussain argues in How Constitutions Flourish or Fail that nations which let communities run their own affairs, with their own money and secure tenure, build states that last. Those that treat local bodies as outposts of the provincial or federal bureaucracy keep returning to colonial habits.

His comparison is direct. Sweden and Finland write the self-government of municipalities into their constitutions and back it with the right to tax. India amended its constitution to entrench village and town councils but left delivery to its states. Pakistan added a local government clause in 2010, yet its local bodies are still dissolved, suspended or starved of funds. This essay sets out what he thinks separates the systems that endure from those that keep collapsing.

What is local self-government?

Local self-government means elected councils that decide local affairs, raise their own revenue and answer to local voters rather than to officials above them. The author draws a sharp line between devolution, where power belongs to the community by right, and delegation, where a higher government lends authority it can take back at will.

He finds the roots of self-rule in the city-states of ancient Greece and, above all, in the American colonies. Settlers governed themselves through town meetings and assemblies long before the United States existed, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, drawn up in 1639, are often described as the first written constitution a Western community framed for itself. The federal Constitution of 1787, in his reading, was the culmination of those bottom-up experiments. Even today, many American states protect the rights of their cities and counties, although some apply Dillon's Rule, under which municipalities hold only the powers their state grants. The lesson he draws is that strong nations are usually built upwards from strong communities, not downwards from a capital.

How do Sweden and Finland empower municipalities?

Both countries guarantee local self-government in their constitutions. The author points out that their municipalities are governed by elected councils, carry wide responsibility for public services, may levy their own taxes and are protected from arbitrary central interference, which is why he regards them as the best local government systems anywhere.

Finland's constitution states that municipal administration rests on the self-government of residents and confirms the right to a municipal tax. Its municipalities are the main providers of public services, and their councils answer to voters alone. Sweden's constitution gives decision-making power to elected local assemblies, makes self-government the operating principle, allows restrictions on local autonomy only where they are proportionate to their purpose, confers the power to tax, and lets the law require richer authorities to help poorer ones reach an equal financial base.

The author also credits the political culture around the law. In Sweden and Finland, a change of government cannot cancel the constitutional mandate of local councils, so projects are not scrapped each time power changes hands. Proportional representation encourages coalition and consensus, and local, regional and national actors work as a network rather than a chain of command. He argues that self-reliant communities organised this way proved more resilient during the Covid-19 pandemic than rigid, centralised state structures.

What did India's panchayati raj amendments change?

In 1992, India amended its constitution to add chapters on panchayats in rural areas and municipalities in towns. The author welcomes this as a real step forward, but he notes that the amendments left implementation to the states, and a wide gap opened between the promise on paper and practice on the ground.

He adds two observations. Seats reserved for disadvantaged groups were often captured by the privileged, so the reforms did not reach the people they were designed to empower. And India's highly trained, integrated civil service, inherited from colonial times, tends to crowd out political institutions at the local level. Citing a well-known essay on why India has never produced its own Silicon Valley, he suggests that a centralised administrative culture holds back the local initiative on which innovation depends. India's constitution, unlike Pakistan's, at least requires each state to set up a finance commission to review the finances of local bodies, a point he raises in The 18th Amendment in Pakistan: Devolution Compared.

What does Pakistan's Article 140A promise?

Article 140A, added by the 18th Amendment in 2010, obliges every province to pass a law creating local governments and to hand political, administrative and financial authority to elected local representatives. The author calls it a placebo rather than a game changer, because it gives local governments no taxing power of their own.

Set beside the Swedish and Finnish provisions, he finds the clause silent on everything that makes local autonomy real. It does not grant a tax base, protect councils from dissolution, guarantee their term or define their functions. Nor does Pakistan's constitution require a provincial finance commission to share revenue with local bodies. In practice, he observes, provinces read the clause as permission to delegate rather than an obligation to devolve. Meanwhile, development funds routed through members of the national and provincial assemblies drain resources that should belong to local councils and pull legislators into municipal work, distorting both tiers.

Why do Pakistan's local governments keep being dissolved?

Because, in the author's view, they were never designed to be independent. From colonial village schemes to military-era ordinances and recent provincial acts, Pakistan's local bodies have been creatures of higher governments, created and dismantled to suit whoever holds power, rather than institutions owned by the communities they serve.

He traces the pattern through history. Colonial village panchayats were government organisations, not representatives of villagers. Bengal's 1885 local self-government law was a step forward, but autonomy never took root. After independence, the 1973 constitution placed local government among non-enforceable principles of policy, and its founders held no local elections during their tenure. Military regimes introduced local systems in 1959, 1979 and 2001, each with features the author examines, from the basic democracies scheme to the citizen community boards of the 2001 ordinance, but civilian governments usually dismantled them.

The provincial laws of 2013 and after did not break the cycle. Elections were delayed, seats were left vacant, and parallel provincial companies and authorities took over functions such as water, sanitation and urban development. The author quotes concerns that Karachi's metropolitan corporation was given fewer powers than smaller bodies and that a properly designed system there could have eased demands for a separate province. He also links weak local government to the urban-rural divide that feeds linguistic, ethnic and regional grievances. The roots of this centralising habit are explored further in From Bureaucratic Rule to Self-Governance.

What makes local self-government last?

The author's answer is constitutional protection combined with financial self-reliance. Local councils need their own taxing powers, a fixed and protected term, clearly assigned functions and freedom from provincial dissolution. Above all, voters must be able to hold them to account at regular, predictable elections.

His proposals, set out in outline here, include:

• giving local governments the power to levy and collect taxes, so they can fund their own plans and services;
• making local councils standing bodies with a shorter fixed term, which he believes would sharpen electoral accountability;
• prohibiting provincial governments from dissolving elected councils;
• holding fresh elections some months before a council's term ends, so there is no gap and new members can be trained;
• assigning clear functions, including reasonable police powers within the council's area and community-based policing; and
• creating a modern academy to build the skills of local governments.

He argues elsewhere that taxes on farm income would be collected more fairly by village councils that spend them locally, a theme taken up in Does Trickle-Down Economics Work? For the wider relationship between the centre, provinces and local bodies, see Fiscal Federalism: Lessons from Five Federations and Provincial Autonomy in Pakistan: Beyond Legislative Lists.

Frequently asked questions

What is local self-government?

It is a system in which elected local councils manage community affairs, raise their own revenue and answer to local voters. The author distinguishes it from delegation, where a higher government lends powers to local bodies and can withdraw them whenever it chooses.

What are the main features of strong local self-government?

Drawing on Sweden and Finland, the author lists constitutional protection, elected councils, their own power to tax, fair equalisation between richer and poorer areas, limits on central interference, and a political culture of consensus that keeps services running when governments change.

What is Article 140A of Pakistan's constitution?

Article 140A, inserted in 2010, tells each province to set up elected local governments by law and pass real political, administrative and financial authority down to them. The author regards it as largely symbolic, because it confers no taxing powers and does not protect councils from dissolution.

What is panchayati raj?

It is India's system of elected village councils, given constitutional status by amendments passed in 1992 alongside provisions for municipalities. The author sees it as a meaningful reform whose effect was weakened because implementation was left to the states and reserved seats were often captured.

Read the full argument

The book traces local government from colonial India to the present, compares it with leading democracies, and explains why self-rule is the foundation of a durable constitution. Read the full chapter in How Constitutions Flourish or Fail, and explore more of Mian Ashiq Hussain's essays.