Slovak villages have increasingly tended to create civic and regional associations. The endeavours to integrate originate in specific and complex mixture of local needs and interests united on the base of economic (e.g. profile of economic activities, distance of the settlements from the centre), social (e.g. similarity in social structure or employment) or cultural (e.g. cultural features, similarities in material signs of culture and language) qualities. The pragmatic leitmotif for an establishment of regional associations is knowledge that larger, institutionally based territorial entity, which links-up several settlements, is able to enforce interests of particular villages more efficiently. Simultaneously it facilitates an access to information and finances for the projects of rural development of the structural funds of European Union. The paper analyses regional activities and initiatives looking at the Western Slovak micro-region demarcated by the villages which in 1997 created the voluntary regional association SOTDUM (the Association of the Villages of the Topoľčiansko- Duchonský Micro-region) following their geographical closeness and jointly articulated regional needs. Using available quantitative data but especially qualitative ethnographic research the author tries to map intraregional conditions in relation to hierarchy and discontinuity in development of settlements. This discontinuity originates in differing administrative conditions for settlement and ...
