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Dictionary definition: local government
- Article from:
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics
- Author:
Copyright© The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information)
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local government
A governing institution which has authority over a subnational territorially defined area; in federal systems, a substate territorially defined area. Local government's authority springs from its elected basis, a factor which also facilitates considerable variation in its behaviour both between and within countries.
Structure in Europe is generally multitier. In Federal Germany below the state-level Länder are commonly found two tiers of local government: the upper-tier Kreise and the lower-tier municipalities. Regionalized states such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and France echo such arrangements by having three levels of local government: the region; provinces ...