Legal and ideological fundaments of administrative decentralization in post-communism

Abstract

The basic hypothesis of the research we are carrying out is that in postcommunism the most important processes of reforming the administrative system are those in the area of decentralization. Initially seen as a “Western fashion”, in the former socialist states, decentralization has proved to be the main means through which totalitarian institutional structures have been dislocated, through which mentalities have been changed and governmental processes have been streamlined at the level of local communities. In this ample process, we have identified two main components: a) the legal bases of decentralization; b) the ideological fundaments of decentralization (represented by the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity).