The Size of Local Units – European Tendencies and Croatian Dilemmas

Problem administrativno-teritorijalne podjele uključuje i odabir između dviju mogućnosti – velike ili male lokalne jedinice. Analiziraju se razlozi za i protiv tih varijanti, prikazuje se proces amalgamiranja lokalnih jedinica u europskim zemljama, tj. proces njihova teritorijalnog povećanja, te se detaljnije osvrće na rješenja primijenjena u hrvatskoj lokalnoj samoupravi (male lokalne jedinice).The author analyses one of the problems of territorial division – whether to divide the state territory into large or small local units. Since there is no solution in the form of »medium-sized municipalities«, the author has shown different attitudes of various authors and arguments in favour of the first or second solution. Many European countries have undertaken radical local self-government reforms in the past sixty years with the intention to reduce the number of basic local units, which meant an increase in the territory and the population of local units. The paper has shown these processes in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands,Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, and Romania. The changes are explained by the aspiration to make the capacities of local units sufficiently large to be ableto perform the tasks that fulfil the basic needs and interests of their citizens. In Slovenia, the process was reversed – the number of Slovenian municipalities kept growing because the aim was to decrease the number of their inhabitants. The author has shown this carefully conducted five-year reform. Hungary also increased the number of its municipalities. France, on the contrary, retained the local selfgovernment system from the 19th century with a large number of small municipalities. After gaining independence, Croatia increased the number of municipalities drastically, from 100 to 418, thus choosing the model with a large number of small municipalities. The process of establishment of new municipalities continued, and their number increased to 429 (and 3.142 inhabitants in average). The majority of Croatian municipalities – 221 of them – have between 1.000 and 3.000 inhabitants. They encompass 51 per cent of the total number of municipalities. Only six municipalities (1.4 per cent) have more than 10.000 inhabitants (5.1 per cent of the total number of people living in municipalities), while five municipalities have less than 500 inhabitants. The smallest local unit has only 145 inhabitants. The ratio between the largest and the smallest municipality is 1 : 88. The author has shown some forms of special territorial structures where the territory is determined according to the action radius of certain services (special districts). Finally, the author analyses the process of continuous increase of Croatian municipalities together with the political circumstances that resulted in 429 municipalities, and suggests possible reform measures to improve the current situation. The cathegory of towns has not been analysed in this paper (127 of them in Croatia. Key words