Territorial administrative reorganization as a strategy for optimizing the structure of local government

Through the tough economic and social situation and the lack of values that has been experienced in recent years, local governments especially in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain have been forced to strongly consider the structure and size of their public sector. Despite some initiative to reduce the number of municipalities and provinces, little substantive progress has been made in improving the management of the local public Administration during this crisis. In this study a territorial administrative reorganization is proposed as a strategy to optimize the structure of local government, analyzing the Spanish situation in general, and an autonomous community in particular.

Detecting conflictive cultural factors in complex scenarios of intervention: Military and local actors in interaction

The integration of cultural elements into the operational planning process is a complex task that requires practical and theroretical tools for a wide comprehension of the context to help solve the problem. This article shows the results of an empirical research which presents conflicting cultural factors as the starting point for the construction of mediating structures. The main result of our research is a partial cognitive structure, a system of ideas, represented in a template listing the basic conflictive factors at the tactical level that military could find in the development of their tasks. The template is also a valuable aid to design military training curricula and to be applied to any post-conflict stability operation in complex environments resulting from irregular or asymmetric conflicts.