Local autonomy is a core issue in democracies, and there have been multiple attempts to
measure it. Most of these efforts provide cross-country comparable data based on country …

Local autonomy has become an increasingly valued feature of local government in recent
decades. Indeed, decentralization reforms implementing the provision of services closer to …

The previous chapters of the book have identified substantial and persistent patterns of
variation in terms of local autonomy and its components across the 39 countries covered by …

The balance between local autonomy and central control is a perennial issue in the
territorial organisation of states. Despite the importance of local autonomy, there is little …

Local autonomy is a highly valued feature of good governance. The continuous efforts of
many European countries to strengthen the autonomy of local government show the …

Frequently, increasing local autonomy is recommended to improve democratic legitimacy
and government effectiveness. This paper attempts to verify to what extent these normative …

In this chapter we attempt to create an index of local autonomy. Ideally, such an index
includes all the different aspects of local autonomy discussed in the literature and combines …

This chapter develops a comprehensive and empirically applicable concept to measure the
autonomy of local government in the 39 European countries covered. To this end, we first …

Some of the most well known models of local government present the policymaking process
as a result of the interaction of different groups of agents (actors). The authors of these …

The Chapter examines the concept of local autonomy in modern European states by
analysing theoretical approaches. The classical, deductive approach defines local …