16.07.2026
On 14 July 2026, Assoc. Prof. Desislava Kalcheva participated in the international academic panel “The Future of Local Democracy in Times of Crisis: Autonomy, Capacity and Democratic Resilience”. The panel was organised by Research Committee 05 of the International Political Science Association – the IPSA Research Committee on Comparative Studies on Local Government and Politics.
The panel was held as part of the IPSA Work-in-Progress Sessions 2026, an international online research forum designed for the presentation and in-depth discussion of academic papers that are still under development. The format provides authors with an opportunity to receive detailed feedback, expert comments, and specific recommendations before the finalisation and publication of their research. The 2026 edition took place from 13 to 19 July and included thematic sessions involving representatives from different countries and academic institutions.
The panel was convened and moderated by Prof. Carmen Navarro, Chair of RC05, and José Hernández Bonivento, Vice-Chair of the committee. It brought together researchers from four continents, while the discussions focused on the effects of successive crises on local autonomy, administrative capacity, democratic resilience, and the ability of local authorities to respond effectively to public needs.
Assoc. Prof. Desislava Kalcheva presented the paper “Local Autonomy under Stress: Formal Powers and Effective Capacity of Bulgarian and Croatian Local Governments during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Energy-Inflation Crisis”, co-authored with Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović, PhD, Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Head of the Department for Regional Development at The Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia.
The study provides a comparative analysis of local government in Bulgaria and Croatia during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent energy and inflation crisis. Particular attention is paid to the gap between the powers formally assigned to local authorities and their actual administrative, financial, and institutional capacity to exercise them. The analysis examines changes in local autonomy, the dependence of local authorities on transfers from central government, the pressure placed on municipal budgets, and the ability of local government bodies to take independent and effective action in times of crisis.
The session provided an opportunity for substantive academic exchange, comparative discussion, and the formulation of specific recommendations for the further development of the papers presented. Participation in the forum contributes to the expansion of international academic cooperation and to the inclusion of the Bulgarian perspective in comparative research on local democracy, decentralisation, and governance in times of crisis