Administrative Reform of Portuguese Civil Parishes 2013
Reflections from the case of the Algarve
Keywords:
territorial reform, public policy, local authorities, civil parish, AlgarveAbstract
This paper discusses the territorial reform in Portuguese parishes in 2013 following the bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission (Troika). The purpose of this paper is (i) to frame the reform of the parishes in Portugal in the trends of reorganization at the local level in European countries in recent decades; (ii) to situate the aggregation at the national scale, integrating it in the Reform of Local Administration of the XIX Government (2011-2015); (iii) to analyze, from the Algarve, the changes in the exercise of its powers, in the provision of services to the population and in the relationship with the municipality; (iv) to discuss the results achieved.
The methodology is based on the literature review on local territorial reforms in European countries, on the critical reading of the national process, and the empirical approach is based on the perspective of the elected representatives, based on semi-structured interviews with all the mayors of the aggregated parish councils in the Algarve.
The top-down aggregation process applied in the country triggered in the region a reaction of sharing and collaboration between parishes, reducing tensions and fractures between communities (but, in other situations, exposing old divisions or fractures). The new map is assimilated, but criticism remains and two reversals have already occurred.
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