Jobban teljesít. Centralizáció és minőség
Doing Better? Centralization and Quality of Public Services

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the impact of changes in local government finance in Hungary from the citizens’ perspective in an international comparison. The 2011 Local Government Act (in effect from 2013) drastically reduced local governments’ responsibilities, centralising several municipal functions and transformed the previous income-based funding system to a ‘task-based’, expenditure-oriented regime. Our analysis shows that the new financing system did not improve public sector performance and seems to be less beneficial for the people, i.e. for the consumers of public services, still provided at the local level. By confirming this observation, the results of an international comparison prove that the level of citizens’ satisfaction with local services in Hungary is less than the European average. The article argues that such an outcome is not a ‘failure’ of the legislator in finding the appropriate instruments for the objective pursued, but the objective itself was not the improvement of quality of public services. The paper provides a comparative analysis based on empirical evidence of satisfaction surveys carried out in Hungarian and other European cities.

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