Role of the Local Government in the Formation of Civil Society in Poland
Problem of development of strong local institutions of self-governance in modern Russia is one of the “sore points” in the general concept of Russian federalism. In the article analyzes the experience of building a strong system of local government in Republic of Poland, after a period of 1989 year. Collapse of the socialist system in Eastern Europe, with its own view the local government only as a system of party representation “on the ground” has prompted reform-minded part of Polish society to establish the concept of “self-governing Republic”. One of the most important principles that guided the architects of this fundamental reform, were principles of subsidiarity, with broad involvement of local communities in the management of administrative units, and principle of “economic autonomy”, which gave local authorities the real economic and financial capacity to develop their own territories. This fact allowed most of the local government system is not to be subsidized institution, which would be totally dependent on the distribution of funding by the central government authorities. Serious economic achievements of local governance institutions, such as their substantial contribution to the volume of the Polish GDP, eloquently testify to the highly successful results of the local self-governance reform in Poland.