decentralization

Despite the increasing international prominence of mayors and municipal networks, local governments across Europe face numerous challenges. In the UK, local councils lack the resources to fulfill their extensive responsibilities, while in France, attempts at decentralization have been hindered by a lack of clarity over the distribution of responsibilities and a relatively high degree of central government interference.

For Slovakia, in particular, as the extremely strong generation of \"Husák\'s children\"* does not have a sufficient population replacement and will start to put a major strain on the health and pension systems in the coming decades.

In the last weeks, we saw debates between the state and the municipalities, which discussed options to increase the resources for local development, but once again these evolved in the direction of centralized solutions.

We have the pleasure to present you the ninth issue of 4liberty.eu Review, titled \"(De)Centralization under Examination\". It focuses on the notions of centralization and decentralization, and discusses the topic from various perspectives, including: fiscal, of governance, of local government

In the ninth issue of 4liberty.eu Review, by investigating a number of national perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe, we attempt to find this elusive middle ground – which, bear in mind, does not necessarily have to be in the middle, at least this is our belief.

Not only do the authors describe different paths to achieving self-governance, but they also focus on the latest reforms that have changed the face of the local government in a positive or negative way and propose liberal solutions that can significantly contribute to improving the activities of local communities.

Centralization, decentralization in Hungary. How to best approach the subject? How best to describe a country, which at the moment has no other long-term goal other than the consolidation and retention of power for the governing Fidesz party?

The governance system at the local level in Ukraine for many years has had built-in conflict as it does not clearly define the responsibilities of elected local authorities and the local administrations, which are a part of the executive branch of power.

Fiscal decentralization is often viewed as a niche issue that mostly concerns administrative and regional development policies. However, it has broader social and economic implications, which are often overlooked, especially in countries with a heavily centralized government structure such as Bulgaria.

Creation of functioning local government in 1990 after a long period of centralized governance during the communist regime is considered to be a major achievement of the democratic transformation which took place after 1989.