Municipal Territorial Reforms of the 21st Century in Europe

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of territorial change on the municipal level across all European countries. Taking a thematic and comparative perspective, the book builds on extensive quantitative data and a large survey of academic experts in 33 European countries. Territorial organisation of the municipal level in Europe is strongly diversified and yet far from stable. Politically speaking, territorial reforms tend to be risky and difficult, as such changes affect vital interests and identities. Despite such difficulties, the last two decades have witnessed considerable changes in territorial divisions at the municipal level across a range of European countries. In this book, the authors describe and analyse these changes comprehensively, making a vital contribution to understanding the reasons and dynamics of territorial reform processes. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in local or sub-national government, institutional design and more broadly to political science, public administration/policy, human geography, sociology and economics.

1. Introduction: Territorial change at the local level 2. Mapping the intensity of municipal amalgamations 3. Institutional rules for territorial change 4. Where do municipal mergers occur? 5. Municipal splits in Central and Eastern Europe after 1990: Tightening rules 6. Discourses of territorial reforms 7. Patterns of conflicts 8. Coupling territorial reform with other reforms: do amalgamations lead to further decentralisation? 9. Evaluation of territorial reforms 10. Territorial reforms in Europe: What have we learned?

Pawel Swianiewicz is Professor and head of theDivision for Social and Economic Research at the Institute of Spatial Management, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences. Adam Gendzwill is Assistant Professor,Department of Local Development and Policy at the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. Kurt Houlberg is Professor of Public Policy at Vive, the Danish Center for Social Science Research, Denmark. Jan Erling Klausen is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway.