Between EU Requirements, Competitive Politics, and National Traditions: Re-creating Regions in the Accession Countries of Central and Eastern

Europe
MARTIN BRUSIS* The article studies the impact of the European Union (EU) on the reforms of regional administration in Central and East European (CEE) accession countries. It analyzes the motives, process and outcomes of regional- or mesolevel administrative reforms in ve countriesBulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakiaconsidering whether the EU has shaped these reforms to a higher degree than in relation to its incumbent member states. The article nds that the EU Commissions interest in regional self-governments with a substantial scal and legal autonomy has provided an additional rationale and an incentive to re-create regional selfgovernments. Advocates of regional self-government and an institutionalization of regions in the accession countries have referred to European trends and (perceived) EU expectations of regionalization. Thus, the Commission and the preaccession framework have become catalysts for a process in which most CEE regions have already enhanced and will further increase their political salience. However, the trajectories and outcomes of regionallevel reforms can be better explained by a combination of domestic institutional legacies, policy approaches of reformers and their adversaries, and the inuence of ethnic/historical regionalism.

INTRODUCTION

Many Central and East European countries (CEECs) are currently rebuilding their regional levels of public administration. These reforms occur in the context of the preparation for the accession to the European Union (EU) and aim at creating the administrative capacities for the implementation of EU legislation. In particular, Central and East European governments intend to enable regional administrative bodies to participate in the management of the EU Structural Funds, which are envisaged to become the main instrument of EU economic assistance after an applicant country has joined the EU. In this perspective, the rearrangement of the regional level constitutes a crucial part of the Europeanization process that governments and public administrations of the Central and East
*Center for Applied Policy Research, University of Munich Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 15, No. 4, October 2002 (pp. 531559). 2002 Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK. ISSN 0952-1895

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European countries are currently undergoing. At the same time, it is caused by the need to establish a modern intermediate level of administration that links local self-government and central government levels, which were both democratized during the political transition in the early nineties and have hitherto been subject to administrative reform. This article seeks to contribute to the Europeanization debate by focusing on the impact of the EU accession constellation on regional-level administrative reforms in CEE accession countries. It analyzes the motives, steps, and outcomes of regional- or mesolevel administrative reforms in ve countriesBulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakiain greater detail and tries to identify the role of the EU and its preaccession policy in generating these outcomes. These countries were selected because they are similar insofar as they have a communist past, dene themselves as unitary states, prepare for EU membership, and are faced with the task of reforming public administration in the context of their postcommunist transformation. The sample includes both countries expected to join the EU in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) and Bulgaria as a prospective later entrant, in order to test whether EU policies differ between the two groups. The analysis does not cover all ten CEECs mainly due to the lack of sufciently detailed empirical knowledge, but occasional references to other CEECs are made. The aim is to assess whether and to what extent EU governance or the interplay of domestic legacies, actor constellations, and policy approaches have shaped the conguration of the new regional administrative bodies. The paper starts with an overview of the debates on the Europeanization and regionalization trends induced by European integration. The second section maps differences and similarities among the institutional arrangements the ve CEECs have established as their regions. The third section develops an explanatory framework that explores the inuence of policy objectives, conditions, and expectations communicated by the EU, national institutional legacies, competing objectives of major political actors, and the salience of historic and ethnic regionalism in shaping regional-level reforms. The conclusion evaluates the inuence of the EU in shaping reform outcomes.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE EUROPEANIZATION DEBATE

With respect to Western European countries, numerous studies have analyzed how the emerging European level of governance shifts the attention and participation of national political actors towards the EU arena and how the transfer of powers to the European level restricts policy choices or reinforces certain political-institutional developments (cf., e.g., Hix and Goetz; Mny, Muller, and Quermonne). Two subelds of this Europeanization debate are particularly relevant to the aim of this paper. The rst refers to the change of national polities and administrations; the

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second is concerned with the strengthening of subnational regions under the inuence of the EU policy process. In the rst debate, some authors have contended that the constitutional and institutional arrangements of member states arealbeit slowly and partiallyconverging towards one common model, since, in response to similar challenges faced in the EU policy-process, member states have to implement reforms and adaptations leading in a similar direction. Such a convergence could be observed with respect to common trends towards regionalization, strong sectorization, high administrative coordination, and a reduction of parliamentary inuence (Rometsch and Wessels, 36, 329, 345). In contrast to the convergence thesis, other studies have emphasized the persisting relevance of national constitutional traditions and structures (Schwarze, 544) or of mediating domestic institutions (Green Cowles, Caporaso, and Risse, 231234). It has been shown that the national implementation of EU legislation depends on the level of adaptation pressure perceived in the member states. Adaptation pressure increases if EU regulations affect national institutional arrangements that are deeply embedded in the national administrative traditions (Knill). The impact of the EU on national administrations is only one among several driving forces of institutional change that tend to be underestimated by Europeanization studies (Goetz). A study on the Europeanization of small West European states concludes that the governments of these states have adapted to European integration by changing their administrative structures in an incremental and ad hoc way, building upon pre-existing domestic traditions and arrangements (Hanf and Soetendorp). This debate raises the question of whether the administrative structures of the applicant countries converge with best or shared practice in the EU or whetherand howEU inuences are moderated by national institutional arrangements and traditions. It is easy to develop a strong argument for institutional convergence in the accession process: 1. Since the democratic transitions, the postcommunist countries have undergone what may be termed as an imitative transformation, copying successful institutions from existing Western models (cf., e.g., Jacoby). 2. The simultaneity of transformation, coping with EU requirements, and an accelerated diffusion of innovations through international agencies and regimes exerts a particularly high adaptation pressure on applicant countries, leaving them little time to try and rene endogenous institutions. 3. Since the applicant countries are more interested in joining the EU than vice versa, the EU has a particularly strong bargaining position in the accession process, being able to shape the procedures and norms of this process unilaterally (Grabbe). Accession preparation

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implies adopting the complete body of EU norms, which represents a mandatory adaptation without the possibility to inuence the rules to which the accession country has to adapt (Grabbe; Lippert and Becker, 59). The Copenhagen European Council of 1993 introduced additional broad political and economic criteria for EU membership that reach beyond a mere transposition of norms and endow the EU with an encompassing mandate to monitor, control, and guide policy-making in the accession countries. The Accession Partnerships adopted by the EU establish priorities for the accession preparation that transcend the obligations deriving from the acquis communautaire and that envisage sanctions in case of noncompliance (Grabbe). Thus, the Europeanization pressure faced by the accession countries appears even stronger than in the case of the EU member states. Accordingly, there seem to be stronger incentives and pressures for institutional convergence. Recent studies on the impact exerted by the EU accession on national polities and administrations of accession countries have argued that the relations between the applicant countries and the EU are dominated by the concept of convergence on the path of integration (Lippert and Becker, 5859; Lippert, Umbach, and Wessels, 1003). A study on the adaptation of governments in the Visegrd countries to the EU observed that the decision-making and implementation mechanism of the Phare program generated converging institutional structures and triggered administrative streamlining of the centers of government (Rupp). The second debate refers to the growing political salience of regions induced and encouraged by European integration. The most important policy framework has been the EU cohesion policy, with its notion of a partnership between national, regional, and local government (Hooghe). The European Commission has involved the regions of EU member states in policy deliberation and formulation in order to gain their support for its policies. Several scholars have argued that the EU changes the intrastate relationship between central government and regions by mobilizing regions and enabling them to use the EU as a source of political and economic support (Bullmann; Jones and Keating; Marks, Nielsen, Ray, and Salk). More recent studies have shown that the regional mobilization effect induced by the EU is differentiated, depending on the power resources of regions in the different national contexts of federal/regionalized or unitarian member states (Benz and Eberlein; Brzel, 593; Jeffery), or on the existence of regional policy communities advocating an entrepreneurial approach of regional development (Kohler-Koch; Smyrl). The EUand, in particular, the EU Commissionhave been described as self-interested in promoting a Europe of the Regions (Hooghe; Tmmel 1998). Since the regional levels of government in EU member states strongly vary in their legal status, set of administrative functions,

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and political weight, and since member states have been considering their regional-level institutions as integral elements of their national constitutional order, there is no consensual and codied acquis of common rules with respect to regional government. Lacking harmonized, formal rules, the Commission has triggered increased policy-making activities of the regions by indirect and underformalized methods (Tmmel 1997). This debate suggests that the accession process is likely to cause a growing political role of regions in the CEEC, especially if one takes into account the strong power position of the EU in the accession constellation, enabling it to more forcefully promote a model of multilevel governance. The moderating and differentiating effects of national constitutional orders and the distribution of powers they have established between levels of government may be less salient, since the constitutional status of regions in accession countries is less settled than in the consolidated EU member states. Both debates provide support for the hypothesis that the EU shapes the course and outcomes of mesolevel reforms in Central and Eastern Europe to a higher degree than in relation to its incumbent member states. However, they also lend support for a competing explanation that emphasizes the persistence of national diversity. This article tests these hypotheses by studying the policy actions of the EU in relation to other explanatory variables taken from the research on the postcommunist transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Before the inuence of these variables is explored, the following section describes and classies the changes in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES IN MESOLEVEL REFORMS ACROSS ACCESSION COUNTRIES

Public attention and political debate in the accession countries have mainly focused on the territorial changes linked to the new administrative bodies. In Poland and Slovakia, for example, the number and boundaries of regions (wojewdztwo and kraj) have been highly controversial among politicians. While the territorial aspects of regional administration reforms have become the most visible issues, the core problems of the reforms are democratic accountability and effective governance. Up to now, administrative reforms have progressed to a different extent in each country, leading to institutional arrangements that are not yet consolidated (for an overview, see Table 1). An important condition and constraint of the reforms is that all accession countries dene themselves as unitary states. Only the Czech Republic and Poland have a second parliamentary chamber with electoral systems facilitating a representation of district and regional interests, respectively.1 However, the second chambers are not linked to regional self-governments in either country. There is a linkage only insofar as the

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TABLE 1 Differences and Similarities of Regional Government Bulgaria Representation of regions in national legislatures No Czech Republic Senate (81 seats, directly elected in electoral districts largely coinciding with administrative districts) 14 kraj since 2001, average 737,000 inhabitants, 5,633 km2 Yes; kraj assembly directly elected, four-year-term, since 2000 Yes No Hungary Poland Senate (100 seats, directly elected in voivodships according to party lists) No Slovakia

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Number and size of regional governments

28 oblast since 1/1999, average 317,000 inhabitants, 3,964 km2 No

19 megye, average 537,000 inhabitants, 4,895 km2

16 wojewdztwo since 1999, average 2.416 million inhabitants, 19,544 km2 Yes; wojewdztwo assembly directly elected, fouryear-term, since 1999 Yes

8 kraj since 1996, average 672,000 inhabitants, 6,129 km2 Yes; kraj assembly and head of kraj directly elected, four-year-term, beginning in 2002 Yes

Regional selfgovernment

Yes; megye assembly directly elected, fouryear-term, since 1994 Yes

Regional tier of state administration

Yes

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Relationship of regional selfgovernment and state administration District selfgovernment

Integration

Separation

Separation

Separation

No; 279 rayon, rayon assembly of delegates from local selfgovernments 4,032 obchina; mayors elected directly

No; 77 okres; okres assembly of delegates from local selfgovernments 6,242 obec; mayors elected by council

No; districts as bodies of public administration

Yes; 372 powiat; powiat assembly elected directly

No; 79 okres, no institutional participation of local selfgovernments ca. 3,335 obec; mayors elected directly

Local selfgovernment

3,071 nkormnyzat; mayors elected directly (small towns) and by council 7 statistical regions since 10/1999

2,459 gmina; mayors appointed by council

NUTS-2 regions

6 statistical regions since 6/2000

8 statistical regions since 12/1998

16 voivodships qualify as NUTS-2 regions

4 statistical regions (provisional)

537

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Czech regional assemblies have a right to submit bills to Parliament. Both the Czech and the Polish second chamber have not yet found their role within the emerging new administrative set-up. Their necessity is questioned, and Senate elections in both countries have had very low turnouts. Regional self-governments exist in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. Only Bulgaria considers its regions (oblasty) an integral part of the state administration and has not established legal prerequisites for self-governments at the regional level. In the other four countries studied here, regional self-governments are institutionally independent bodies of public law, performing self-governmental as well as state administrative tasks. Accordingly, regionsor, to use a term focusing on the institutional setup, countiesconsist of a state representative and a self-governing organ. Hungarian county assemblies already have a certain tradition, since they were elected directly by citizens in 1994 and for a second term in 1998. In contrast, the rst direct elections to Polish county assemblies took place in October 1998, and the rst direct elections to the assemblies of the Czech and Slovak counties were held in November 2000 and December 2001, respectively. The size of the regional units in the ve countries studied here varies considerably. The newly established Polish counties (wojewdztwo) are by far the biggest units, with an average population of 2,416,000 inhabitants and an average territory of 19,544 km2. Hungarian counties (megye) and the new Slovak and Czech counties (kraj) range between 537,000 and 737,000 inhabitants, and Bulgarian counties are approximately half as big. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia increased the number of regional administrative units in the course of their reforms, while Hungary has maintained its inherited administrative-territorial division. Poland reduced the number of counties, but this reduction was supplemented by the creation of a new, lower tier of districts (powiat). The district level of administration between the county and the local self-governments differs strongly across the countries studied here: Hungary does not have a district level of public administration, Poland has introduced self-governed districts with directly elected assemblies, and the districts in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are part of the state administration. Contrary to the district and county level, local government reform was perceived as a priority of democratization by the new political elites in Central and Eastern Europe (Baldersheim, Illner, and Offerdal; Horvth). Immediately after the political transition, the newly elected parliaments and governments established statutes of local self-governments and held local elections. Those countries which have already established regional self-governments tried to refrain from subordinating local (and, in Poland, district) self-governments to the new regional self-governments. The general intention of the reformers was to avoid a re-centralization of powers; rather, regional self-governments usually have received competences of existing state administrative bodies.

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Deconcentrated sectoral and territorial state administration has been integrated with regional self-governments to a different extent in each country. County and district self-governments in Poland took over many functions from regional bodies of the general territorial state administration and from the regional units of sectoral ministries, but they are institutionally separated from the state administration. Self-government and state administration have historically been most clearly separated in Slovakia and the Czech Republic (Koudelka). Slovakias legislation of 2001 established an institutional separation of county assemblies and county ofces of state administration. In contrast, the Czech Republic decided on an integrated model in which elected representatives have discretion over the organization and personnel of regional state administration. Hungary has established numerous coordinating institutions between its institutionally separate tiers of self-government and territorial and sectoral state administration (e.g., regional development councils, county labor market councils) (Bende-Szab). Since specic and comparable data are missing and the scope of regional government has not yet been fully dened in most countries, the competences of regional governments cannot be compared here. Supervisory powers appear to be regulated very similarly in all ve countries studied for this article. As a rule, local self-governments may deal with all local public affairs that are not explicitly assigned to the state administration or higher levels of self-government, based upon a law. Apart from this encompassing competence, local self-governments carry out tasks of state administration that are transferred to them (transferred competences). Usually, the representative of the state administration at the county level exercises only the legal supervision of county (in Poland, district as well) and local self-governments, and specialized audit ofces ensure a nancial control. Until 1997, administrative de-centralization was not paralleled by scal de-centralization, as World Bank (216217)/International Monetary Fund data on subnational government budgets between 1990 and 1997 indicate. According to the World Bank, the share of subnational government in total public expenditure rose only in Hungary, and subnational government increased its share of the total tax revenue only in Hungary and Lithuania. This corresponds to the assessment that Hungary has been a frontrunner in de-centralization (Baldersheim, Illner, and Offerdal; Illner). Compared to West European countries, expenditure levels ranged between that of Portugal and France (11.6% and 18.6% of total public expenditure in 1997) on the one side and Sweden and Denmark (36.2% and 54.5%) on the other. Meanwhile, all ve countries have created statistical and planning regions that correspond to the Nomenclature des Units Territoriales Statistiques (NUTS) levels in the current EU member states.2 This comparative classication of administrative-territorial units is used to identify regions eligible for assistance from the Structural Funds. NUTS-2

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regions are required for the so-called objective-1 assistance, which is targeted at regions with an average per-capita gross domestic product of less than 75% of the EU average and amounts to two-thirds of the total structural assistance. After accession, most of the territory of the new member states will become eligible for objective-1 support, which is allocated to programs based upon NUTS-2 regions. NUTS-3 regions are the basis for objective-2 support, which is provided for regions facing socioeconomic change (cf. European Commission 1999a, Articles 34). NUTS-2 regions of EU member states have an average population of 1.8 million and an average territory of 15,700 km2, and they participate in the structural policy of the EU. Regions of such a size are in contrast with the traditional small-scale administrative-territorial structures of the accession countries and contradict the tendency of postsocialist reformers in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland to subdivide previously integrated territorial units.3 Only Poland, the largest country of the ve, was able to create regional self-governments that match the NUTS-2 level in size. The new counties established in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Hungarian counties are much smaller and correspond only to NUTS-3. The precise legal status of the newly established NUTS regions is still subject to discussion. The Czech government has created NUTS-2compatible cohesion regions, with corresponding councils that consist of representatives elected from the county assemblies. In June 2000, the Bulgarian government adopted a decree to create NUTS-2-compatible regions, each endowed with an interministerial Commission for Economic and Social Cohesion that is to perform a consultative function. In addition, the Regional Development Law of March 1999 set up countylevel councils for regional development to assist governors. The county councils are chaired by governors; they consist of mayors of the municipalities and one member of each municipal council. Slovakia created a provisional classication of four NUTS-2-compatible regions and, in 2002, established regional monitoring committees composed of delegates from the local and regional self-governments, state administration, and regional socioeconomic partners. Hungary established macroregions with regional development councils in October 1999 on the basis of preceding voluntary structures.
TOWARDS AN EXPLANATION OF REFORM PATHS AND OUTCOMES

The overview of the preceding section has shown that mesolevel administrative reforms in the ve Central and East European countries under discussion display similarities in their general orientation but differ across countries according to preconditions, the scope of reform measures, their sequencing, and their outcomes. In order to assess the EU inuence on reform trajectories and outcomes, one has to relate it to other possible determining factors and to distinguish it from their impact. This poses an analytical problem, since reform measures may be overdetermined by EU

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and domestic factors acting in parallel, and domestic political actors may use EU requirements and advice instrumentally to legitimize their own policy objectives. This section addresses this difculty. First, it analyzes EU policy actions concerning the regions of the accession countries in more detail, assuming that EU behavior is very closely observed in the accession countries and that policy messages communicated by the EU matter to the background of the preaccession constellation. Second, it draws on the body of research on the postcommunist transformation and comparative government in Central and Eastern Europe and studies the explanatory power of determinants identied in this literature. If these determinants explain reform outcomes and trajectories with sufcient plausibility, it is assumed that the EU has not had a signicant inuence. On the basis of studies comparing institutional change, public administration reform, and de-centralization in the Central and East European countries, one may distinguish three main variables. First, historical legacies of the state socialist and presocialist times, together with the legacy of the democratic transition, provide institutional constraints for the protagonists of administrative reform and inuence their choices (Crawford and Lijphart; Hesse 1993, 1997; Illner; Wollmann 1995, 1997). The competition between political actors with centralist and localist policy approaches constitutes the second variable (Hesse 1997; Illner). The third variable refers to the existence and impact of historical or ethnic regionalismthat is, regionalist identities, mobilization, and the perception of regionalism for the political context and the outcomes of mesolevel reform (Hughes, Sasse, and Gordon; Keating and Loughlin). Policy Concepts and Preferences of the European Union The EU institutions neglected regions of the accession countries until 1997. The Commissions White Paper of 1995, for example, pointed to the general necessity of administrative capacity-building but did not refer to the restructuring of administration at the regional level. In March 1997, a Commission expert still suggested eschewing an overtaxing of regional administrations by restricting the participation of prospective new member states in the Cohesion Fund, which is administered only by the national governments (Hallet, 27, 29). This reluctance was grounded in developmental economics: assisting backward regions would imply a redistribution of resources from prosperous regions and thus impede their development, slowing down the national economys growth (Hallet, 25). However, following this suggestion and excluding new member states from the Structural Funds would have implied negotiating a temporary exemption with the accession countries or renegotiating the general framework of structural policy. The Agenda 2000 did not opt for such an approach; instead, it reinforced the principle according to which accession candidates were to adopt the entire acquis communautaire at the

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moment of their accession, including all rights and obligations (European Commission 1997). The Commission responded to the economic criticism insofar as it suggested dividing the cohesion policy resources for new member states on the basis of a 1 : 2 relation between the Cohesion Fund and the Structural Funds (the current size relation of the funds is approximately 1 : 10).4 The principle of adopting the entire acquis upon accession implied that accession countries needed to improve their administrative capacities at the regional level in order to manage Structural Funds (Brusis). Thus, the EU directed an increasing part of the Phare resources to prepare the countries for this task in the framework of preaccession assistance. In addition, technical assistance was provided in the framework of the twinning program. Regional development institutions and administrative capacitybuilding became a priority in the rst Accession Partnerships, adopted in March 1998. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia were explicitly asked to establish the administrative structures and budgetary procedures of a regional policy that would allow them to participate in EU structural policy after accession. In its updated Accession Partnerships from December 1999, the Council called upon Slovakia and the Czech Republic to adopt and implement public administration reform programs and upon Bulgaria to improve its institutions of nancial control, including regional control bodies. While the Accession Partnerships constitute unilateral decisions of the Council, which the applicant countries are expected to reect in their National Programmes for the Adoption of the Acquis, the annual regular reports of the Commission serve to evaluate the progress made by the applicants in implementing Accession Partnerships and national programs. The Commissions opinion on the membership applications from July 1997 (avis) and the regular reports from November 1998, October 1999, and November 2000 assessed the state of administrative reforms in each country and gave some policy advice, often veiled in opaque and diplomatic language (European Commission 1997, 1998, 1999b, 2000, 2001b). Over time, the reports have become more differentiated and have developed a code of graduated assessment and benchmarking. The Commissions remarks on regional administration indicate that its preference appears to be democratically elected regional selfgovernments that possess a substantial nancial and legal autonomy (cf. Fournier, 115). This preference, however, is expressed only indirectly and implicitly. In an interview in 2001, an advisor to the Commission described this as a soft expectation. The remainder of this section tries to trace this preference in those parts of the reports that refer to regional administrative bodies. Legal Autonomy of Local and Regional Authorities The Commission has been very cautious and has exercised restraint in openly stating its preferences with respect to the legal status of local and

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regional government, often conveying preferences only through factual statements.5 It noted, for example, that the higher units of territorial selfgovernment envisaged by the Czech constitution were lacking (1997) and had been established (2001). The Commissions opinion on Bulgaria (1997) expressed the expectation that the envisaged Bulgarian counties (established in January 1999) might be granted the right of self-government. With respect to Slovakia, the Commission (1997) criticized the fact that the newly established Slovak counties and districts received competences at the expense of local self-governments. This criticism, however, was placed in the context of an opinion regarding Slovakias failure to establish democratic stability that is, to meet the political criteria of Copenhagen. After the change of government in Slovakia, the Commission (1999b) recommended development of de-centralization and public administration reform. The government should pay attention to partnership with regional and local partners (European Commission 2000, 65). For Bulgaria and Hungary, the 2001 report stressed that genuine partnership structures should be established at the regional level. The Commissions 1999 (1999b, 13) report on Poland praised the new territorial-administrative structure that will provide signicant opportunities for economic and democratic development at all levels of Polish society. Financial Autonomy of Local and Regional Authorities While the Commission took the view that local self-governments would require sufcient nancial resources to make use of their autonomy, it did not formulate a specic expectation with respect to the extent of scal autonomy. The 1997 report on the Czech Republic noted that local selfgovernments would still face difculties in using their autonomy, since two-thirds of their budget depended on state subsidies. In 2000 (19), the Commission stated that [I]mportant decisions remain to be taken regarding the nancing and stafng of the de-centralization process. For Hungary, the Commission (2000, 14) observed that the reduction of the local government share in the personal income-tax revenues (from 13.5% to 5%) proved that the gap between the political autonomy granted to the local governments and their nancial autonomy increased further. In the Commissions (1997) opinion, the autonomy of Polish local and regional governments was still restricted and should be expanded, particularly in its nancial aspects. Relationship between State Administration and Self-Government The Commission statements did not explicitly suggest a transfer of powers from state administration to local and regional self-governments, but they often demanded a clarication of the distribution of powers. For example, the 2001 and 1997 reports on Slovakia called upon the gov-

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ernment to clarify the division of powers between state administration and self-governments. In Poland, the division of responsibilities between the chairmen of the county assemblies and the county governors, the representatives of the state administration, needed clarication and a clear division of responsibilities (European Commission 2000, 2001). The 2000 report on the Czech Republic noted progress insofar as the act on the counties extended delegation of state administration to county self-governments. Administrative-Territorial Division The Commission expected the accession countries to dene regions corresponding to the NUTS classication, but it remained vague on whether this would require changes to the territorial-administrative structures, too. With respect to Poland, the Commission (1997) recommended that the division of the state territory needed to be improved in order to implement Structural Funds. The 1998 progress report noted that Bulgaria planned to establish 28 counties, Poland had decided to establish selfgoverned regions and districts, and the Czech Parliament had decided to establish 14 regions. Sinceperhaps althoughthese factual statements were not further qualied, one can assume that they expressed a cautiously positive acknowledgement of a progress and of its relevance. The Commission requested clarication of the status of NUTS regions, but did not express a preference as to whether the level of the political bodies representing a region should be NUTS-2 or NUTS-3 (European Commission 1999b on Bulgaria and the Czech Republic; European Commission 2000 on Hungary). The 2000 report on Hungary appreciated that the importance of regions corresponding to NUTS-2 was increased by an amendment to the regional development law. The Commission (2000) also seemed to support the reintegration of overly fragmented municipalities into larger unitsfor example, Hungarys policy of forming microregions of small municipalities. Summarizing the assessments and statements, one may conclude that the Commission has been very cautious in its advice and has avoided urging a comprehensive regionalization. It has been more explicit: (1) where the acquis provides a more specic mandate, such as in the case of nancially independent local and regional authorities; (2) where points of reference exist in international law (e.g., the European Charter for Local Self-Government) or in national law (e.g., the Czech Constitution on higher territorial units); and (3) where a broad international scientic consensus exists (e.g., the need for a professional career-based civil service, separation of politics and administration). EU policy has largely remained in the realm of implicit suggestions, unofcial statements, and off-therecord advice as far as the need for regional self-government, the constitutional status of regional authorities, and the administrative-political institutionalization of NUTS-2 regions are concerned.

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Presocialist, State Socialist, and Transition Legacies Administrative reform in Central and Eastern Europe did not take place by implementing the blueprints of international advisors or domestic policy planners in an institutional vacuum. Rather, reform has been shaped by the institutional and cultural legacies of the presocialist times, the authoritarian state socialism, and the transition phase. An important presocialist legacy is the dualist model of public administration, dating back to the municipal statutory law of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy (1862) (Illner, 1415). According to this model, which was applied in the Czech lands, Hungary, and Galicia (the southeastern region of Poland), powers of self-government and state administration were considered to be of separate origin and were vested in separate tiers of state administration and self-administration.6 After 1989, the dualist model inuenced the conceptual thinking on administrative reform, particularly in Czechoslovakia and its successor republics, since reforms of the regional level were framed as questions of how to balance elements of amalk). In contrast, state administration and self-government (cf., e.g., S regional administration in Bulgaria lacks the dualist legacy and instead reects the legacy of a prefectoral system inuenced by Russian and French examples. The state socialist legacy of state administration consisted of a politicization of decision-making and administrative staff, the restriction of professional autonomy, the absence of detailed legal regulation guiding administrative action, and the discretionary application of legal provisions (cf., e.g., Hesse 1993). In an attempt to modernize and centralize state administration, the state socialist governments of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had already embarked on reforms of the administrative division of their territories. Czechoslovakia reduced the number of districts and counties and centralized competences in 1960. With its reforms of 1975, the Polish government abolished district-level bodies of administration and increased the number of counties from 17 to 49 (Taras, 2223). In 1984, Hungary also abolished its districts (jrsok) and shifted competences to the county level. Due to the power-stabilizing political intentions linked to these earlier state socialist reforms, the new democratically elected governments perceived regional-level administrative bodies as relics of authoritarian rule. As a consequence, in 1990 Czechoslovakian reformers decided to dissolve the county-level bodies in order to strengthen the autonomy of local selfgovernments. This was facilitated by the persistence of an established district-level state administration. Hungarian reformers, who were faced with the same option of dissolving the mesolevel administration, could not presuppose a separate district-level tier. The Polish government also refrained from dissolving the county level but reintroduced a district level (rejon) in 1990, which corresponded to the old district units of the pre1975 period.

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A different legacy results from the fact that Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria had orthodox state socialist systems until 198990, while the pretransitional state socialist systems of Poland and Hungary are better described as liberalizing authoritarian regimes. Thus, the latter two countries could draw from a longer conceptual debate on administrative de-centralization and local self-government. The Solidarity trade union movement in Poland had traditionally emphasized local self-government as an important dimension of civil society and an instrument to build democracy (Benzler). Accordingly, in 1991 the National Assembly of SelfGovernments proposed to dissolve the counties and transfer their powers to district and local self-governments. Reform-socialist Hungarian incumbents and the countrys mainly intellectual opposition circles had criticized the countys administrative tutelage over municipalities and agreed in the resolve to introduce strong democratic local self-governments (Pln Kovcs). This may explain why Hungary rearranged its regional-level institutions immediately after the political transition and set up elected county self-governments in 1994. Hungary was much faster than Poland in implementing reforms because the successive Polish governments during the rst years after the transition lacked a stable parliamentary basis and were preoccupied to a larger extent with consolidating their power. Another explanation for the differing progress of reforms refers to the transition legacies constituted by the different paths of transition. Since the Polish transition was based upon negotiated power-sharing between Solidarity and the state socialist regime, the Solidarity-led government had to conne itself to the re-establishment of local self-governments, refraining from a comprehensive reform of the county level (Benzler, 322323; Illner). In Hungary, the early split of the opposition movement in the course of the liberalization and transition supported a policy characterized by compromise and incrementalism (Fowler; Navracsics, 286287). The velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia provided the citizens movement of 1989 with the power and legitimacy to quickly abolish the regional administrative levels, which were considered to be one of the strongholds of the ancien regime (Illner; Malkov and Mihlikov; Vidlkov). Since Bulgaria experienced a delayed transition and the successor party of the former Communist Party managed to win the rst democratic parliamentary elections, the government could implement only gradual and reluctant reforms, leaving the county level by and large unchanged. Centralist versus Localist Policy Approaches The presence of institutionalized legacies has not predetermined all major decisions taken in the course of mesolevel reforms. Rather, decisive institutional choices have resulted from the interplay of political actors who were guided less by short-term electoral interests than by more consistent

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policy approachesthat is, sets of beliefs and ideas that legitimize political interests and link policy communities of parties, experts, and interest groups. While advocates of a centralist approach strove to maintain and/or widen the central governments nancial, legal, and political control over regional and local activities, supporters of a localist model aimed at increasing the autonomy of regional and local governments. In the early nineties, the parties emerging from the former dissident opposition advocated localist policy approaches, whereas the successor parties of the former state socialist parties were reluctant with regard to decentralization. Since then, the composition of localist (centralist) policy coalitions has differed across countries and does not correspond to the familiar labels of conservative, liberal, and social democratic parties. The delayed establishment of regional self-governments in the Czech Republic can be explained by the centralist policy of the government of Vclav Klaus, ruling the Czech Republic and dominating its political life until 1997. The Klaus government argued that economic reform should be treated as a priority and its implementation should thus not be impeded by administrative rearrangements (Vidlkov). Its reluctance to share powers with other actors and institutions was rooted in an economic interpretation of civil society. The Klaus government questioned the legitimacy of any intermediary political institution between state and citizen, including institutionally independent counties (Illner, 2526). This principal position was supported by the argument that only municipalities were legitimate units of territorial self-government at the subnational level. Higher-level self-governing entities should emerge from the voluntary association of municipalities in a bottom-up process, not by the articial creation of regional bodies from above. The centralist policy approach of Klaus was also reected in the opposition to reorganizing the Czechoslovak federation and to institutionalizing a co-operation between the Visegrd countries. The social democratic minority government of Miklos Zeman has been much more positive towards de-centralization, and it introduced regional self-governments in November 2000. The new Czech law on the selfadministered county linked counties to the second chamber of the Czech Parliament, insofar as it entitled the county assemblies to submit bills to the Senate. In Slovakia, the opposition between centralist and localist policy approaches became one of the main dividing lines in the power struggle between the government of Vladimr Mec iar and the opposition parties. The latter tried to strengthen local self-governments in order to create a countervailing power against the centralization attempts of the government in most spheres of society and politics. When the Mec iar government adopted the act on the creation of eight counties in 1996, it decided that the territorial-administrative division of the country should precede a transfer of powers to the county self-governments that were to be established (Brusis and Niz n ansky ). It redesigned district and county bound-

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aries largely regardless of the territorial units the municipalities had chosen by forming regional associations. After the opposition parties defeated Mec iar in 1998, the new government declared de-centralization one of its main policy priorities and has since embarked upon an ambitious, comprehensive administrative reform. To justify the need for de-centralization, the governments reform team referred to the subsidiarity principle of the EU Treaty, interpreting it as a principle to structure Slovakias domestic administrative setup and a decisive criterion for the accession negotiations with the EU (Government Ofce of the Slovak Republic, 4). The reformers also envisaged an element of a federal model by proposing to create a second chamber of delegates from the county assemblies. However, their concept was rejected not only by Mec iars party but also by parts of the governing coalition, which managed to add centralizing amendments when the parliament adopted the acts on the county self-governments and the elections to county self-governments in July 2001 (Niz n ansky and Kling). In Hungary, the broad localist coalition of the mid-1990s relieved the counties from their state-administrative and supervisory function and conned them to a mainly consultative role, transferring legal supervisory powers to the commissioners of the republic (Navracsics; Pln Kovcs). When the liberal opposition parties won the municipal elections of October 1990, the localist-centralist polarity re-emerged between local self-governments and the central government composed of conservative and Christian Democratic parties. The government, faced with this power constellation, transformed the commissioner of the republic into a governmental control organ of local self-governments and other bodies of state administration (Navracsics, 286287). After 1994, the socialist-liberal coalition government abolished the increasingly unpopular institution of the commissioner and tried to strengthen the county by introducing its direct election and acknowledging it as a territorial self-government (terleti nkormnyzat). This county-based approach was justied in terms of EU accession; but those aware of the shortcomings of the countybased conception also appealed to Europe (Fowler, 34). The conservative government led by Viktor Orbn has complemented this territorial-administrative structure by establishing statisticalplanning regions on a mandatory basis and microregions of small municipalities (kistrsgek). With its 1999 amendment to the 1996 Regional Development Law, the Orbn government leaned towards a more centralist approach, since it strengthened the representation of government in the regional development councils at the level of the seven statistical-planning regions. Supporters of a localist approach in Poland envisaged transferring state administration tasks to voivodship self-governments and abandoning most separate units of state administration at the local and regional level. This approach was, inter alia, advocated by the National Assembly of Self-Governments and aimed at a far-reaching de-centralization

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of powers (Instytut Spraw Publicznych). Some supporters of decentralization even proposed taking steps towards a federal model by transferring certain legislative competences to voivodship assemblies and transforming the Senate into a parliamentary chamber representing local self-governments. The Sejm majority rejected these proposals and refrained from linking the Senate with the new counties. According to the alternative, more centralist approach, voivodship selfgovernments should be restricted to tasks of regional development and a separate tier of state administration should be maintained. While the parties emerging from the Solidarity movement advocated a more comprehensive de-centralization, the postcommunist parties (the Democratic Left Alliance and the Polish Peasants Party) were reluctant to transfer state powers to voivodships and did not undertake steps to create directly elected voivodship self-governments during their period of government (Dawson; Regulski). The ensuing government, afliated with the former Solidarity, set the legislative basis of regional self-government. However, concerns of the major force in the governing coalition (Electoral Action Solidarity) about a too far-reaching de-centralization induced the government to reduce the powers of voivodship assemblies and to create 16 new voivodships instead of the initially envisaged 12 voivodships. The Bulgarian reform of public administration was dominated by a centralist policy approach, originating from the fact that the postsocialist Bulgarian Socialist Party won the free parliamentary elections of 1990 and 1994 and managed to stay in power until 1997, interrupted only by a brief opposition-led government in 199192 (Jepson). The opposition-led governments after 1997 were preoccupied with the deteriorating economic crisis and did not show an inclination to transfer powers to regions that ran the risk of political disintegration and obstruction (Borissova). In order to retain its commitment to scal discipline, the Bulgarian government has also been very reluctant to provide municipalities with more budgetary resources. Historical and Ethnic Regionalism Apart from the policy-related opposition between centralist and localist approaches, the existenceor perceived threatof regionalist political movements has been important for the political debates on regional-level administrative reforms. Theoretical and analytical conceptualizations of regionalism are faced with the problem of delineating precise analytic terms and identifying clear cause-effect relations (Keating and Loughlin). While awareness of the uid character of regionalisms and the blurred boundaries between their sources is needed, a distinction may be made between ethnic and historic bases of regionalism. Ethnic regionalism emerges if an ethnic groupwhose members consider their cultural identity as distinct from that of the other citizens of a stateand its political organizations link their main political demands to a subnational territor-

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ial unit, usually the territory inhabited by the group. Historic regionalism presupposes a territory with a particular history distinct from the rest of the countrys territory. The current inhabitants of that region may not necessarily consider themselves ethnically different from other citizens, but they link their identity to their regions history and articulate, through particular organizations, political demands related to their region. Among the ve countries studied here, only the Czech Republic and Poland are composed of subnational territorial units with a distinct history, such as Moravia, Silesia, Pomerania, and Greater Poland. One may identify an eastern and a western historical region in Hungary (Hunnia and Pannonia), but these regions ceased to exist as distinct units before a modern Hungarian nation-state was built in the course of the 19th century.7 After the political transition, political actors in the Czech Republic and Poland tried to claim regional interests and demands by referring to the historical regions. A Moravian political movement proposed to structure the Czech territory into the historical lands of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, but was subsequently marginalized and did not re-enter parliament in 1996. In Poland, groups linked to the National Assembly of SelfGovernments proposed the establishment of autonomous regions shaped according to historical regions and the introduction of federalist elements into the state structure. However, they were rejected by the majority of political parties, which, reacting to these tendencies and perceived risks, reinforced the commitment to unitarism in Polands Constitution of 1997. A basis for ethnic regionalism exists in those Central and East European countries that have a signicant and politically active national minority.8 Among the countries of this study, Slovakia has an ethnic Hungarian minority amounting to 10.8% of its population, and Bulgaria has an ethnic Turkish minority (9.4%). Only the ethnic Hungarian parties of Slovakia in 2000 proposed to design the boundaries of a county in southwestern Slovakia so as to coincide with the ethnic Hungarian settlement area, in continuity with their 1996 proposal to establish an autonomous region in that area (Brusis and Niz n ansky ). Neither the 1996 act on the administrative-territorial division nor the 2001 acts took into account the ethnic Hungarian proposals. The ethnic Turkish community in Bulgaria, which constitutes local majorities in the counties of Haskovo and Rousse and articulates its interests through the Movement of Rights and Freedoms, has so far not developed a similar concept of territorial autonomy. The general weakness of regionalism in Central and Eastern Europe may be explained by the incongruence of ethnic and historic regionalism: countries with signicant national minorities do not have regional units with a distinct history, and countries with historical regions lack groups identifying themselves as ethnically distinct from other citizens (see Table 2). The only cases among the ten Central and East European states are

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TABLE 2 Ethnic and Historic Preconditions of Regionalism Historic Regions since Nineteenth Century State with signicant national minorities (>10%) Homogenous nation-state (minorities <10%) Romania, Latvia Czech Republic, Poland No Modern Tradition of Regions Bulgaria, Estonia, Slovakia, Lithuania Hungary, Slovenia

Romania, which has a particular historical region (Transylvania) and a signicant ethnic Hungarian minority, and Latvia, with the distinct historical region of Latgale and a considerable ethnic Russian community. One may argue for the addition of Poland, with its ethnic German minority in Silesia, but this group amounts only to approximately 0.8% of the population and its representatives have not exerted a signicant political inuence on the outcomes of the mesolevel reform. The incongruence of regionalisms has impeded and prevented the mobilization of support for regionalist claims. Political actors have found it difcult to legitimize an ethnically based regional autonomy with historic reasons or to base claims derived from the historical distinctiveness of a region upon a distinct ethnic identity of its inhabitants.9 Governments have neither needed to respect regionalist interests nor been inclined to support regionalist mobilization by designing regional units accordingly. As a consequence, up to now, county territories in the countries of this study have been designed neither according to historic regions nor with respect to ethnic afliations. The disinclination towards triggering regionalist dynamics induced a parliamentary majority in Slovakia to make the entry of force of county regulations contingent upon prior government approval. For similar reasons, Polish and Czech governments refrained from linking the reform of their second parliamentary chambers to the creation of regional self-governments.
CONCLUSION

This article has described major similarities and differences in the reforms of regional administration implemented by Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. It has related reform trajectories and outcomes to four explanatory factors: policy concepts and preferences of the EU, domestic institutional legacies, policy approaches of reformers and their adversaries, and the political role of ethnic/historic regionalism. The results can be summarized as follows. The impact of the EU on regionalization processes in the accession countries has been diffuse and ambiguous. On the one hand, the Commission has by and large abstained from giving direct and public

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advice on how to structure the state territory, whether to establish elected regional self-governments, and how to institutionalize NUTS-2compatible regions. This restraint is guided by the principle that such questions belong to the internal affairs of EU member states and that there is no basis for an EU intervention in the treaties. On the other hand, the Commission has, inter alia through its progress reports, conveyed an EU preference for democratically elected regional self-governments with substantial nancial and legal autonomy. This preference may be explained by the EUs encompassing political commitment to democratic stability and the rule of law in the CEEC expressed in the Copenhagen criteria for membership. An additional argument for an active promotion of regionalization can be derived from the partnership principle guiding the management of EU Structural Funds. To become credible partners representing regional interests in program development and implementation, regional authorities need to have an autonomous standing. This rationale is fused with the rationale to set up NUTS-2 regionsthat is, regions sufciently large for generating endogenous development and comparable across Europein order to qualify as eligible areas for objective-1 support from the Structural Funds. The EU, the accession constellation, and the Commissions interest in regional self-governments with a substantial scal and legal autonomy have provided an additional rationale and an incentive structure for Czech and Slovak governments to re-create regional self-governments. The Hungarian government has used the EU context as a rationale to further institutionalize pre-existing macroregions and regional development councils. However, mesolevel reforms in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland, as well as the less far-reaching reforms in Bulgaria and Hungary, were mainly driven by an interest in public-sector reform that is, to link local self-governments and central government on the one hand and self-government and state administration on the other. Bulgaria has not created regional self-governments, not because of a different EU policy with respect to second-wave entrants but because Bulgarian public administration has been shaped by a centralist legacy and the dominance of centralist policy approaches. In the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia, governments refrained from implementing more far-reaching proposals of regionalization or federalization to avoid initiating any regionalist dynamics. The adoption of legislation on new counties in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia in 2000 and 2001 has been supported by the EU accession preparation and by perceived EU expectations. However, the timing of reforms in the Czech and the Slovak Republics was mainly determined by the fact that new governments with more localist policy approaches had entered ofce. The preaccession constellation was even less important for the timing of reforms in Hungary and Poland. Stronger localist coalitions and the reform-socialist legacy led to the early establishment of regional self-governments in Hungary, while political strug-

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gles and a stronger politicization of the issues in Poland delayed the agreement on a new administrative setup. Advocates of regional self-government and an institutionalization of regions in the accession countries have referred to rationales, European trends, and (perceived) EU expectations of regionalization. However, the point is that arguments referring to an EU-induced need for regionalization cut across the main policy cleavage of centralism-localism and have been used not only by political actors arguing for a greater decentralization of state tasks, but also by actors supporting, for example, a reintegration of local self-governments. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have created statistical and planning regions that correspond to the NUTS classication used in the EU. The creation of these units is a mandatory requirement for EU accession. However, the extent to which NUTS-2 regions are institutionalized differs strongly between the countries studied here. The weak position of NUTS-2-level institutions in all countries except Poland indicates that they constitute articial elements in the traditional (and re-created) territorial-administrative structure. The divergence of institutional arrangements also shows that the EU Commission did not seek to homogenize the status of these envisaged partnership institutions for the Structural Funds. It remains to be seen whether NUTS-2 regions in the accession countries will subsequently become further institutionalized, proving functional in enabling endogenous development and an economic catch-up process with the current EU member states. So far, the EU inuence in the preaccession constellation resembles the indirect impact the EU and the economic and political integration process have had on the re-emergence of regions in Western Europe. The Commission and the preaccession framework have become catalysts for a process in which most Central and Eastern European regions have already enhanced and will further increase their political salience. However, a process of institutional convergence has been discernible only with respect to the adoption of the formally codied components of the acquis communautaire. Regional administrative structures vary in detail and the re-creation of these structures has been strongly inuenced by a combination of domestic legacies, policy approaches, and political constellations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper originated in the framework of a project on the integration of Central and East European countries into the European Union, jointly managed by the Bertelsmann Science Foundation and the Centre for Applied Policy Research. Former versions were submitted to the journal Governance and presented at the biannual conference of the European Community Studies Association, May 2001, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. The author would like to express his particular thanks to the two anonymous

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referees of Governance, Vesselin Dimitrov, Claus Giering, Klaus Goetz, Heather Grabbe, Wim van Meurs, Hellmut Wollmann, and Radoslaw Zubek for their valuable comments and information.
NOTES 1. Apart from the Czech Republic and Poland, Romania and Slovenia are the only states in Central and Eastern Europe that have second chambers in their parliaments. While the Romanian Senate represents the regions, the Slovenian Senate is an institution of functional-interest representation, with representatives from employees and employers associations and other organizations of civil society (Ziemer 1996). The territories of EU member states are divided into ve statistical units according to the so-called Nomenclature des Units Territoriales Statistiques (NUTS). For example, the German Bundeslnder belong to NUTS-1 and the Regierungsbezirke constitute NUTS-2. This classication is not stipulated in European Community law, but it is used in the regulation of the Structural Funds and by the Statistical Ofce of the European Communities (Eurostat). These problems are known in Western Europe, where unitary member states have also had difculties in integrating NUTS-2 regions into their territorial-administrative setups. The United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, and Greece have established NUTS-2 regions mainly for the purpose of participating in EU structural policy (Bullmann, Goldsmith, and Page 1997, 135; Hooghe and Keating 1996, 224). Ireland, Denmark, and Luxemburg have not created NUTS-2 levels because Irelands entire territory was qualied as an objective-1 area and the other two countries lack eligible areas. The Commission also tried to reconcile regional development and national catch-up objectives: Where a whole country is eligible under Objective 1, however, the Structural Funds need to contribute to the development and structural adjustment of the whole national economy, though addressing at the same time regional disparities within the country (European Commission 2001a, 4). These policy messages are not only ambiguously formulated, but also misunderstood in the accession countries. In an internal document summarizing the experiences of twinning projects in the eld of cohesion policy, the Commission (2001b) noted a widespread misunderstanding in the accession countries, according to which the eligibility for Structural Funds would depend on a de-centralization of political and administrative structures. Note that the original dualist model of the municipal statutory law (Reichsgemeindegesetz) was inspired by ideas of enlightened authoritarianism and subsidiarity: The participation of citizens in state administration, corresponding to the participation in the legislation of the constitutional state, is not the principle dominating the self-administration of Austria. Rather, selfadministration rests on the principle of a maximum separation of tasks and functions of state administration and self-administration (Mischler and Ulbrich 1905, 502). It should be noted that historic nation-builders in Hungary created and preserved the megye division as a device to avoid the emergence of this and other ethnically based regionalisms. According to a classication proposed by Brunner (1996), a state is no longer considered a homogenous nation-state if the share of national minorities in the population is above 10%. Adapting this classication for the purposes of this article, only those national minorities amounting to approximately

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

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9.

10% of the population are considered signicant. The following gures are taken from the census data quoted in Brunners book. This linkage is weaker in Latvia than in Romania, because most of todays ethnic Russians were settled in the country after Latgale had lost its regional distinctiveness, and nowadays the ethnic Russian community is spread throughout the country, mostly living in cities.

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