Processes of European Defragmentation as an Inspirative Tool for Policymaking

This paper looks at the different stages of European municipal defragmentation and at the diverse models that post-war countries have adopted for their municipal structures. It notes that defragmentation has been undertaken with little previous knowledge regarding the possible impacts of these approaches. Through applying the QCA method of analysis it looks at common and distinct features of these approaches and draws a sharp dichotomy between defragmentation trends in post-communist countries and countries of the Western bloc. By showing that there are trends intrinsic to post-communist political systems, this paper presents that these systems can learn from errors made by countries that approached municipal defragmentation before. Drawing on the example of the late-defragmenting Iceland, this paper shows how currently or prospectively defragmenting countries can learn from its experience. In the last part of the paper, suggestions are made with regard to how the Czech Republic can learn from this experience.