Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 19th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Local Government Author(s) Daniel Klimovsky Comenius University Bratislava Slovakia Pinteric Uros, Uroš Pinterič Title Importance of historical conditions for development of local government: Slovakia and Slovenia in comparative perspective File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Historical development of different countries has definitely had some influence on development of further reality. In case of Slovakia and Slovenia there are some historical similarities going long way back in time. But do these similarities deffine todays reality? Both countries belonged to long lasting Habsburg monarchy which was basis for modern central european state system. Both countries shared communist past in general. However, communist pasts of Slovakia and Slovenia were completely different at least that one belonged to the Soviet communism while other one developed special way that can be understood as open regime with high level tolerance. In late 1980s, both countries decided to give up communist doctrine and took over democratic one. Both countries renovated their local level governance as well. Both countries have one thing in common; highly localized system of local governance, which seems to be something very common around the central Europe. But authors want to point out that both systems are very different in fact. Slovenia was not able to develop process of real decentralization. All main decisions are made by central government which alocates also main financial sources of municipalities. One can argue that in fact Slovenian transformation from previous system was in fact step back form decentralized self-governance to centralized democracy while Slovakia in the same time made progress towards systematic decentralization. For the purposes of argumentation, the authors utilize relevant secondary data.
