Volltext: Very small countries: economic success against all odds

In brief, VSC are so small that an additional administrative or jurisdic- tional level is simply not necessary. This last argument does not apply to island VSC which consist only of a few islands that constitute a natural division in counties or parishes. Contrary to the theoretical notion, many VSC have the same num- ber of governmental or administrative levels as most larger countries. The evidence from Table 4.7 is, however, not absolutely clear, because sometimes communes or municipalities are counted as a separate level in the statistics and sometimes not. Nevertheless, it can easily be verified from Table 4.7 that most of the selected VSC have two governmental or administrative levels, even if communes and municipalities are left aside. Thus, most of the countries listed have three administrative levels: the fed eral level, parishes (districts, counties, states etc.) and communes or municipalities. Again, European, landlocked VSC differ from others, also with re- gard to the extent of their federalism. Liechtenstein, Malta and San Marino restrict themselves to a national level and a communal or muni- cipality level. Luxembourg does exhibit three administrative levels, but the medium level is constituted by only three districts. Andorra is not very different from other VSC with regard to federalism. Note finally that the number of administrative levels in VSC seems to be too high in general, but this topic can only be analyzed thorough- ly when tasks, financing and expenditure of the levels are considered in greater detail. The latter is however not possible due to severe data con- straints. 4.3.7 Theoretical expectations versus reality – foreign policy The next important part of the public sector that we consider is foreign policy and representation in international organizations. Given the ef- forts of EU member countries to close their embassies and create com- mon EU representations, it is obvious that foreign policy and represen- tation is an expensive task, especially for VSC, associated with consider- able economies of scale. Note further that membership in international organizations often means not only having permanent representation, but sometimes also implementing legislative decisions of the organiza - tion and providing data, reports etc. The deeper the integration and the 104 
Very small countries: organizational choice and international outsourcing
	        

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