The book analyses how political parties compete and strategise on the issue of territorial reform using case-studies that include countries from both Western (Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain) and Central-Eastern Europe (Poland, Slovakia and Romania). Each case-study considers different drivers of decentralization, such as territorial identities and the demands of regionalist parties for territorial autonomy or independence, efficiency concerns related to issues of uneven economic development and economic competitiveness, the pressure from supra-national organizations (especially the EU), as well as different combinations of these drivers. They also consider how the ideology and organisation of state-wide parties and the institutional context in which they compete shape their responses to these drivers and their strategy towards the question of territorial reform. This collection investigates the logic of the actions that guide political parties’ strategy to highlight trends that are apparent across the case-studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

This book studies political leadership at the local level, based on data from a survey of the mayors of cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants in 29 European countries carried out between 2014 and 2016. The book compares these results with those of a similar survey conducted ten years ago. From this comparative perspective, the book examines how to become a mayor in Europe today, the attitudes of these politicians towards administrative and territorial reforms, their notions of democracy, their political priorities, whether or not party politicization plays a role at the municipal level, and how mayors interact with other actors in the local political arena. This study addresses students, academics and practitioners concerned at different levels with the functioning and reforms of the municipal level of local government.

In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values – the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?

Drawing on classical and emerging research perspectives, this comprehensive book provides an up-to-date review of local government in Europe. Featuring an impressive range of contributors from both eastern and western Europe, the book addresses three main topics: territorial reforms, democratic empowerment of citizens and the role of local leadership, as well as new trends in local finances. Acknowledging their inherent diversity, the book examines the ways that local governments have responded to shared challenges, such as climate change, increasing populism and democratic deficit in order to identify both the variety and communalities between the country-specific features. In doing so, it provides a rich picture of the latest trends in local government, as well as pointing the way for future developments.

Debates about multi-level governance have led to a profound restructuring of regional and local government. The second level of local government is under review in most European countries, with the aim to strengthen the institutional capacity of municipalities or to develop appropriate institutional structures for governing fragmented urban areas. This book provides a thematic and cross-national analysis of the key actors in local government that form the crucial components of effective and democratic policy making. Focussing on the second tier of local government, it examines new empirical data on councillors from this level of government in 15 European countries and integrates important variables such as party politics, notions of democracy, finance, multi-level settings. Divided into five parts, it addresses: Attitudes of county/provincial councillors towards administrative and territorial reforms; Their role perceptions and role behaviour; Their political orientation; Actor constellations and governance arrangements; Political socialization and recruitment, professionalization and career patterns of county/provincial councillors. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of local government, urban studies, regional studies, political science, sociology and geography.

In this 2004 volume, a formidable group of scholars investigate patterns of conflict that are arising in the European Union.

Bringing together scholars from across Europe, Territorial Consolidation Reforms presents the struggles by politicians, technocrats, and the public to agree on the optimum size of government that balances good performance with good services, and the relevant arguments for the fragmentation, consolidation, or cooperation of government. Edited and introduced by Pawel Swianiewicz, this 15-chapter anthology presents the major reforms of municipal government that were implemented in Europe in the last decade. Covering much of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as detailing the experiences of "old" EU member states of Denmark, England, France, Germany, and Greece, this book investigates how territorial reforms have impacted local public affairs, public service delivery, local identity and autonomy, and what political and public debates have accompanied or been responsible for success or failure. The cases in this anthology answer how government did or did not respond to the need to provide efficient services in concert with demands for local autonomy and needed territorial reforms. Chapters on the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary describe a top-down approach to the stimulation of intermunicipal cooperation in service provision as an answer to fragmentation. Chapters on Armenia and Ukraine summarize the debate, and the decision on which has been postponed. In the final pages of Territorial Consolidation Reforms in Europe, the distinguished scholar Robert Hertzog writes about voluntary cooperation of municipal governments as an alternative, while Kurt Houlberg looks further into the relationship between the population size of municipal government and various dimensions of its institutinal performance. --Book Jacket.