The National Concept for Settlement Network Development of 1971 and Some Western European Comparisons

The present study covers the issue of what similarities there are between the National Concept for Settlement Network Development (NCSND) of 1971 and the reform processes in the public administration of the time in a number of Western European countries.

Although some caution is justified due to differences in the economic-social systems and development levels, it can still be established that several parallelisms and analogies can be observed between the Hungarian and the Western European regulations, with regard to the objectives, contents or even consequences thereof. The study presents the most important components, impacts and consequences of the NCSND in the aspects of Hungary’s settlement network, public administration and regional organisation. Nevertheless, the study shall not take a stand in the debate on the positive or negative impacts of the Concept going on since it was drawn up. This is still the case even if the bare fact that the study examines the Western European analogies of regulations drawn up in a communist country involves the evaluation thereof, rendering its “sins” relative with the excuse that countries in the free, democratic West committed similar ones. The present work presents Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands in the form of case studies. Important aspect when choosing individual countries were the availability of reference literature and data in languages the author speak, and whether or not the chosen countries were exemplary to other countries or at least chronologically firsts, i.e. pioneers. It has been established that there were a number of similarities in the regulations of countries having implemented reforms in their public administration, as well as in the consequences of such reforms (e.g. significant reduction of the number of local governments, variations in the extent of consideration of differences between individual regions within countries, the gradual nature of the implementation of reforms or the protests against reform measures). It can also be stated that, strangely enough, the countries presented as exceptions also match the trend since, in a broader sense, they can be regarded as reformers even without any reforms (e.g. in France, they aimed at optimising, or at least, rationalising the number of local governments by means of establishing associations instead of uniting settlements, and Switzerland only breaks the limit of time but is no exception in terms of the basic concept and the consequences). Finally, a proposal is made for the clarification of the Hungarian terminology since the comparisons and analogies cannot be completely justified without an unambiguous system of concepts used in the given language and those translated into other languages being made corresponding to each other.