The theme of the working group is local government. By using the term local government we prefer the broader context of governance to the internal machinery of local administration. The core of the mission of the working group will be built around a comparative analysis of local government developments in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) area. The developments will be compared to the European and Anglo-Saxon local administration models, as well as to the theories of self governance and decentralization.

The Working Group will focus on local government reforms. Members are expected to compare the challenges CEE countries face, identify the trends and waves of changes, and draw conclusions about convergence and divergence within CEE and between the CEE countries and the rest of Europe. The reforms examined by the group include both large-scale structural changes of public administration and small-scale managerial reforms initiated by local decision-makers. Contributions are encouraged, especially in the following topics:

- multi-level governance (different solutions in use in various European countries in the division of work between the layers of administrative machinery; relationships between sub-national levels and the consequences of regional reforms);

- local network governance (the usefulness of this fashionable term in CEE countries, forms of cooperation with other administrative agencies and business and important civil society groups);

- e-governance and e-democracy (possibilities, problems and expenditures especially with regard to the needs of the CEE countries);

- metropolitan governance (the consequences of the rapid suburbanization process of the 1990s, the need for urban administrative development and the challenge of the capital city).

These various parts of research fields can be analysed using political, administrative, cultural and economic views. According to the specific needs of the CEE countries in their reorganisation of societies’ administrative and economic views (especially the division of economic responsibility between central, regional and local administrations) are of the utmost importance. On the other hand, the political view is also required as a realistic background for more concrete comparative analyses.

l general theoretical papers on local government reforms in CEE and the CIS;

l comparative papers on the different conditions for local government reforms between Western Europe on the one hand and CEE and/or the CIS on the other;

l comparative papers on the different conditions for local government reforms between CEE on the one hand and the CIS on the other;

l comparative papers covering local government reforms in a few or several CEE countries;

l case studies on local government reforms in single CEE countries in a comparative context.

During the first meeting of the working group in Bratislava, coordinators will accept papers with single case studies, while emphasis will be placed on comparative papers in the following years. Authors will be encouraged to include empirical data on the various dimensions of local government reforms.

Gabor Soos is a Research Director of the Tocqueville Research Center, Budapest. He holds a PhD in Political Science, MA in Sociology, and MA in History. He edited and co-edited three books on local government in Central and Eastern Europe.

Potential working group members will come from both academic institutions, working in local administrative science and from the practitioners who are involved the development of the local administrations in CEE and CIS countries.