The co-operation of rural municipalities - chance or condition of achievement

Abstract

263Czech settlement structure is extremely disintegrated. The causes of this very high disintegration of settlement structure consist in the historical formation of the structure of towns and rural municipalities and they are conditioned above all by physical-geographical aspects, by the quality of agricultural land and by other external factors. The traditionally very disintegrated settlement structure was taken over also by the historical organization of public administration formed in the territory of Czech lands since the second half of the 19 th century. In spite of various development difficulties, this disintegrated network of municipalities has survived up to present days. In reaction to the administratively performed and ruthless integration of municipalities going on from the 1960s to the 1980s, individual rural communities proceeded immediately after loosening of the restrictive conditions to a spontaneous disintegration of municipalities. In the period between June 1990 and March 1991, more than 1 800 municipalities were re-established and during two following years, the number of municipalities in the Czech Republic grew from 4 000 at the end of the totalitarian period to 6 250. The structure of municipalities in Czechia is extremely asymmetrical. There are 551 (8.8%) municipalities with less than 100 inhabitants and in total 1 655 (26.4%) municipalities with less than 200 inhabitants. More than 60% of all municipalities have less than 500 inhabitants and nearly 80% of all municipalities less than 1 000 inhabitants.Rural municipalities, including the smallest ones, are further divided into detached settlement units which have a very low number of inhabitants, often less than 20 permanent residents, and where a great part of houses serve only for recreation and are thus not permanently used. Small rural municipalities are The co-operation of rural municipalities -chance or condition of achievement Spolupráce venkovských obcí -možnost nebo podmínka úspěchu R. PERLÍN Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech RepublicAbstract: Czech settlement structure as well as the structure of public administration on municipal level is extremely disintegrated. Besides a great number of very small villages -small settlement units -there exists a big share of very small municipalities with self-government. Those municipalities can and often do cooperate in voluntary associations, which can transfer some of their competencies by a specific municipal treaty. This paper is focused on the discussion of possibilities and limits of cooperation among rural municipalities. Different forms of existing collaboration are discussed and possibilities of new forms of municipal collaboration are drafted, including the possible presumed and real dangers of such collaboration.Key words: public administration, self-government, rural development, cooperation of municipalities, development strategies Abstrakt: Česká sídelní struktura a stejně tak i struktura veřejné správy na municipální úrovni je extrémně rozdrobená. Kromě ...

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