WG1: Local Government
WG coordinators
- Ilona Pálné Kovács, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, palne@rkk.hu
Professor Ilona Pálné Kovács is a lawyer, political scientist, elected as a corresponding member of Hungarian Academy of Science HAS in 2013. She is a full time research professor and the head of PhD programme in political science at the Department for Political Studies of University of Pécs. Her fields of interest are regional policy, regional governance and local governments, European multi-level governance, cohesion policy, Europeanisation. She conducted many domestic and international projects, participating in several FP, ESF, INTERREG, TEMPUS, ESPON, UNESCO, EC DG Regio programmes.
- Michiel S de Vries, Chair of the department of Public Administration, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, m.devries@fm.ru.nl
Michiel S de Vries holds the chair in Public Administration at the Radboud University of Nijmegen and is visiting professor at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. He is president of IASIA, full member of the Group of Independent Experts on the European Charter of Local Self-Government of the Council of Europe and member of the editorial board of numerous journals on Public Administration. His research concentrates on local government, public sector reform, policy evaluation, policy change and comparative public administration.- Daniel Klimovský, Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Arts, Department of Political Science, daniel.klimovsky@gmail.com
His research and educational activities focus on public administration, as well as political issues linked to sub-national levels. He is the Regional Studies Association Ambassador for Slovakia and a member of both the Management Committee and the Steering Committee of the COST IS 1207: Local Public Sector Reforms in Europe led by Professor S. Kuhlmann and Professor Geert Bouckaert. He is the main coordinator of the POL-LOC initiative, which includes more than 20 universities from 15 European countries. Aside from his academic activities, he cooperated with the Social Watch (2008-2011) and was a member of the Steering Committee of the Open Society Foundation in Slovakia (2012-2014), as well as an independent/external expert of the Council of Europe. Furthermore he has cooperated with central government in Slovakia and with several local governments and their associations.
Call for papers
Introduction
The Working Group on Local Governance deals with all sub-national levels of governance from several points of view: regulation, structure, organisation, functioning, finance, representation, election, and public policies etc. The WG especially welcomes empirical research results, comparative analysis, and theoretical contributions. Of course, interdisciplinary approaches are supported.
Central theme for 2019: Internal and external challenges of local governance
Local and regional governments are facing new challenges in a time of crisis, in the era of "illiberal” turns and recentralisation in several countries. The new challenges require new structures, scales, functional methods, new cooperation forms, new kind of politics and policy making. But it is also clear that the responses are manifold in different countries in spite of some general trends and similarities. It is time to identify the common features and practices and also different patterns of territorial governance and the reasons behind them.
The panel will discuss papers dealing with topics such as:
• Local democracy, the role of councils, new forms of participation
• New, horizontal linkages between local governments and state agencies in public service delivery
• Size, scales, capacities, cooperation of municipalities
• New challenges in public policy at local and regional level
• The context in which local governments have to operate,
• Stakeholders inside the municipality
• Intergovernmental relations between the local, regional, national and European level
Therefore, although general papers on local government are welcome, we especially invite theoretical and empirical papers that address the issues mentioned above. Special attention will be paid to Policy Design and Policy Practice in the European Integration Context.
Selection criteria
• We invite especially local, nationwide empirical researches on how centralisation and decentralisation tendencies are managed and research into the (financial, functional, quality, democracy) impacts and responses.
• Comparative analyses are especially welcome.
• International or methodological or theoretical relevance: What we can learn from the paper beyond the case?
• New emphasis will be put on involving practitioners who have experience in public service delivery, in inter-municipal cooperation or in managing local decision-making in general and are willing to share analyses on their cases.