Abstrakt
Based on experience from the Czech Republic with municipalities that fail to perform their local government functions (due to their critical indebtedness), the paper seeks to clarify in what other European countries the municipalities might face existential problems. It can be assumed that critical indebtedness is not the only possible threat that endangers European communities.
For this reason, one of the aims of the paper is to identify other possible threats to municipalities and introduce their specific examples. Among other things, the paper attempts to initiate a scholarly discussion and to bring the phenomenon of endangered municipalities closer to political science.
The paper draws on qualitative methodology and on an extensive content analysis; it identifies possible threats that may in the extreme case lead to the extinction of European municipalities. When gaining data on specific cases of endangered municipalities in Europe, the method applied was snowball sampling, used by researchers to identify potential subjects in the studies where subjects are hard to locate.
The main conclusions of the paper include the identification of five possible threats to European municipalities, which are divided into two groups - rather common threats and less common threats. In case of identified threats, it describes where the endangered municipalities can be found or where the threats are impending.
At the same time, groups of municipalities potentially most threatened by individual threats are introduced. The paper also deals with possible political impacts of individual threats.
It draws on documented empirical examples based on which possible model situations that may arise are introduced. Based on the conducted analysis and experience from specific endangered municipalities, the paper proposes to use six general terms that outline the general endangerment.
Using these terms, the paper Primary Systematization outlines eight possible variants of the course of municipal endangerment.