ABSTRACT
Most countries have dealt in some way with the perceived inadequacies of their systems of local and regional governance during the years since World War II. Some have sought to match the emergent metropolitan reality of economic and social life with a metropolitan scale of government. Others have tried to add a regional scale of government to a federal structure. All of these countries have experienced battles over the redistribution of territory and responsibilities among governmental authorities. Often, the conflict has been concerned with what authorities there ought to be. Typically, the number of local authorities has fallen, sometimes sharply. The number of school districts in the U.S.A., for example, shrank from over 120,000 in 1930 to below 20,000 by 1970 (Sher and Tompkins 1977: 44).
