The book addresses in detail local governance in Spain. In recent decades, local governments in Europe have increasingly found themselves under pressure from a multitude of new challenges, such as demographic change, climate change, fiscal austerity policies, digitization, the demand for more citizen participation in local affairs, and the migration crisis in some of them, to name just a few. Consequently, a wave of political and administrative reforms to address these challenges, pressures and problems, has changed local governance in many countries. In part, these changes were the result of reform policies introduced by national and state governments, often triggered by austerity policies, which has become an overwhelming reality for Spanish local governments that have been forced to introduce innovations in local governance. This book aims to give an account of these innovations in local governance in Spain. This book considers the local political-administrative structure in its dimensions, focusing on the analysis of its party system, electoral competition and political behavior in the local arena, as well as on local finances, all of which are determining elements in urban and rural governance processes. On the occasion of the recent crisis unleashed by Covid-19, the book will also deal with local governance in crisis situations. The book will also contextualize local governance processes in Spain in relation to the trends in local governance observed in other European countries.

Autorentext

Ángel Iglesias Alonso is Professor of Political Science and Administration at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. He has participated as principal investigator and researcher in numerous national (Spanish Ministry of Science) and international (EU-COST-H2020) competitive projects on local governments, and has published his results in numerous scientific articles in national and international indexed journals (JCR, Scopus) as well as in book chapters in European (Palgrave-McMillan, Nomos, etc.) and national (Tecnos, Dykinson, etc.) publishers. He has been a consultant to Spanish local governments in large and medium-sized cities.. He is a national prize winner in local government, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Territorial Administrations and also won the Fernando Albi Prize in local government and administration, awarded by the provincial government of Alicante in Spain.