Top-Down or Bottom-Up? Coping with Territorial Fragmentation in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The story to be told in the present chapter about territorial choice in the Czech Republic offers an ambiguous picture of territorial reform. Commencing in the 1950s, it describes successive streams of change, each of which moved the territorial structure of local government in a different direction. The process started in the 1960s and 1970s when, under the communist regime, a stepwise consolidation of local government structures was decreed by central authorities. Then in the 1990s, after the fall of the communist regime, a permissive reform followed, a reform enabling and tolerating spontaneous fragmentation. Finally, in recent years, attempts at renewed consolidation of local government have once again taken place.