Central and Eastern Europe has a rather recent interest in the modern, democratic local government studies. This trend is mostly explained by the developments of the political studies and the research on local political issues occurred not earlier than the beginning of the 1990s. In this context, the RSA RN POL-LOC will be linked to:
- Conducing university students and perspective university teachers/researchers from the CEE countries to enhance the focus on local government and related issues;
- Developing the research in the fields of local governance;
- Advancing courses linked to local governance, local government, local and regional development and related issues.
A main research problem of the RSA RN POL-LOC is: “What is a current state of local governance in the Central and Easter European countries?” The research network wants to deal with various issues that can help us to understand how local governments, local/regional development, local policy making and other related issues have been developed in the mentioned region since 1989/1990. Local governance as a broad phenomenon requires interdisciplinary research, and therefore the network includes various researchers from several Central and Eastern European countries.