Magister Legum - LLM / This study is about the individual liability of councillors in South Africa. It examines and analyses whether individual liability of councillors can serve as a bulwark against the abuse of decision-making power that is vested in the municipal council.

This dissertation aims to reclassify municipal structures of the U.S. municipalities and investigates the effect of municipal structures on government fiscal management outcomes, including fiscal conditions and fiscal slack balances. This dissertation is comprised of four chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces, and each of the remaining three is an independent research article. The second chapter investigates seven essential structural characteristics of the U.S. municipalities and constructs a municipal structure political-administrative index. It then examines the determinants of municipal structures on a political-administrative dimension. The empirical results show that municipal structure choices are statistically significantly associated with citizens’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Citizens’ income levels play a crucial role in determining municipal structure changes during the sample period. The third chapter examines the effect of municipal structures on government fiscal conditions. Municipal structure is operationalized by the municipal structure political-administrative index, which is the focus of the second chapter. There are a variety of mechanisms through which municipal structures can influence government fiscal conditions, among which managerial professionalism, strategy stance, and managerial accountability versus efficiency are theoretically addressed. Empirical evidence shows that a municipal structure that is more administrative is associated with healthier fiscal conditions in cash solvency, dependence on intergovernmental transfers, and debt level. Particularly, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the municipal structure index and governments’ fiscal conditions. Moreover, municipal structures moderate the influence of external environmental factors. The fourth chapter investigates the determinants of local government’s fiscal slack in a political-budgetary-managerial framework. The research argues that voters’ preferences, government’s budgetary performance, and government internal management work interactively to influence government fiscal slack, and it proposes appropriate indicators for the three explanatory dimensions. Particularly, government internal management is operationalized by the municipal structure political-administrative index. Empirical results show that voters’ anti-tax and pro-spending sentiment have a negative effect on the size of government fiscal slack, and government’s budgetary performance exerts a positive impact. Moreover, government internal management modifies the effects of voters’ preferences and government’ budgetary performance on government fiscal slack.

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Magister Legum - LLM

This thesis solves the territory of the island and surrounding areas in the district Husovice. The island is defined by Svitava river and mill flume. The aim was to solve the areas, with an emphasis on the waterfront and use the potential of city's waterways. The task was also to design different forms of access to the water and logically connetct it with the designed buildings. The proposal also incorporates existing brownfield and creates a functioning urban structure which takes advantage of its location near watercourses.

This study deals with the typologies and the development of municipal orders in Europe. The theoretical basis of the work is important typologies of individual authors dealing with municipal orders of different countries. These typologies are exploring mostly European countries and looking for similarities across municipal systems of individual countries on the basis of some criteria and in relations between central and local levels and through relations between the institutions of local government with each other. Ten chosen European countries which are used in the typologies form empirical part of work. Countries are studied based on criterion development of municipal structures, especially in terms of amalgamation of municipalities and based on the criterion of executive models, especially in terms of direct election of mayors. For each country is studied the development and present situation of these criteria on the basis of which are determined the aims of this study. It is about finding out topicality of typologies and their comparison with the time of their origin to the present state of municipal orders of individual countries. Another aim is points to trends in local politics and gives an indication of possible future trends in terms of municipal orders in Europe.

<p>Local government is arguably the most significant sphere of government to lay citizens, as it is the point of contact of citizens with their government. Local government enables a direct link between the general public and the basic services that they are entitled to by means of their constitutional and legislatively entrenched rights. It is the only sphere of government that allows and encourages face-to-face engagement between citizens and their governors, providing the necessary platform for interaction, contact and communication. It is imperative therefore that this tier of government operate optimally and competently, as it represents a reflection of the operation of government wholly. Research unfortunately illustrates that public perceptions of local government are negative, with levels of trust in local government being substantially lower than those in provincial and national governments. The responsibility for failure to perform would lie squarely on the shoulders of those individuals leading any institution. The leading incumbents driving a municipality are the political and administrative heads, i.e. executive mayor and municipal manager.</p>

<p>Local government is arguably the most significant sphere of government to lay citizens, as it is the point of contact of citizens with their government. Local government enables a direct link between the general public and the basic services that they are entitled to by means of their constitutional and legislatively entrenched rights. It is the only sphere of government that allows and encourages face-to-face engagement between citizens and their governors, providing the necessary platform for interaction, contact and communication. It is imperative therefore that this tier of government operate optimally and competently, as it represents a reflection of the operation of government wholly. Research unfortunately illustrates that public perceptions of local government are negative, with levels of trust in local government being substantially lower than those in provincial and national governments. The responsibility for failure to perform would lie squarely on the shoulders of those individuals leading any institution. The leading incumbents driving a municipality are the political and administrative heads, i.e. executive mayor and municipal manager.</p>

Magister Legum - LLM / Local government is arguably the most significant sphere of government to lay citizens, as it is the point of contact of citizens with their government. Local government enables a direct link between the general public and the basic services that they are entitled to by means of their constitutional and legislatively entrenched rights. It is the only sphere of government that allows and encourages face-to-face engagement between citizens and their governors, providing the necessary platform for interaction, contact and communication. It is imperative therefore that this tier of government operate optimally and competently, as it represents a reflection of the operation of government wholly. Research unfortunately illustrates that public perceptions of local government are negative, with levels of trust in local government being substantially lower than those in provincial and national governments. The responsibility for failure to perform would lie squarely on the shoulders of those individuals leading any institution. The leading incumbents driving a municipality are the political and administrative heads, i.e. executive mayor and municipal manager. / South Africa