Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 25th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Local Government Author(s) Iwona Sobis University of Gothenburg Göteborg Sweden de Vries Michiel, Title The Local Governance of Capital Municipalities in CEE and CA: An Overview Study File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Iwona Sobis Abstract This research begins a new series of scientific articles dealing with the effect of size of local government on public administration. In this article, focus will be on the political-administrative relations, policy development, organization and management of local governance in the capital-cities of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Central Asian (SA). Capitals usually have a very special position towards other local governments but also towards regional-, and national governments. They face specific problems and they found specific solutions to them. Since New Public Management at the beginning of 1990s became the pattern to follow across the world, research in the field of Public Administration has experienced a shift of paradigm. Scholars turned their focus from local government into local governance. Local governance has been perceived as new styles of governing at local level. It has been also perceived as “the presence of governance without government” (Rosenau 1992, p. 3). According to the western scholars (Rosenau 1992; Rhodes 1996; Stocker 1998; Bevir, Rhodes & Weller 2003; Pierre & Peters 2005; Larsson, Letell & Thörn 2012; Beunen, van Assche & Duineveld 2015), in such the process, new rules are created and new collective actions are expected. However, what do we really know about local governance within the capitals cities of Central and East European (CEE) countries and Central Asia (CA) countries? The purpose of this review is to describe and order in our knowledge about the local governance of capital cities in CEE and CA. The following sub-questions are expected to help us to identify some gups deserving farther research in this field: What challenges and problems do the capital municipalities face in their everyday practice? How does local authority solve them? What conclusions can be drawn? The search for the scientific articles or books is based on the library sources from the universities that both authors have access to, we use literature available by google, google scholars and other electronic engines but also the NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy having focus on CEE and CA issues. The very preliminary searching for such the literature is challenging, which motivate us well to conduct this research. This literature study is structured according to Peter John and Alistair Cole’s (1999) theory on political leadership in the new urban governance, Gary Stoker’s (1998) theory presenting five aspects of governance, Jon Pierre and B. Gay Peters (2005) explaining the concept of governance, its institutional capacity and steering. The operationalization of those theoretical approaches should help us to divide the found literature into themes studied by scholars and concerning the local governance of capital cities in CEE and CA. The results can be somewhat surprising as there is much less research on the capital cities’ governance than expected. Thus, further empirical studies in this field are severely needed.
