The public administration of local governments

After the 1949 Constitution, conceptions about self-governments had been superseded from the literature on local and territorial administration. It is interesting historically, though, that the third Act on Councils determined the nature of councils and their organisations as representative self-governmental and administrative bodies. Declaration of this was enough for the legislator and he did not detail it farther. Contemporary literature associated selfgovernmental features primarily with the different ways of developing autonomy. Preparations for the change of regime awoke interest in local governments. As a result the elaboration of the institutions of local governments, which were to replace the council system, was started. However, it soon became clear, that with the accelerating changes and ensuing political preparations, professional works for establishing local administrative structures could not always keep pace. These arrears must have had a role in the occurring inconsistencies in the 1990 legal regulation, which has fundamental significance. This may also be the reason that the Parliament has repeatedly amended the act on local governments. Authors dealing with the origins and development of self-governing often go back to the administration of city-states and the feudal (nobiliary) local governments, as origins. The direct antecedents of the present local governments operating in territorial and settlemental units, however, developed from the forming civil states. It is crutial to begin the examination of local governments with its definition. Professional literature gives different definitions, but fastidious authors are wary of combining them into one or two sentences. Still we will mention some essential elements of relatively new definitions which are presented in professional literature. Self-governing is interpreted as a form of sovereignty of the people. Another approach is that self-government can be identified with the complete local administration. Self-governing is often used as a synonym for autonomy. In some definitions, democratic exercise of power combined with autonomy is identical with self-governing. According to a further theory the conception of Hungarian self-governing has three fundamentals: local democracy, overall responsibility, and local autonomy. The European Charter of Local Governments gives the following definition: "Autonomy is the right and opportunity of local administrative bodies to regulate and govern substantial part of public matters through decrees within their scope of competence in the interest of the local people."