Abstract
This chapter presents insights into the comparative analysis of the local state-society networks in five selected Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries—namely, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The dimension of relevance is an important indicator explaining the decision-making power of the local state-society networks in the region that also reflects the turbulent democratic transition. Compared to the Western system of local state-society infrastructure, most observed CEE countries have low scores of autonomy, coherence, and, particularly, relevance, which refers to the civic actors’ impact on policy-making (Heinelt et al., Close ties in European local governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021). The chapter focuses on the country-specific differences in the perception of the decision-making power of institutional networks by their members. From the results of the statistical analysis, it can be concluded that the perception of the relevance of the networks depends on the previous political engagement of the societal actors involved, public trust and the institutional context in the region.
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Notes
- 1.
For the analytical purposes of our analysis, we have also included Croatia that is as a former socialist Yugoslavia country to the group of selected CEE countries.
- 2.
For the typology and the distinguished types of local state-society networks, see Teles (2021).
- 3.
Western Europe (N=1657): Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Nordic countries (N=1926) are Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Southern European (N=827) countries are Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The grouping of these countries is based on the ‘United Nations Statistics Division’ for Europe (see https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/).
- 4.
There are methodological limitations in defining the population size of the networks because of country level differences in institutional framework of network composition and lack of municipal regulation in defining the size of networks in different municipalities and policy areas.
- 5.
The variable of generalized trust is measured using survey question “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?”.
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Bučaitė-Vilkė, J., Lysek, J., Lazauskienė, A. (2022). The Prevalence of Low-Relevance Networks in Central and Eastern Europe and the Post-Communist Legacy. In: Egner, B., Heinelt, H., Lysek, J., Silva, P., Teles, F. (eds) Perspectives on Local Governance Across Europe. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15000-5_11
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