WG1: Local Government
WG coordinators:
- 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
Daniel Klimovský is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. At the same he cooperates with the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is alternate member of the Group of Independent Experts on the European Charter of Local Self-Government of the Council of Europe. In addition, he is member of the editorial board of several journals focused on public administration and/or public policy. His research and educational activities are focused on public administration, as well as political issues linked to sub-national levels. He has been involved in numerous international projects, and he is a policy advisor or analyst of several public authorities.
- Tim Jäkel, National Research University Higher School of Economics: School of Public Administration, Russia, tjekel@hse.ru
Tim Jäkel is an Assistant Professor at the School of Politics and Governance of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation. He holds a PhD in Political Science (Dr. rer. pol.) from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Prior to joining the National Research University Higher School of Economics, he worked as a research fellow at the German Research Institute for Public Administration Speyer, Germany. Tim’s research interests include public management, work-attitudes and behaviors, and public affairs in Russia. Results from his research were recently published in the International Review of Public Administration, the NISPACee Journal of Public Administration and Policy, Statistics, Politics and Policy, and Teaching Public Administration.
Call for papers:
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, public policies etc. The WG especially welcomes empirical research results, comparative analysis, theoretical contributions and, of course, interdisciplinary approaches are supported.
The working group invites 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 levels.
For the next conference the working groups especially invite papers on the sustainability of arrangements as mentioned above and the role, promises and evaluation of the increasing use of digitalisation. Digitalisation promises to bring local government closer to the people at lower costs. Digitalisation comes at significant cost to overcome sentiments amongst employees, infrastructure, cyber security, and training measures. Digitalisation is associated with serious risks: Replacing analogous by digital services creates barriers for older people and residents in remote areas (digital gap).
Potential research questions are:
•What are the best practices in digitalisation of local public service delivery in CEE countries?
•How do local governments address various risks associated with digitalisation? What risk-management routines were put in place?
•What are the obstacles to the implementation of digitalisation strategies? Why do some local governments successfully foster digitalisation while others do not?
•How do citizens perceive digitalised public services? To what extent do attitudes towards and usage of digital services vary by age, income, gender, or political preferences?
•Does digitalisation improve trust in local government?
Thus, although general papers on developments in local government in CEE countries are still welcome, we invite especially theoretical and empirical papers that address the issues mentioned above.
Proposals for papers should include the following:
1.The names of the authors and their affiliation.
2.The research question to be answered in the paper.
3.The way in which the research question is going to be answered.
4. Information about the case(s)/data to be analysed.
5.The relevance of the paper for the working group.