Changing municipal agency in a multilevel polity. Diverse pathways in Central and Eastern Europe

The meeting will take place online via ZOOM. Please register here.

CEE countries share the history of dissolving communist systems, decentralization of state power, unfolding dependent financialization and subsequent crises entailing subsequent austerity schemes. Nevertheless, the region exhibited diverse pathways of spatial organisation of state power. The discussion shall be focused on the results of a desk research on the changing position of municipalities in the various national regulative-institutional fixes in terms of development policies, the distribution of public funds, controlling public services, the legitimacy of local leadership moreover, the political struggles shaping various paths of de/re/municipalization in CEE.

The questions to be addressed are: (1) How did the subsequent crises since 2008 impacted the position of municipalities in the multilevel polity? (2) What did the spatial reorganization of state power entail to local agency shaping (changing/maintaining) development paths? Does sustaining community control (strong, democratic municipalities) over local processes entail socially and environmentally less exploitative development trajectories in the eastern periphery of Europe?