Abstract
The chapter discusses development of sub-municipal units (SMUs) in Poland after the 1990 decentralization reform. It discussed major elements of legal setting and variation of local policies toward SMUs. It stresses the difference in the position of SMUs in rural areas and in urban setting. The difference is related to two factors: (1) depth of historical traditions, (2) support of the central level (rural SMU receives support from the central budget through Village Fund, while such a support is absent in case of urban SMUs). Presently Polish SMUs play only marginal role in local politics and in provision of local public services, and their role in invigorating local democracy is also very limited. This chapter discusses factors behind the variation of the position of SMUs in different cities.
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Notes
- 1.
The only exception to this rule is 2002 Law on Local Government in Warsaw Capital City which imposes the creation of 18 SMU and stipulates basic rules related to the relationship between city level and SMUs. However, this specific case is not furhter discussed in this chapter.
- 2.
In 1991 the Association was formed in one of the Polish regions, and in 1994 it was transformed into a nation-wide organization, consisting of a federation of 14 regional associations (there are 16 regions in Poland, so two regions—Łódź and Warmia-Mazury—do not have their representation in the National Association).
- 3.
1989–1993, 1997–2005 and 2007–2015.
- 4.
It is half of proportion for municipal mayors but several times more than among average citizens.
- 5.
After the 2014 election the proportion of female councilors in rural local governments in Poland is 27% and among rural mayors it is just over 10% (own calculations based on National Electoral Committee data).
- 6.
For a more comprehensive discussion of the Poznań reform see chapter 8 in Swianiewicz et al. (2013).
- 7.
In the recent study by Stradomski (2016) there is an analysis of the turn-out in SMU elections in 22 cities with population between 50 and 150,000. He finds out the huge variation (from 1% to 40%), but a typical turn-out, has been low similar to that in the largest cities.
- 8.
It should be mentioned however, that in cities in which sub-municipal councils operate on only part of the city territory, we calculated the average turn-out by dividing the number of actual active voters by the total number of eligible voters in the whole city. The justification of this method is the fact that sub-municipal councils are usually not created (so elections do not take place) in those parts of the city in which bottom-up interest in the creation of the neighborhood government structures was the lowest. An alternative method of taking into account the average from only a few of the most active neighborhoods (in which elections took place) would result in an over-estimation of citizens’ interest in sub-municipal councils.
- 9.
In this part of analysis the budget spending of neighborhood councils plays a role of independent variable of the model.
- 10.
Measured here by an index composed on the basis of answers to several questions, related to citizens’ awareness of the existence of sub-municipal governments, knowledge of the names of neighborhood councilors and so on.
- 11.
For the discussions of the planned reform in Poznań see Swianiewicz et al. (2013).
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Swianiewicz, P. (2018). New Experiments of Maintenance of Old Traditions? Dual System of Sub-municipal Units in Poland. In: Hlepas, NK., Kersting, N., Kuhlmann, S., Swianiewicz, P., Teles, F. (eds) Sub-Municipal Governance in Europe. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64725-8_8
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