The Factors of Voluntary Municipal Amalgamations: the Case of the Czech Republic in European Comparison

The diploma thesis analyzes the issues of voluntary consolidation of municipal structures in the European countries. The period between the 1990 and 2013 was chosen as the time frame for the thesis because of the possibility to incorporate the countries of the former Soviet bloc to comparison. The text is divided into two main parts, where different perspectives are used. The first part is mainly theoretical using the top-down, state-focused perspective. The European countries are distributed into different categories according to the type and degree of voluntariness in the consolidation process. The cases of the countries are individually analyzed to illustrate the tools and factors that influenced success or failure of the municipal merger processes. The second part of the text, using the bottom-up perspective, is focused on the individual cases of the municipal amalgamation in the Czech Republic. It describes every case alone and analyzes assumptions and factors affecting decisions of small municipalities to merge. The combination of the two perspectives allows creating a basic set of strategies and instructions which, under certain circumstances, may convince small municipalities to merge