LEVELLING OF LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT UNITS

The dilemma about the establishment of one or more levels of local self-government units is one of the most important problems of territorial organisation of local self-government. Levelling is structural answer to the problem and needs to integrate local self-government system itself and to integrate that system into a wider organisation of a state as a whole. At the beginning, the paper deals with general discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of levelling. The situation in almost forty countries has been analysed, including two groups of countries: developed democracies (Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Island, Italia, Japan, Luxemburg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA) and transition countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Serbia). Four different types of territorial frames for local self-government system integration have been identified: one-tier, mixed or segmented, two-tier, and three-tier systems. Decision to select one of them is conditioned by the average size of local units, monotypic or polytypic design of territorial division of a country, the size of a country in terms of the number of inhabitants, and form of political organisation (federation or unitary state).