The revolutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were founded on strong commitments to democracy at local as well as national levels of administration. This book shows how these commitments were put into practice in local elections held between 1990 and 1992, and what happened subsequently.

Local Government in Eastern Europe begins with overviews of contemporary local government in Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and the Russian Federation. This is followed by a series of specialist studies focusing on local government finance, management skills, local economic development, housing, and the relationship between elected and appointed officials. The book concludes with a study of how Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union can learn from the experiences of local government in the West.

As well as offering a series of authoritative and original studies, this collection makes some significant contributions to the on-going theoretical debate about the nature of local democracy in a free society. It will be welcomed by students of East European politics, visitors and consultants working in the region, and by politicians, administrators and academics in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union who are themselves struggling to bring change to their local communities, and who need to understand how others are tackling problems similar to their own.