How much do you know about/pay attention to your local government and politicians?

10 comments

1. The local municipalities(_Kommuner_ in Danish) and regions(_Regioner_) are the entities that, in a way, run the country. Not as in, they’re sovereign, but more like, they’re the entities which perform the day-to-day running of the state’s functions. So they’re considered kinda important, though not as important as national politics, as, in the end, national politics rank higher than local politics.

   But most people will follow along in local politics, and will know who their local politicians are, or at least the most prominent or important of them, and they will vote in local elections, though turnout _is_ lower than at the national level.

2. Personally, no, I don’t follow local politics or politicians. We just had a local election last week and the turnout in my city ranged from 32.9% to 56.3%, depending on area. The turnout at the last general election was 65% to 68% and at the last Scottish Parliament election it was 57% to 59%.

3. Local government in the UK is a mess. There’s no one system, and you get different arrangements in different areas.

   The common factor though is that local media is almost always terrible. Reporting of what the most local level of government is doing ranges from hardly anything to nothing at all, making it very difficult to judge what kind of job they are doing. Most people ignore them most of the time, except for when they screw up in some way.

   The UK had local elections in many parts of the country last week. The turnout for this election was considered reasonably high, because lots of people wanted to give the government a kicking, but it was still well below 50% on average.

4. The last time we had a local election in Moscow we did a bit of research to make sure we vote for someone who is not from the United Russia (or other ultranationalist) and who is also likely to win. Other than that, not really paying much attention to local politics.

5. A lot, they have the most influence over you daily life. School, elderly care, roads and direct welfare is handled on a local level while healthcare and public transport are regional issues so even regional politicians are worthy of ones attention.

6. Yes, they are theoretically at least very important, they have a lot of powers here.. Sicily is an autonomous region.

   There are a lot of layers of bureaucracy in Italy though… from the city, to the province, to the region and then to the national government.

   So not a lot tends to get done,no matter who is in charge.Things change very little here, from a local governmental point of view.

   Many people don’t bother to vote for any party.There is also opposition to the very high salaries of local government officials and advisors.. many of whom earn more than national politicians, while doing even less work.

7. Local politics is more important in Germany as a federally organised country than in centrally organised countries such as our neighbours on the left bank of the Rhine. Unfortunately, the interest is considerably lower than at the national level.

   In our country, this is called “local self-government”. So the cities are themselves or partly responsible for important things in daily life like schools, here I mean the buildings, public cultural facilities or sports facilities.

   A few years ago, for example, it was an election campaign issue here in Frankfurt to enable schoolchildren to visit the public swimming pools free of charge. The swimming pool visit is now free of charge for our school children.

   In my city, local politics is quite “interesting” our mayor and his ex-wife are being investigated for corruption, his ex-wife was 20 years younger than him, which mainly older fellow citizens and their media found important, contacts with very conservative Turkish organisations and a bit more, but that’s to local.

8. Local governments are fairly important in Sweden so I try to follow. We have municipalities (kommun) and regions. Municipalities do most of the day-to-day work that goes into society, they run the schools, daycares or elder homes, they have responsibility for most local infrastructure like water or heating, and the municipalities also run the difficult cases of welfare. Regions have two primary responsibilities – healthcare and public transport.

   In my municipality, I know who the main local politicians are, I know what the debates are about and I generally feel I have enough of an idea to vote.

   Regions are much more difficult. A national survey just showed that only 17% of Swedes can name any politician working in their regional government. I’d be among those 17% but I only know one name, the head of the regional council, which isn’t great knowledge. I find regional politics much harder to follow, there’s basically no coverage of any political debate in the media, and I have – with 4 months until an election – no idea what the different parties are proposing. At the municipal level, parties are publishing their political programs I can read, at the regional level it’s harder. I recently checked my region’s section on a couple of party websites but even those are focused on national politics.

9. Yeah, they are important but they are also in many ways the least flashy part of politics and hardest for me to get interested in. At least when I was younger. Now that I have a family, own a house, I feel like I am more connected to my surroundings and care more about municipality politics.

   We just had a major healthcare reform where healthcare was taken away from municipalities and given to new “wellness regions”. Hard to say how that will affect local politics in the future. The municipalities and cities are still in charge of things like schools, roads, parks, city planning, building permits etc.

   The last issue I remember getting annoyed was when I still lived in Helsinki and they had a budget surplus but still planned on cutting school budgets. That really fucking annoyed me. Thankfully they u-turned on that.

10. Local politics are becoming somewhat of a battleground for infrastructure policy. Carbrains are up in arms over every parking space lost and every bike lane added, but change is coming and its mostly the responsibility of local legislature.

    Another big issue is housing. Local municipalities usually don’t have the funds to do much about it, but they do have some power to direct private development. Its different in the city-states and the really big cities, but new state owned housing still isn’t happening. Instead, private development is often subsidized if it includes social housing, though they’re allowed to repurpose even that after a number of years. I hate thise practice and its one of the reasons I still consider voting for the socialists, despite the sectarian shitshow they’ve become.

    As for local news, you have the choice between the local newspaper and radio station. The newspapers are often of very low journalistic quality, run by boomers for boomers. The radio caters to the working age population and it is not uncommon to listen to your local station at work or during commute, though I suspect that’s becoming less of a thing every year. The staffing is often younger and more progressive, especially in university cities. Many universities have their own radio station, which means there is a constant supply of trained, young radio hosts for the commercial and public stations to tap into.