Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 19th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Local Government Author(s) Georg Sootla Tallinn University Tallinn Estonia Laane Sulev, Sulev Lääne Title Responses to the crisis of local autonomy in Estonia: Centralisation vs. multilevel governance perspective File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract In the beginning of 1990s the autonomous (dual) pattern of central local relations was developed in Estonia that largely draws on Nordic experience and support. This became possible largely because of deep economic and political crisis in the beginning of 1990-s. Before the II WW in Estonia the Continental pattern (pattern established in Russian Empire) of central local relation was adopted. The government and public administration at central level was created on the basis of Continental European values and German legal tradition and the school of law at Tartu University. The dual system of local government was established only on municipal level, so these two different logic of public spheres did not have direct contact at county or regional level which according to Leemans (1970) is the core of central-local balances. From the end of 1990 the autonomy of local authorities started to decline and centralizing trends also of central government arrangements become obvious. By the end of 2000-s the local authorities were turned more and more into arm length of central government and the trend towards the fused pattern of central-local relations become dominant. In the article we intend to analyze variables that makes possible such a radical change of initial pattern of central local relations at different stages of development, including at the stage of establishment (beginning of 1990s) of that pattern. We focus on historical path dependency in both (pre-Soviet and Soviet period) aspects, as well as political, politico-administrative, economic and situational (personal) variables that played important role in this development. Our conceptual framework is based on variations in understanding of the concept of local autonomy in different politico-administrative systems and at different stages of state development. The decline of local autonomy was caused not only by the enhancement of dominant conservative-legalistic public administration at central level but also by sustaining of traditional conservative-protective understanding of local autonomy by the local elites inherited from the past. A special attention is given to the role of evolution of intermediate level of governments (county and regional governments) and to roles of different actors in this. Our paper is based on multiple sources of empirical and archive materials, including government archives, personal archive of S. Lääne (one of founders of the system of local government) as well as interviews of different actors. Sources: 1. King， D. , Stoker G.（Ed.）（ 1996）Rethinking local democracy. Basingstoke : Macmillan 2. Leemans, A. (1970) Changing Patterns of Local Government. IUAL
