30th NISPAcee Annual Conference
"Crises, Vulnerability and Resilience in Public Administration"
June 2-4, 2022
Bucharest, Romania
WG1: Local Government
Working group coordinators:
Michiel S de Vries, Chair of the department of Public Administration, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, m.devries@fm.ru.nl
Daniel Klimovský, Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Arts, Department of Political Science, daniel.klimovsky@gmail.com
– Report
During the 2022 NISPA conference, WG 1 on local governance had only two sessions and one common session with WG 5. It seems this is due to the impact of the COVID pandemic which is still visible. During the two sessions of WG 1, six papers on the development of local government in CEE countries were discussed. The themes addressed included on the one side the important topic of democracy at the local level, i.e. local public participation, co-production, the need for democratic innovation. On the other hand, papers were presented on the administrative capacities of local governments, and the impact of European regulation on local affairs. The common session of WG1 and WG5 concentrated on the topic of participatory budgeting, the merits thereof, and the hurdles to overcome in order to make such processes more effective.
Despite the low attendance and low number of papers submitted, many interesting issues were raised in this working group and the quality of papers was very good.
Overall 12 papers were presented in 3 sessions.