This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of territorial change on the municipal level across all European countries. Taking a thematic and comparative perspective, the book builds on extensive quantitative data and a large survey of academic experts in 33 European countries. Territorial organisation of the municipal level in Europe is strongly diversified and yet far from stable. Politically speaking, territorial reforms tend to be risky and difficult, as such changes affect vital interests and identities. Despite such difficulties, the last two decades have witnessed considerable changes in territorial divisions at the municipal level across a range of European countries. In this book, the authors describe and analyse these changes comprehensively, making a vital contribution to understanding the reasons and dynamics of territorial reform processes. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in local or sub-national government, institutional design and more broadly to political science, public administration/policy, human geography, sociology and economics.

Intra-municipal decentralisation in Scandinavian cities is unique with regard to the volume of services devolved to urban districts. The book investigates the democratic and efficiency effects of decentralisation reforms in six major Scandinavian cities. Special attention is given to consequences of different institutional arrangements as well as to providing an understanding of reform processes. Data for the descriptions and analyses are provided by a number of sources: Surveys with district politicians and samples of citizens, published evaluation reports and interview data from three case studies especially done for this study. Institutional arrangements differ between Copenhagen with relatively autonomous districts and Swedish and Norwegian cities whose districts are more closely integrated with the centre. These differences do matter, both with regard to reform effects and the trajectories of reform processes. Institutionalisation, adaptation and power seeking behaviour of political parties are important factors for understanding the reform processes.