Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 29th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG1: Local Government (Physical) Author(s) Tibor Laszlo Busko Ludovika University of Public Service Budapest Hungary Title Re-thinking the Role of the Lower-Middle Level in Hungary - from the Local Government Point of View – File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Tibor Laszlo Busko Abstract The subject-matter of the paper is the Hungarian lower middle level associated with the EU’s LAU level 1 before 2017. From the 14th century until their elimination in 1983, the districts were considered as primordial representatives of the lower middle level in Hungary. After the transition, various local governmental associations tried to plug the vacuum arisen in place of the eliminated districts. In the first decade followed the millennium, legislator made attempts to unify the tasks and competences attached to the lower middle level as well as well as public administration, territorial development and organisation of local public services. Outcome of those attempts, the system of multi-functional micro-regional associations of local governments (institutionalised by the Act CVII of 2004), can be interpreted as a crucial step toward the harmonization of different micro-regional areas of competence. However, several problems (e. g. territorial aspects of separating state- and local governmental responsibilities) remained unsolved. Although re-establishing the districts from 1 January 2013 resolved a significant proportion of those problems, functions of districts are still confined typically to certain administrative tasks and competences requiring a particular level of expertise. The paper tries to evaluate actual place and role of the Hungarian lower middle level, drawing projections on its future, too. We are taking the district system as our starting point. It may justifiably be argued that as the primary function of present districts is to perform particular administrative tasks, one of the most important challenges with which districts should be facing in the near future is the transition to the WEB 3 period. Although the districts have achieved significant results from the point of view of making the administrative tasks as user-friendly as possible in recent years, moving into the WEB 3 period, where consumers will be able to arrange a wide range of administrative affairs dominantly via the internet, a decrease in the importance of the district system (e. g. reduction of number of the districts and/or rationalization the tasks and competences performed by those districts) seems inevitable. We will be carefully analysing the achieved outcomes of the centralization efforts (e.g. the task and competences that were merged from the local governments into the district offices) attached to the creation of the districts in the 2010’s. While this process should be estimated negatively from the point of view of the multi-level governance idea, moving into the WEB 3 period can lead to a paradigm shift. Rationalization of the tasks and competences performed by the districts, for example, can help to revitalize the formations similar to the multi-functional micro-regional associations of local governments marginalized after 1 January 2013, when Act CVII of 2004 ceased to have effect. Specifically, a system of information hubs operated or supported by local governments, in the centers of micro-regions, where people could avail help regarding the electronic solution of their official issues would serve as a base of a re-estimated lower middle level. It has to be understood that to the re-revitalization of these formations, the willingness of the state is necessary. However, and in a broader policy aspect, we will argue for that creation of such formation can potentially be in the interest of the Hungarian neo-Weberian state aiming to meet citizens’ needs and wants (and ultimately, downsizing administration to a smaller, more human scale).
