Abstract
Nowadays it is not easy to ask how much decentralisation we need which was regarded as almost a miracle in the nineties. Especially in the last decade, territorial governance or the territoriality of governance has been neglected in many countries, and centralisation generally strengthened in the pressure of new challenges of governance (economic crisis, climate change, terrorism, migration and so on). The chapter is basically a Hungarian case study based on empirical researches, focusing on meso-level territorial governance. At the same time the study provides general lessons also, proving that the actual role of self-governments does not only depend on the reforms intended by the central governments but upon the activity of local and territorial actors as well. Legal competences, instruments are, of course, crucial, but local and meso-level governments are able to act “without legal empowerment” also. The meso-level government has an “in between” position where the real transmission role up or bottom, depends on the real needs of public and societal actors.
Keywords
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Thanks to the support provided from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary (Project no. 132294), we can continue our research in the next years.
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Kovács, I.P. (2020). Governance Without Power? The Fight of the Hungarian Counties for Survival. In: Nunes Silva, C. (eds) Contemporary Trends in Local Governance . Local and Urban Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52516-3_3
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