Consolidation of Small Municipalities as a Solution of Territorial Fragmentation in the Czech Republic
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Proceedings of the 18th International Conference: Curent Trends in Public Sector Research |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Management and administrative |
| Keywords | Municipality; territorial fragmentation; territorial consolidation; optimal size of municipality; Czech Republic |
| Description | Local government is one of the fundamental parts of public administration of a democratic state. Municipality is a basic territorial unit and a basic unit of local government in the Czech Republic, which is entitled to a degree of independence from the state and to manage own affairs in own interest. There are almost 6250 municipalities in the Czech Republic and every municipality has its own elected mayor and councilors and must provide basic public services. The high degree of territorial fragmentation is connected with the most serious problems of small municipalities. For this reasons, the politicians and experts talk about the need to amalgamations of at least the smallest municipalities. The aim of this paper is to provide literature overview and to assess current knowledge in the area of territorial structure of municipalities and optimal size of municipalities. The most essential arguments for territorial fragmentation are primarily based on democracy-related arguments and the most important arguments for territorial consolidation are connected with economic theories such as economies of scale. However, it should be that deciding on the size structure of municipalities cannot be only based on the assumption that small local governments are dysfunctional in comparison with the larger ones. |
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