Asociaţia moldovenească de ştiinţă politică
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СодержаниеTable 1. Size of local government units in selected new EU member states |
Table 1. Size of local government units in selected new EU member states
Note: 1 - number of municipalities; 2 - mean number of inhabitants; 3 - Municipalities below 1000 inhabitants (%); 4 - Mean density of inhabitants in km2; 5 - mean area of municipality (km2. Source: calculated by government websites of respective countries. The population of the capital city is excluded The quest to autonomy was replaced by centralizing trends, which become especially intensive in 2000th. Local authorities tried to resist to those trend without success, because they draw on traditional and outdated by 2000th in Europe of the concept and practice of protective local autonomy. Central authorities who backed the centralizing trend actually focused on the replacement of one traditional pattern of IGR (dual system) with the other (fused system). Whereas in Europe in 1980-1990s the substantially new pattern of central local relations – multilevel governance [22] or government across levels [19, 37] emerged. It was caused by extreme fiscal stress as well as that was by European integration and by general globalisation trend. In this situation the both perspectives: autonomy and centralisation become obsolete [16; 3] and the need to introduce the pattern of multilevel governance become acute [22, 23]. The new trigger to the latter trend was caused by emergence of macro-regions strategies in European Union (Mediterranean, Danube basin and Black sea), among them the Baltic Sea region strategy, which can be promoted by intensive cooperation across levels of government [24]. Basic patterns of central-local relations in Europe. Patterns of central local relations in Europe emerged in two basic ways in the course of development of nation states [17; 26]. On the one hand, in Continental European power vertical was established as a result of - actually – conquest of central government and subordination by then of strong and conservative and uncontrollable local elites, who governed over the hierarchical corporatist clan like communities, which economically based on serfdom. The central government established its rule at the local level in order to unify certain dimensions of nation state-society (language, culture, public order) and to control better local resources to be able to finance extensive central government and army. As the result the fused system of intergovernmental relations (IGR) emerged. In this patters it was clearly defined central state competences, which were assigned either to state provincial governments and field offices or to municipality officials (mostly administrative services to population and to the state), who worked under more or less strict state supervision in implementing those tasks. The local autonomy rests on those public tasks and services that state> In Northern Europe, where historically serfdom did not emerge (Nordic region) or it was abolished by monetary agriculture very early as in England, the nation states, integrated space of culture and economy, formed in the context of balance of levels of governance, because of strong egalitarian communities with extensive self-governing institutions or even rudiments of local democracy. Rather important role in this process played protestant religion, which promoted values of equality, individualism and competitiveness. This set of already integrated but relatively communities and local elites were able not only to resist to centralizing trends and to satisfy needs of central government (in conscription, in providing justice) but were rather constructive partners in developing internal markets, in providing public services, such as secular education or social care, whereas military service recruitment was already put on the monetary / economic basis. As a result, the dual system of central local relations emerged, where public authority of central government and local government become clearly legally separated spheres of public authority and mutual intervention of their affairs> |