Abstract
All over Europe, cities and municipalities face new and numerous challenges to uphold their unique self-governing role in society. This intriguing reality underscores this volume’s ambition of brightening the future of local self-government. After further elaborating on this relevant background and the approach taken, the first chapter introduces three main dimensions of analysis. They are key to the volume’s subsequent parts on the essence of local government’s autonomy, its transformations in the light of digitalisation, marketisation and amalgamation and, finally, its changing intergovernmental relations concerning supervision and subnational policy-making. This volume covers eight countries, spread over Europe. And so, this introductory chapter ends with highlighting main features of the different local government systems involved.
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Notes
- 1.
The Local Autonomy Index (LAI) allows to compare local autonomy across countries and/or over time on a wide range of dimensions, including institutional, fiscal, financial and organisational ones. Its development was funded by the European Commission in 2014–2015. This project covered 39 countries, including all EU member states. For more information: see Ladner et al. (2015).
- 2.
Without shared taxes and fees.
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Kuhlmann, S., Wayenberg, E., Bergström, T., Franzke, J. (2021). The Essence and Transformation of Local Self-Government in Western Europe. In: Bergström, T., Franzke, J., Kuhlmann, S., Wayenberg, E. (eds) The Future of Local Self-Government. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56059-1_1
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