Dr. Hongmou Zhang (p), Ms. Shan You

Administrative division adjustment is a common instrument of territorial governance restructuring. Across Europe, municipal amalgamations and regional reforms have repeatedly altered administrative boundaries, raising questions about their long-term social consequences. Since the early 1980s, China has implemented large-scale county-level administrative affiliation changes, providing a valuable setting to examine how institutional boundary reform influences residents’ place identity.
This study analyzes the impact of county-level administrative affiliation changes in China on residents’ place identity with newly assigned prefecture-level administrative regions. Drawing on a nationwide survey of counties that experienced affiliation change after 1982, we examine whether the timing of administrative division adjustment shapes identity outcomes. Using multivariate regression, mediation analysis, and clustering methods, we assess both overall effects and heterogeneous identity patterns.
Preliminary findings indicate that earlier administrative division adjustments are associated with stronger place identity toward the prefecture-level administrative region. This relationship is partly mediated by the intensity of residents’ socio-economic contact with the prefectural center. Residents who personally experienced the affiliation change also display distinct identity responses. Identity outcomes further cluster into differentiated patterns shaped by household registration status, income, and center–periphery interaction.
While robustness checks are ongoing, the evidence suggests that administrative division adjustment generates gradual and uneven identity integration. The findings contribute to broader debates on administrative boundary reform by providing empirical evidence on how institutional affiliation changes shape place identity over time.

Mr Ivaylo Stamenkov (p), Mr. Nikolay Popov

Bulgaria is characterized by a paradoxical combination of a highly centralized state structure and constitutionally guaranteed local self-government. Municipalities represent the primary level of subnational governance; however, the existing administrative-territorial configuration of 265 municipalities reveals substantial spatial fragmentation and pronounced asymmetries in administrative, economic, and demographic capacity. In the context of ongoing population decline, strong dependence on state transfers, and the increasing role of the public sector as a major employer in many peripheral municipalities, the question of administrative-territorial reform continues to surface periodically in policy debates. These discussions, however, tend to remain predominantly normative and demographic in orientation, rarely addressing the correspondence between institutional boundaries and the actual spatial patterns of service provision and territorial influence.
This paper starts from the premise that the issue of administrative fragmentation should be examined through the lens of centrality research rather than solely through indicators such as population size or administrative capacity. The main research question concerns the extent to which the current municipal structure corresponds to real spatial patterns of centrality. In this context, the paper explores the potential for adapting approaches developed within the German-speaking research tradition on centrality and central place theory, including indicators related to accessibility, service provision, and daily commuting.
The aim is to outline a methodological framework for examining municipalities in terms of their centrality, enabling a better understanding of the relationship between institutional territorial organization and underlying spatial structures. The expected contribution lies in reframing the debate on potential municipal administrative-territorial reform from a predominantly normative-administrative perspective towards a spatial-analytical one, while highlighting the relevance of German-speaking approaches to centrality for the Bulgarian context.

Prof Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Dr. Alexandra Sandu (p)

Europe's green and digital transitions advance unevenly across regions, shaped not only by technological capacity and infrastructure but also by the quality, effectiveness, and responsiveness of institutional environments. This paper examines how institutional contexts condition twin transition pathways across European NUTS 2 regions exploring the relationship between governance quality, transition profile, and socio-economic context.
Drawing on composite measures of green and digital transition capacity, socio-economic dynamics, and institutional quality indicators, we find that institutions matter, but in different ways across transition domains. Preliminary evidence suggests the digital transition may display stronger associations with institutional environments, while the green transition appears to involve more complex relationships where governance interacts with inherited production structures, sectoral composition, and infrastructure legacies across regions.
These findings challenge one-size-fits-all policy frameworks, suggesting that transition policies need to account for institutional variation across regions, address governance quality alongside infrastructure investments, and recognize that institutions may enable transformation in different ways depending on context.
 

Dr Julia Rodionova, Mr Victor Phiri (p), Mr Rafael Lopez Valverde, Professor Aksel Sundström, Professor Marina Nistotskaya, Ms Tamara Köhler, Ms Chuwei Chen

Despite a surge in the use of subnational-level data in research, changes in administrative boundaries remain an ill-understood phenomenon. Existing research commonly overlooks temporal instability in the number and territorial configuration of local authorities, which may lead to biased inferences. Over recent decades, many local authorities in Europe have undergone substantial boundary changes yet they remain chronically understudied.
Building on the systematic analysis of official geospatial data, combined with extensive verification of municipal boundary change using legislative documents, this paper provides a comprehensive account of local authority boundary changes across 35 European countries between 2014 and 2024. We first develop a comprehensive typology of local authority boundary changes, distinguishing between boundary changes, such as mergers, splits, separations and other, and corresponding municipality identifiers changes, includ-
ing name and official registry code changes. Second, we make an important empirical contribution by bringing into scientific circulation the LoQoG dataset, which records all
local authority boundary changes in Europe during this period. This dataset enables researchers and practitioners to consistently track relevant local units over time. Finally,
we demonstrate the utility of the LoQoG data for conducting more rigorous longitudinal analyses and obtaining more accurate estimates by explicitly accounting for administrative changes.