Failed Rescaling of Territorial Governance in Hungary: What Was the Gist?

The European administrative space has become a normative programme relying on the relationship between the different tiers of governance and the elaboration of common procedural and professional standards (Cardona, 1998; Olsen, 2003; Goetz, 2006). This means that there is an aim for some convergence in the national public administrations in Europe. The Europeanization of the public administration territory occurred, among others, through territorial reforms which generally led to strengthening lower level governance (Lidström, 2007). Seemingly this happened in Hungary too, but the result is ambivalent.