Governments of the Cities and System of the Local Government

Abstract

The paper first gives an overview of the literature on metropolitan government in developed countries, and in the second part focuses on the urban governments of the cities with county rights ("large cities") in Hungary. The main conclusion of the paper is that large cities have a decisive role in the regional system of Hungary. The major changes of the intergovernmental fiscal relations in the last 15 years have been influenced by the conflict between the central government and large cities (and Budapest) because of the relatively good position of latter. The large cities have been the main beneficiaries of the sectoral development programs (wa- ter, housing, transportation, etc.), and serve as 'natural growth poles' of regional develop- ment. The political lobbying of large cities was strong enough not only to roll back the county municipalities an to deactivate the regional reforms proposals.