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Sources of Institutional Integrity and Contradictions of County Governance: Analyzing the Estonian Experience

Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences

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Title Sources of Institutional Integrity and Contradictions of County Governance: Analyzing the Estonian Experience
 
Creator SOOTLA, Georg; Professor of Public Policy, Institute of Political Science and Governance, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia
LAANES, Liia; PhD Candidate, Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
 
Subject county governance, county governor, prefect, fused pattern, dual and split hierarchy, patterns of intergovernmental relations
 
Description The article focuses on the analysis of internal dynamics and controversies of patterns of county-level governance. Seven alternating confi gurations of county governance in Estonia are taken as an empirical case. We also intend to develop further a conceptual framework for analysis of county governance, drawing on the experience of developing county governance in Europe in the last decades. We reveal that dual and fused patterns of county governance have rather different roles in balancing intergovernmental relations. Hence, when combining dual pattern with elements of fused pattern, it should be done very carefully in order to avoid deep tensions in the intergovernmental system. This was ignored in Estonia where, in the 1920s and the beginning of the 1990s, a strong political mandate of county governor and its role as representative of the state were combined. In the 1930s the crisis of county governance was solved with a perfectly balanced fused pattern, established by an authoritarian regime. In the 2000s, Estonia faced a political as well as a structural deadlock in the development of the intergovernmental system because of the deconstruction of county governance. As a result, the crisis in one link would require a complete reorganization of central- local relations in Estonia in the second half of the 2010s.
 
Publisher Babes Bolyai University
 
Contributor
 
Date 2015-10-20
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://rtsa.ro/tras/index.php/tras/article/view/459
 
Source Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences; 2015: Issue No. 46 E/October; 197-216
18422845
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://rtsa.ro/tras/index.php/tras/article/view/459/448
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences