Page 127 - RIMD_4
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127
R e v u ed el ’ I n s t i t u td uM o n d ee td udéveloppement
– The towns and communities did not win reputation in public and they were
very passive in relations to other subjects (e.g. to NGOs or private enterprises).
– At the beginning there was an idea that state should support those activi-
ties of local governments which are linked to investment in infrastructure,
environmental protection, and public-assistance dwellings. However, the
reality of the first half of 90’s shows that state did not accomplish these
functions at all. Moreover, system of state grants was insufficient, unfair,
and non-motivating.
– State did not have any clear and stable concept of system for a holding
of local government budgets on state taxes’ income (especially the so cal-
led residual method was utilized in that time). Due to such absence, local
governments could not develop any real strategic projects in that time.
– The most of the local government budgets receipts was unstable and
many of them were rather coincidental or irregular than regular.
– Because of both an absence of self-government units on a regional level
and a high number of delegated competences from state administration to
local self-government, the units of regional as well as district state adminis-
tration acted as supreme units in relation to the communities
Evenworseconditionswerecreatedforregionaldevelopment.Severalexpert
groups – for example expert group of the Association of Towns and Com-
munities of Slovakia (ZMOS), expert group of Ján Čarnogurský’s govern-
ment (1991-1992), or expert group of Vladimír Mečiar’s third government
(1994-1998) – prepared a few scenarios of division of Slovak territory into
the regional self-government units in the first half of the 1990s, and some
of them were even utilized in various government documents. However,
these proposals remained always in paper, and were never implemented in
practice. The widening of the “scissors” gap in development across regions
after 1989 was primarily the result of historically accumulating differences
in economic, demographic and socio-cultural potential. This was the result
of differences in the modernization in which some regions were bypassed
even by the technical aspects of modernization. Thus, regions with above-
average levels of fixed capital (in the sense of basic infrastructure) such as
Bratislava and its surroundings, Košice, Trnava, etc. contrasted extremely
sharply with other regions which are starkly “undercapitalized” such as
Čadca, Spišská Nová Ves, Nové Zámky, etc. However, it was also a result of
the inadequate regional policies of the central governments and of insuffi-
cient opportunities for regions to undertake their own development poli-
cies (Krivý, 1997, p. 289) during the whole period of the 1990s.
§4 – continuation of reform processes after 1998
Compared with the pre-election period, people started to perceive pro-
blems of politics and democracy as less urgent. However, at the same time,
o
RIMD–n 4–2013
R e v u ed el ’ I n s t i t u td uM o n d ee td udéveloppement
– The towns and communities did not win reputation in public and they were
very passive in relations to other subjects (e.g. to NGOs or private enterprises).
– At the beginning there was an idea that state should support those activi-
ties of local governments which are linked to investment in infrastructure,
environmental protection, and public-assistance dwellings. However, the
reality of the first half of 90’s shows that state did not accomplish these
functions at all. Moreover, system of state grants was insufficient, unfair,
and non-motivating.
– State did not have any clear and stable concept of system for a holding
of local government budgets on state taxes’ income (especially the so cal-
led residual method was utilized in that time). Due to such absence, local
governments could not develop any real strategic projects in that time.
– The most of the local government budgets receipts was unstable and
many of them were rather coincidental or irregular than regular.
– Because of both an absence of self-government units on a regional level
and a high number of delegated competences from state administration to
local self-government, the units of regional as well as district state adminis-
tration acted as supreme units in relation to the communities
Evenworseconditionswerecreatedforregionaldevelopment.Severalexpert
groups – for example expert group of the Association of Towns and Com-
munities of Slovakia (ZMOS), expert group of Ján Čarnogurský’s govern-
ment (1991-1992), or expert group of Vladimír Mečiar’s third government
(1994-1998) – prepared a few scenarios of division of Slovak territory into
the regional self-government units in the first half of the 1990s, and some
of them were even utilized in various government documents. However,
these proposals remained always in paper, and were never implemented in
practice. The widening of the “scissors” gap in development across regions
after 1989 was primarily the result of historically accumulating differences
in economic, demographic and socio-cultural potential. This was the result
of differences in the modernization in which some regions were bypassed
even by the technical aspects of modernization. Thus, regions with above-
average levels of fixed capital (in the sense of basic infrastructure) such as
Bratislava and its surroundings, Košice, Trnava, etc. contrasted extremely
sharply with other regions which are starkly “undercapitalized” such as
Čadca, Spišská Nová Ves, Nové Zámky, etc. However, it was also a result of
the inadequate regional policies of the central governments and of insuffi-
cient opportunities for regions to undertake their own development poli-
cies (Krivý, 1997, p. 289) during the whole period of the 1990s.
§4 – continuation of reform processes after 1998
Compared with the pre-election period, people started to perceive pro-
blems of politics and democracy as less urgent. However, at the same time,
o
RIMD–n 4–2013
