Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

Decentralisation has been one of the buzzwords in the neoliberal good governance public policy literature in the last decades. After the main decentralisation trend in the western democracies, in the seventies, the developing and transition countries worldwide were advised to devolve most of the competences in public service delivery and in local economic development.

The main argument was the fact that the decentralised democratic, participative way of managing local affairs could improve both accessibility and quality of public services and provide at the same time more transparency and legitimacy. Many territorial reforms have been implemented under the umbrella of principle of subsidiarity and decentralisation, supported and sponsored by the EU (cohesion funds) and other international organisations (OECD, World Bank, UN), referring especially the regional competitiveness and the achievement of the Millennium Goals. Not only the financial crisis in 2008 but also many negative experiences and even failed reforms so far contributed to the scepticism concerning decentralisation and rescaling.

Thus, centralisation attempts emerged realizing that decentralisation has crucial preconditions and that for the overall governance, the political, economic, cultural-social and territorial contexts matter. The aim of the workshop is to discuss the experience of these recent territorial reforms. The workshop will include plenary and panel sessions. The organization plans to publish a selection of the papers presented.

Papers are especially welcome on the following topics or approaches:

· Longitudinal and/or international comparative analysis of territorial reforms, successes and failures;

· Explicit and hidden methods of centralisation;

· National case studies of how local and regional governments used or misused their competences at various policy fields;

· National patterns for consolidating the local- regional governments during the crisis;

· Theoretical papers on trends, advantages and disadvantages, legal and material preconditions of decentralisation.

Participation in the Workshop requires the presentation of a paper.

All proposals (abstracts) will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee.

The Workshop takes place in Pécs, Hungary, on 9-10 May 2019.

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