Original scientific paper
Consolidation, Fragmentation, and Special Statuses of Local Authorities in Europe
Ivan Koprić
orcid.org/0000-0002-9086-6937
; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Many countries in Western Europe consolidated their territorial organization in the last few decades, searching for increased local capacities. Great Britain, Denmark and Germany are the examples of such reforms, although many other countries went in the same direction. Certain transitional countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, etc.) went in opposite direction, fragmenting their territorial structures. In the third group are those countries that mainly retained their traditional municipality structures. They have local units of very different sizes, like France, which has made changes in some other dimensions of its local government system – by introducing regions, fostering intermunicipal cooperation, and by preparing special status of metropolis. Four continuums are identified as relevant for the territorial organisation of a country:
continuums between: 1) very small and very large municipalities, 2) fragmentation and consolidation, 3) etatisation and privatisation, and 4) centralisation and decentralisation. Surrogates for consolidation are: inter-municipal cooperation, forms of building local administrative and professional capacities, differentiation of statuses of various municipalities, private engagement in providing local services, levelling (designing more than one level of local authorities), supplementing and substituting municipalities by the structural arrangements for regional policy, performing tasks important for local people by the local branches of central state administration, and other forms of centralisation. Solutions for relaxing problems caused by too big local governments can be: fostering citizens’participation and the forms of direct democracy, including e-democracy, strengthening local identities, sub-municipal decentralisation, functional and fiscal decentralisation, privatisation of local services, and – again – centralisation of previously local tasks and responsibilities. It can be concluded that design of special, different statuses for heterogeneous local governments is only more or less productive surrogate, not the best solution for fragmented territorial structures.
Keywords
local governments; consolidation or fragmentation of territorial organization; special statuses of local governments; intermunicipal cooperation; decentralisation
Hrčak ID:
130492
URI
Publication date:
3.12.2012.
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