Territorial consolidation reforms in Europe
By: edited by Paweł Swianiewicz
Contributors: Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative
Publisher: Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative, Open Society Institute
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Budapest, Hungary
Language: eng
Number of pages: 341
ISBN-13: 9789639719163
Subjects: Local government; Municipal government; Administrative and political divisions; Public administration; Politics and government; Central-local government relations; Intergovernmental cooperation; Lokalverwaltung; Mitteleuropa; Verwaltung; Europäische Union; Politik
Description: Bringing together scholars from across Europe, Territorial Consolidation Reforms presents the struggles by politicians, technocrats, and the public to agree on the optimum size of government that balances good performance with good services, and the relevant arguments for the fragmentation, consolidation, or cooperation of government.<BR><BR>Edited and introduced by Pawel Swianiewicz, this 15-chapter anthology presents the major reforms of municipal government that were implemented in Europe in the last decade. Covering much of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as detailing the experiences of "old" EU member states of Denmark, England, France, Germany, and Greece, this book investigates how territorial reforms have impacted local public affairs, public service delivery, local identity and autonomy, and what political and public debates have accompanied or been responsible for success or failure.<BR><BR>The cases in this anthology answer how government did or did not respond to the need to provide efficient services in concert with demands for local autonomy and needed territorial reforms. Chapters on the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary describe a top-down approach to the stimulation of intermunicipal cooperation in service provision as an answer to fragmentation. Chapters on Armenia and Ukraine summarize the debate, and the decision on which has been postponed. In the final pages of Territorial Consolidation Reforms in Europe, the distinguished scholar Robert Hertzog writes about voluntary cooperation of municipal governments as an alternative, while Kurt Houlberg looks further into the relationship between the population size of municipal government and various dimensions of its institutinal performance. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Territorial fragmentation as a problem, consolidation as a solution? / Paweł Swianiewicz; title: Structural reform in Denmark : central reform processes in a decentralized environment in 2007 / Karsten Vrangsbaek; title: Uncompleted Grek territorial consolidation : two waves of reforms / Nikos Hlepas; title: Territorial local level reforms in East German Länder : phases, patterns, and dynamics / Hellmut Wollmann; title: English local government : neither local nor government / Colin Copus; title: Conceptualizing territorial reorganization policy interventions in the Republic of Macedonia / Veli Kreci and Bekim Ymeri; title: Local government reform in Georgia / David Melua; title: Shadows in a cave : Georgian consolidation reform seen from a distance / Students' Research Club Spatium; title: The voluntary union of municipalities : bottom-up territorial consolidation in the Czech Republic? / Michal Illner; title: Territorial consolidation and intercommunal cooperation at the local level in the Slovak Republic / Daniel Klimovský; title: Hungarian public service reform : multipurpose microregional associations / Edit Somlyodyne Pfeil; title: The evolution of Ukraine's administrative and territorial structure : trends, issues, and risks / Kateryna Maynzyuk and Yuriy Dzhygyr; title: Territorial consolidation of municipalities in Armenia / David Tumanyan; title: Intermunicipal cooperation : a viable alternative to territorial amalgmation? / Robert Hertzog; title: Municipal size, economy, and democracy / Kurt Houlberg.