The Concept of Local Autonomy? New Local Government Legislation from a Comparative Perspective

Author: (Swedish) Amner et al. (editors) / Yang Li Hua et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: Local government is an important component of a national political system. Without understanding the former, one cannot understand the latter. Every country has only one central government but multiple local governments. Local governments are more closely related to the daily lives of the people and have a closer connection with diverse geographical and social ecological environments. This book is an academic collection of comparative studies on local autonomy by scholars from various countries. The authors come from politically diverse nations, and the analytical samples they selected are highly diverse: Hungary and Poland represent relatively new democratic systems in the process of political transformation, revealing the transition from highly centralized to local autonomy; Spain has embarked on the path of rebuilding local governments, representing a new type of democratic system among Western European countries; Japan has both its own political and cultural traditions and continuously absorbs Western constitutional ideas, while local autonomy is also a complex issue in this hybrid democratic system; the local government of the United Kingdom is undoubtedly one of the oldest components of a democratic system; while the local governments of Norway and Sweden play important roles in the Scandinavian welfare model. In these case studies, both empirical research and the construction of theoretical models by scholars are included. It is precisely this global perspective of diverse political cultures that broadens our horizons, inspires our thinking, and helps us construct theories and systems regarding the division and allocation, supervision and checks and balances of central and local powers under a unitary system with Chinese characteristics.