Oksana Lutsyk

Oksana Lutsyk

Postgradute student of studying of the department of History and Culture of Ukraine and special historical disciplines State Higher Educational Establishment «Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi State Pedagogical University named after Hryhoriy Skovoroda».

ORCID: 0000-0002-1818-7366

DOI: 10.17721/2522-4611.2021.43.8

POLISH MODEL OF THE TERRITORIAL COMMUNITIES’ ASSOCIATION

AND FUNCTIONING PROCESS

Abstract. From the very beginning of its existence, the process of local self-government bodies’ formation in post-socialist countries is characterized by total control by central authorities. It is common that citizens in political-power relations are forced to play a secondary role in such systems, therefore they naturally tend to the European model of policy on the community level. Each of the post-socialist countries has chosen its own path of reforming the local self-government system. This article deals with the analysis of the Polish model of administrative-territorial reform, as Poland was one of the first countries in the socialist bloc that began reforming process radically denying the communist model of governance imposed by the Soviet Union. In addition, we analyze the Polish experience as Ukraine and Poland share common history and these countries have much common features in terms of economy and culture. Poland had the opportunity to critically analyze the experience of leading European countries while preparing their own administrative and territorial reform and, eventually, applied the best European practices in Poland. On the one hand, the main goal of the Polish government in this area was to establish effective work of local governments, which would consider the need of having a controlled vertical of executive power typical for a unitary state and, on the other hand, maximize the rights of local governments. It is a known fact that the Republic of Poland began with the reform of local government, particularly, abolished the two-steps system of territorial units (gminas and voivodships) and introduced a three-steps one instead (gmina – county – voivodship). The establishment of the Republic prepared a detailed set of legal documents for each level of the self-government hierarchy, which clearly regulated the scope of competence for each level. This model proved its effectiveness and has been used until now. The aim of this article is to identify mechanisms for reforming local governments in post-socialist countries based on the experience of Poland.

Key words: local self-government, territorial and administrative reform, decentralization, principle of subsidiarity, administrative unit, commune, county, voivodship.

Received by the editorial board: 13.11.2020

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