How important are local governments for local government researchers?

Local government studies are not a separate academic discipline but rather (often peripheral) parts of “mother disciplines” such as political science, urban geography, economics, sociology etc. The paper traces how important part of research activity of academics having reputation of leading local government experts is devoted to local government studies. Empirically the paper is based on 30 in-depth interviews with selected scholars as well as on quantitative analysis of publication records of 130 local government scholars in eight European countries.