Examining Regional Autonomy through Policies: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Examining Regional Autonomy through Policies: Evidence from the Czech Republic

Summary/Abstract: Scholarly research on regional politics has been gradually shifting from the institutional descriptions of the past decades to detailed examinations of the real manifestations of self-governance. The so-called second generation of research on multi-level governance emphasizes the policy dimension and conditions for autonomous decision-making, an approach offering greater analytical depth. In this article, this approach is applied to the neglected case of the Czech Republic and is especially fruitful due to the country’s mixed model of administration, which combines the principles of decentralization and deconcentration. Examined by the example of the South Moravian Region, the Czech regional level of self-governance is identified as significantly weak in almost all policy areas. There is extremely limited space for autonomous political decision-making, mostly in the form of mere financial investment, not direct regulation.

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