A student who passed this course will be able to:
critically analyse current reform proposals for local governments by examining the content of the discourse on "public interest" adopted by those proposals.
locate the reform proposals and the challenges before local governments to their proper historical context.
identify the current (and future) challenges for local government practice by detecting their roots in the processes of urbanisation.
formulate and produce nuanced, empirically oriented research papers to examine:
the dynamics that shape the relations between central and local governments (and thus dynamics of local government reform)
administrative issues underlying organisational arrangements in local governments
how civil society/business and local government relations could shape the practice of local governments.