Samorząd lokalny w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej

ALTHOUGH MOST OTHER East-Central European states have long traditions of local government, the extent to which the traditional systems have survived depends to a large extent on the nature of the reforms to which they have been subjected. The most pervasive reform has been to amalgamate many traditional small communes or municipalities into fewer larger, ones. In almost every East European country there is at lest one additional tier of local government between the basic unit of the commune or municipality and the national government. These are typically described as provinces or counties, and there obviously far fewer. There are 20 in Hungary, 41 in Romania, 27 in Bulgaria, 380 in Poland. In these cases, there is then an additional, regional level at the top of the local government pyramid and below the national government (there are 16 regional provinces in Poland, the biggest country in EastCentral Europe).