Where shall we work? Governments, make your best pitch!
With our Alumni-meetings every week, we get to know so many opportunities how to become involved in policies with an urban lens. I mean, this is kind of the question we want to solve: Where to go after having successfully graduated in May 2023?
We not only need to decide in which field we want to work as a public servant, but also on which government level. The alumni this week gave it all at their pitches.
This week, we talked all about the three levels of government in Canada — federal, provincial, and municipal and how they are functioning, especially from an urban policy lens. I have to admit: Until this week, Canadian politics were pretty clear (although the weak and strong mayor system is just turning my head around). But this week’s class left me back being very confused. How can this government structure be effective? And what made me especially gasp was the fact that the federal and provincial governments are on the same level, there is no hierarchy between them. They are different in the responsibilities they account for.
How interested are the different levels in governing cities? Where would it be best to work? Pretty clear, the federal government actually has no real interest to engage directly with municipal governments. It is up to the provinces to manage and fund municipalities.
So, is it best to work at the provincial level if one wants to work directly on urban policies? The provinces manage and fund municipalities. And they have constitutional power over municipalities.
But what if you can do both? Irritated? Well — at least in Germany, this is possible.
Germany is a federal system with 16 provinces, three are city-states. I am from Bremen. It is one of the three city-states (Hamburg & Berlin are the other two), where municipalities are provinces at the same time. Bremen is governed by a Senate, which is elected by the Bremen parliament. This is elected in a 4-year term by all Bremen citizens. The president of the Senate is the mayor of the city and the minister of the province simultaneously. As the highest organ of the executive branch, the Senate with its departments also bears responsibility for all Bremen authorities and offices.
To me, working in Bremen in my future career has many advantages. It would give me the possibility to influence Bremen’s development while also taking greater action on a higher level if wanted. The 16 provinces get a say at federal politics through the Bundesrat. This was pretty dominant during Covid, for instance. But also, my neighbor is a great example: She works for the Bremen representation in Brussels, Belgium. Who can say that one still works for a municipality, and also represents it as a province at the EU level? I think this is pretty cool!
