Institutions of Territorial Self-Government in North Macedonia: Is There a Need for Change?

The chapter offers an overview of the territorial self-government of the Republic of North Macedonia from the perspective of social (mainly political) factors that shaped the current picture. The detailed analysis of the genesis of the legislation and the institutional framework shows the key development periods, among them take importance the Ohrid Framework Agreement (2001) which introduces the ethnic criterion in the territorial division with significant legislative, institutional and large-scale social consequences. Also, the analysis goes through the implementation of the Regional Policy of the European Union, which lays the adoption of the Law on Balanced Regional Development (LBRD/2007). Polycentric regional development is implemented according to the model of administrative division—Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), which is completed in a formal sense but still does not give a visible positive result in balanced regional development. The paper considers the factors for regional disparities and slow economic growth: slow decentralization, dominance of the political figures, fragmentation of the territorial division (80 municipalities were 76% have less than 40,000 inhabitants), lack of democratic debates in local environments and passivity of local stakeholders stirring intensive emigration from economically underdeveloped regions. Obviously, changes are needed.