Organisational autonomy and the politico-administrative configurations of Swiss municipalities

Recent decentralisation trends across the world are more and more commonplace, which not only increases the potential power and importance of local governments, but it can also impact the relationship between the different branches of said local authorities. This paper will examine how organisational autonomy acts on the mutual political influence between the executive and administrative branches of local government. According to the Local Autonomy Index (LAI 2.0, Ladner et al., 2021), organisational autonomy is defined as “the extent to which local government is free to decide about its own organisation and electoral system.” This may include how the municipal council is elected and whether local government may decide elements of its core political system, but also the freedom of local authorities to hire their own staff and fix their salaries, to choose the status of staff and its overarching organisational structure. The case of Switzerland is an interesting one to study because of its high number of municipalities (2136) wielding a high degree of organisational autonomy. By cross-examining data from the LAI 2.0 and data from the most recent Swiss Municipal Monitoring survey, we will be able to look into several elements pertaining to politico-administrative configurations at the local level, one of them being if high organisation autonomy leads to higher politicisation of municipal secretaries and an increased political influence on the other branches of local government. This research offers a unique opportunity to test the linkages between organisational autonomy and the politicisation of local bureaucracy, further contributing to the literature on the perennial politico-administrative dichotomy debate. Furthermore, it provides innovative and up-to-date insights on the relationship between different local governing spheres in a highly autonomous federalist context.