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Dezbaterile publice privind administraţia publică sunt de neconceput fără analiza problemelor ce vizează autoadministrarea colectivităţilor locale. Carta Europeană a Autonomiei Locale tratează colectivităţile locale ca fundamente ale democraţiilor contemporane, recunoscându-le dreptul şi capacitatea de a rezolva o parte considerabilă din problemele cu caracter local sub propria responsabilitate şi în interesul populaţiei locale. Pentru exercitarea acestui drept, fiecare stat elaborează cadrul normativ, care, sub influenţa mediului politic, social şi economic, este supus unor permanente modificări, operate pentru a da mai multă forţă sistemului de autoadministrare. Prezenta lucrare îşi propune să faciliteze cunoaşterea, înţelegerea şi însuşirea problematicii autoadministrării colectivităţilor locale. Pe planul informaţiei sunt prezentate rezultatele cercetărilor analitice, obţinute fie în cadrul unor eforturi de cercetare, fie în programe de consultanţă. Rolul acestora este de a sugera pe de o parte importanţa cunoaşterii potenţialului colectivităţilor locale, constrângerilor şi resurselor în planificarea unor măsuri asumate formal şi de o manieră sistematică. Pe de altă parte oferă soluţii practice şi sugestii privind aplicarea unor acte normative şi soluţionarea diverselor probleme generate de practicile cotidiene. Înserarea în conţinutul lucrării a problemelor de natură juridică şi teoretică urmăreşte nu doar înzestrarea cititorului cu informaţii relevante şi actuale. Acestea apar mai degrabă ca un reper pentru contemplare, pentru clarificare şi sistematizare şi mai ales pentru a le situa corect în raport cu misiunea activităţilor circumscrise administrării. Lucrarea va fi utilă celor implicaţi în procesul decizional local, funcţionarilor publici din instituţiile administraţiei publice locale, angajaţilor întreprinderilor municipale, studenţilor şi masteranzilor, tuturor celor interesaţi de problemele autoadministrării locale.

During the first half of the 19th century, social public care was organized along two directions: commitment of professional beggars, without a family, in specialized institutions, and home assistance of beggars with families (by a monthly pension and by an annual change of clothes). The article relies on archive documents, such as potential beneficiaries' help requests, administrative documents issued by the authorities, lists of help beneficiaries, inquiries, etc. It presents aspects related to the practical functioning of the social assistance: types of beneficiaries, pension distribution procedures, abuses and frauds. The legal limitations of the administrative rigidity of the pension system were strictly defined, even before the assessment of the real needs in society. This is the reason the efficiency of the pension system was lower than expected both by the authorities and the beneficiaries.

This study proposed, first, to carry out, based on archive documents, an incursion as regards matrimonial relationships of XVIIIth century with all legal, economic and social connotations involved. The marriage contracts studied fall into a typology more closely of what was happening in the same period in Western Europe than in South Eastern Europe. This is because such acts have emerged within the former county of Arad in the first half of the century after the establishment of Habsburg domination and after the German colonists were brought into the area.
Besides the juridical problems regarding the contractual liabilities of the spouses, the status of the children, some problems related to wealth and dowry, I tried to mark out some aspects regarding the everyday life of Arad's inhabitants in the XVIIIth century.

The two documents which are the subject of the present study, made to share property in the event of divorce, help to form an image on various aspects of daily life, poorly known from other sources: household size, land property, earnings in marriage furniture, tools, animals, prices, food, secular and religious involvement of the private life etc. In addition to legal information, both inventories, which stood at the base of documents on which the property was to be divided, reveal another perspective on social history of Arad in the late eighteenth century.

This study submits to our attention some qualitative and quantitative aspects related to urban and semi urban habitat from the former Arad County in the eighteenth century. If in 1715 there were 6 market towns, at the end of the century were already 15. Based on the conscriptions, urbariums and census, I have tried to detect the evolution of market towns during the entire eighteenth century. Reform policy of the Habsburg absolutism has determined even an economic and demographic increase in the market towns of Arad County. Between those 15 market towns of the county existing in 1787 only Arad had obvious urban characteristics. Here was concentrated 6.15% of the county population. By comparison with other counties from Transylvania and Hungary, I have pursued to dignify and quantify different aspects of the urbanization degree in the Arad County registered in the eighteenth century. The development of market towns in Arad County has had the same evolution with those of Central and Eastern Europe, because the agrarian character of these localities was predominant. The evolution towards urbanization was evident along the eighteenth century both in terms of population growth and a great social mobility and also in light of the economic and municipal development. The transformations in the direction of modernization registered during the eighteenth century were the basement of the future process of urbanization of Arad County in the century that has followed.

A marriage amongst youth belonging to the Greek-Catholic and Orthodox confessions was considered almost normal in certain communities. This can be explained by the fact that few parishioners could grasp the differences between the two confessions. At the same time, we have the ethnical aspect. Ethnie could not be separated in this case from confession, as both Greek-Catholics and Orthodox in the area are mostly of Romanian ethnie. These elements should be considered especially since we considered a mainly rural area, where customs "laws" are superposed over the official ones. On the other hand, in the mixed Greek-Catholic and Roman-Catholic communities, inter-confessional marriages are easier accepted on the "official" level.
An important constraint, or, on the contrary, a strong determination against a mixed inter-confessional family came from the families. As mentioned before, a strong pressure against achieving a mixed marriage came from the church. Both parishes to which the youngsters belonged had to be consulted. In order to have a religious marriage, they needed an engagement exemption from the archpriest (they came weeks, even months late, there were situations when the marriages were not accepted, so there would be no exemption). They had to pay a large amount for the exemption, so that many youngsters could not afford to pay for it; this was often solved by clandestine "wild" marriage. However, both the State and the Church wished to stop this phenomenon, so they took steps in this area.

The image of the European culture is given by the association of the concepts people – culture – history – territory, which provides certain local features. From this relation, we identify a cultural area with local, regional and national features beyond a certain European culture. Thus, we identify at least two cultural identity constructions on the European level: a culture of cultures, that is a cultural area with a particular, local, regional and national strong identity, or a cultural archipelago, that is a common yet disrupted cultural area. Whatever the perspective, the existence of a European cultural area cannot be denied, although one may speak of diversity or of "disrupted continuity".
The paper is a survey on the European cultural space in two aspects: 1. Europe with internal cultural border areas; 2. Europe as external cultural-identity border area. From a methodological point of view, we have to point out that despite the two-levelled approach the two conceptual constructions do not exclude each other: the concept of "culture of cultures" designs both a particular and a general identity area. The specific of the European culture is provided precisely by diversity and multiculturalism as means of expression on local, regional, or national levels. Consequently, the European cultural area is an area with a strong identity on both particular and general levels.

The historical-demographic approach of family in their relationship with society with different transitory societal or community typologies is a complex initiative that needs a methodological approach including peripheral elements as well, besides a deep analysis on the central defining elements. The historical demography and other sciences, such as anthropology or history of mentalities, by directly or collaterally approaching the family, often make references to the three important moments in the individual's life: birth, marriage and death.
We have used several categories of documentary sources in our survey. We have the information on the population in north-western Romania due to the ecclesiastic notes (in the parish records or reports and the bishopric notes); on the other hand, we have the information provided by the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian state. Methodologically, the first phase of our research consisted of the preparation of the documents investigation strategy, as expected. In our research, we consider the fact that we approach the area of ecclesiastic entities, as most of our sources for the 19th century belong to the church. This imposes a stress on the confession and its importance. Besides confession, an aspect that we wish to underline is ethnicity. In our investigation on the family the main stress was laid on the survey and analysis of different marital behaviours. Through different constraints and determinisms entailed by the possibility to choose, marriage is highly relevant in establishing behavioural laws (if they ever existed!?). The dimension of the marital market corroborated with the ethno-confessional and socio-professional realities provided the particularities of the marital phenomenon.
Referring to the lay and ecclesiastic legal framework, we support the need for a flexible approach of the topic. The logic of this foray consists of the visualisation of the legal framework – rigid and impregnated with an obvious moralising discourse – on the one hand, and the image of conformism and means of adaptation of the individual, on the other hand.
The starting point of the family is marriage. If we approach marriage from the point of view of the confessional and ethnic conditioning, we get to an analysis of the mixed marriages phenomenon. In fact, the analysis of the ethno-confessional and socio-professional determinisms and of other types of community or individual conditions can be easily carried out in the case of mixed marriages. The central point of our research is the analysis of Romanians', Hungarians', and Germans' marital behaviours without ignoring the image of this phenomenon at other populations in the area.
An analysis on birth and death rate, or natural growth, is able to provide information on the impact demographic phenomena had upon family. A world where death rate was very high and where family would react through a high birth rate was undoubtedly influenced by the demographic flow. Irrespective of the society typology, divorce, concubinage, and illegitimacy (no matter their way of manifestation) were forms of social deviance leading to the dilution of family image and precepts. We do not discuss here a dilution of the traditional precepts on the family, as someone might misunderstand; it is an erosion of the idea of family in general. The "family" began to acquire other forms than the "official" ones. From the relationship of the family with the community were born mentalities, roles and social statuses. The family, its formation, the relationships between man, woman, children and relatives, as well as the relationships with the rest of the community were filtered by the "village gossip". The need for a strong solidarity that was necessary in the unfriendly conditions at the time compelled the individuals to accept the cohabitation with other members of the family (including the extended one) and with the rest of the community.

Divorce is, irrespective of the perspective of approaching the phenomenon from the point of view of the society typology, a form of social deviance that has as effect the dilution of family image and norms. We do not discuss here of a dilution of the traditional norms concerning family, as someone might misunderstand, it is an erosion of the idea of family in general. "Family" starts to have other forms than the "official" ones. Divorce is the last step in the process of erosion and dissolution of the central axis of the family – the marital couple. Despite the fact that we have considered the divorce as the last step in this process of dissolution, we have to admit the fact that, after the divorce, considering that the old couple had children, the existence of the family does not cease, it just takes a new form.
The research of the archives, preserved due to the parish notes (often duplicates), provides the opportunity of identifying the main issues at a certain epoch in the Romanian rural world concerning divorce and the act of divorcing. Our research is structured in two directions: 1. a broad one, through which we will make a quantitative analysis of the size of the phenomenon in the counties of Bihor and Satmar (by observing the particularities in the county seats) – in this way, we will try to calculate the divorce gross rate (by calculating the number of divorces at one thousand inhabitants); 2. the other direction, through a case study on the Greek-Catholic parishes of the diocese of Oradea, will pursue a rather qualitative analysis without ignoring the quantitative aspect. The choice of the Greek-Catholic parishes was made for several reasons: the first is the quality of the materials preserved; the second is the fact that the confession, unlike the Roman-Catholic one for instance, accepts the divorce, thus providing the opportunity of bringing to light the separations undoubtedly existing in the Catholic environment; the third is that we think that, by its position as compared to the two Churches (Catholic and Orthodox), the Uniate Church provides an image that is closer to the reality as shown on the level of the whole population in the region.