Decentralisation in Ukraine is an important factor in the development of a democratic system of government. The reform of local self-government aims to create new relations between citizens, local authorities, and the state. The aim of the article is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the local government reform in Ukraine and other countries in order to identify its main advantages and disadvantages as well as indicate ways to overcome the existing shortcomings in this area. The study determined that decentralisation in the country leads to democratic transformations of society based on civic initiative and responsibility, as well as provides a decent standard of living and quality services at the local level. The introduction of decentralisation can be observed in almost all areas, including administrative, political, financial, and social. This significantly affects the potential of the population and increases the responsibility of public authorities to the population. There is an increase in the level of public services with regard to economic, legal, political, social, and ethnic issues. Finally, proposals were made to make changes in the field of local self-government in order to overcome the existing problems in this area.
Whose is the city? This question only superficially refers to the past when at least some cities were in fact law-making, autonomous communities of their citizens. Unlike in the past, the contemporary city is a random collection of individuals gathered in a space with no clear boundaries, who in their majority have a weak sense of identification with the place of their residence, whether longer or shorter. The residents of such a city are not citizens but merely users of space which has become a commodity. Taking Warsaw as an example, the paper shows the process of selling out the city space, which is driven by globalisation and metropolisation processes. The consequence of this is privatisation and fragmentation of space, leading to the evaporation of public space in the city.
The last decades have brought intensive development of urban areas. In many Polish cities, including Warsaw, such development takes place without obligatory local plans. Thus, administrative permission decisions concerning any investment are prepared on the basis of so-called studies of conditions and directions of spatial planning. The aim of the present paper is to discuss how general plans of spatial development in Warsaw can influence some features of its climate which are important for the quality of life of Warsaw citizens. Special attention is paid to Urban Heat Island.
The article discusses political leadership in local government. Change from traditional local government to local governance requires also institutional changes and new roles played by local leaders. The notion of political leader is limited to persons having democratic legitimacy for their role played in local politics. It excludes people, who might be influential but remain outside formal democratic institutions of local government. The article distinguishes between type (which depends on formal institutional settings) and style (more dependent on personal characteristics) of leadership. The article discusses selected theoretical concepts of type and style of leadership and tries to refer them to Polish local governments. Recent Polish reforms have brought a change from the type which was close to a collective model to one closer to a strong mayor form. Analysis of four initiative in 2 Polish cities (Poznan and Ostrow Wielkopolski) allows to formulate some conclusions on citizens’ perception of actual styles of local political leadership. The largest proportion of citizens in analysed cities prefers a style which is close to consensus facilitator. But in a real behaviour of leaders, citizens see more of city boss style, which might be characterized by the implementation of an own vision with internal resources existing within local government structures. Comparison of citizens’ preferences with the perception of actual behaviour of leaders allows to compute an Expectation Gap Index. The gap is usually quite narrow in initiatives focused on the construction of broad development programmes, but it becomes wider if we turn to more concretely focused projects.
The paper is an attempt to analyze the reform of the local government electoral system introduced by the Act of January 11, 2018. The authors of the study describe the most important changes from the point of view of the citizens mentioned in the title of the act as well as of the institutions involved. Among the most important changes the authors list those related to passive voting right, seat allocation method and the structure of constituencies. Because of the lack of an appropriate time perspective, the authors limit themselves to legal and political analysis, pointing only to their possible consequences.
The goal of the present study is to determine what types of emotions are displayed by mayors in social media. Their posts at the Facebook social network were tested using sentiment analysis. The study shows that the top concern of the mayors’ agenda built on Facebook is to create their positive image of someone willing to build relationships with citizens. In their personal profile pages, mayors also favour information about specific decisions rather than more general information about events in the municipality. The most important conclusion is that the mayors use emotionally charged social media posts more often than the administrators of the city organization profiles, and that these are usually positive emotions.
Along with time-related changes in the migration of Poles to Germany, the invisibility that has been ascribed to them has also evolved: from intentional hiding to deliberate merging into local social and spatial structures. The city of Berlin, perceived as an open, modern and multicultural metropolis, is an exceptional laboratory of transformations and diversity of social behaviours shown by Polish migrants. It attracts new citizens who not only want to make a living here, but also – and more frequently – to achieve self-fulfilment. While the invisibility of the economic migrants is mainly a result of their alienation in a new country, the representatives of lifestyle migration deliberately merge into the culturally diverse society of Berlin and they try to identify with other social groups. The aim of this article is to identify the existence and forms of every-day functioning of Polish migrants in Berlin in the context of invisibility.
The aim of the paper is to identify different visions and expectations of the citizens and the local government regarding the development of their suburban space, which are a source of potential spatial conflicts. It discusses contradictory interests of all the people living in the suburban area, certain groups of inhabitants, and local authorities. The paper characterizes different types of conflicts, including spatial ones. The conflicts in the suburbs are generated by a desire to keep the suburban character of the place of residence, the primacy of property rights and individual interests over collective ones, and excessive development ambitions of local authorities. Considerations on spatial conflicts in a suburban zone are illustrated by the results of two surveys carried out in the Lesznowola municipality near Warsaw, one on a representative sample of residents throughout the whole municipality (394 persons), and the other on a representative sample of residents of Mysiadło (305 people).
Europe has no language which would be its symbol of identity, which would emotionally integrate its citizens. According to the official stance of the European Union the linguistic symbol of its identity is its multilingualism, which is confirmed by the fact that it has 23 official languages. The official multilingualism causes some problems connected with translation and interpretation. (For simultaneous translation from all 23 to all other 23 official languages theoretically as many as 506 interpreters are needed). There are techniques reducing this number, but at the expense of time and quality of interpretation). For pragmatic reasons EU institutions increasingly use English alone in their internal activity and in their contacts with member states and other institutions, thus de facto promoting English as the contact language of the EU. English, however, is not a specifically European lingua franca. The role of English as lingua franca in Europe is growing, but as English is the global lingua franca and the spread of English is a sign of globalisation, English cannot at the same time unite Europe and separate it from the rest of the world. Even more so that there is political opposition to the growing role of English in Europe. Therefore the link between language and identity in Europe consists not in possessing a single language (or languages) as its symbol of identity and centre of loyalty and as an instrument of internal communication and external separation. It consists in the fact that the use of English and other contact languages and the mechanism of interpretation and translation in the EU enable circulation of information and ideas which eventually may contribute to the creation (strengthening?) of the sense of European identity.
The Act of 11 January 2018 amending certain acts in order to increase participation of citizens in the process of selecting, functioning and controlling certain public bodies (Journal of Laws 2018, item 130) obliged all local government units to establish a citizens’ resolution initiative and to regulate the basic procedures related to the preparation and submission of applications by a resolution of their law-making body. The article analyses the implementation activities undertaken in cities with county rights. It indicates that before the entry into force of the Act, 55 cities out of 66 had already implemented such an arrangement, and, in their case, the Act helped unify the procedures. The article also points out that some cities did not implement these regulations before the beginning of the 8th term of office of local governments, and in several cases there were problems with the implementation, which prevented citizens from exercising their resolution initiative. The article presents the legal status as of 31 December 2019.
In the face of constant pandemic-related and military threats to citizens’ right to work, collective bargaining has become almost the only real instrument to reconcile the interests of social partners and consolidate their efforts. The authors proposed a methodology for assessing the development of social partnership in the regulation of labour remuneration based on a set of indicators and a comparative analysis of the indicators in several public organisations: the State Audit Service of Ukraine, the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, the Police of Ukraine, and the Pension Fund of Ukraine. Based on the challenges and general trends revealed by the results of the analysis, the authors identified areas for improving collective wage bargaining and the best practices in social partnership for their dissemination in public organisations.
A low level of social activity in all dimensions is a characteristic feature of Poland. However, some enclaves of social activity do exist: there are fields of social life in which Poles are more active and devote more spare time to them; we can also distinguish active social groups. The article is an attempt to analyze social activity of Lodz citizens in the following dimensions: the participation in community activities and the participation in non-governmental organizations. The authors try to indicate the level of social activity of Lodz residents and the correlates of the analyzed dimensions of civic activity. Sex, age, profession and income are analyzed as independent variables.
The text is an essay of analysis of the relations and interactions between the main protagonists of the “Warsaw scene”: the local administration representatives, anthropologists and sociologists, architects, urbanists, journalists and common citizens. The author is trying to summarise the discourse about the public space in Warsaw and about the difficulties in communication that concern the public discussion on the topic. The aim of the analysis is also to define the place of Warsaw as a city that belongs as well to the Europeans’ metropolises and to the towns of the Third World at the same time. The main topic concerns the view of the public spaces and its social functions in case of Warsaw, the position and roles of the heroes of “the game of the city space”, the architectural and urbanistic structure, the citizens’ identity and other issues. The essay is based on the personal research and TNS OBOP’s surveys and discourse analysis of the media content.
The study contains a review of websites of local governments in Podlaskie voivodship. The authors address the problem of demand for internet services, provide the inventory of available websites and evaluate the importance of this form of communication. The popularity of Internet services is clearly growing, especially with respect to interactive solutions, saving time and money of citizens. The quality of website’s contents is also a strong determinant of it’s success.
The article discusses the idea of co-production, understood as informed and intentional participation of citizens in the organisation and provision of public services in the context of the global ageing process, a phenomenon which necessitates actions aimed to secure the needs of older people. The basis for the empirical investigation was a study carried out under the aegis of a WHO agency, the Centre for Health Development in Kobe, Japan. It offers an analysis of the case studies of initiatives addressed to elderly people in the local communities of 10 selected developing countries (Chile, China, Iran, Libya, Russia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ukraine, Vietnam). The key criterion in the selection of the analysed projects was direct involvement of institutional and non-institutional representatives of local communities in their implementation. As a participant (researcher) of this international survey, the author analyses the observable manifestations of silver co-production characterising the individual initiatives.
The author investigates the citizens perception of the impact of Polish-German border on local economies and communities in Western Poland. The research, based on the survey conducted in selected municipalities, reveals also the attitudes of the citizens towards the protection of natural environment and their opinion about the neighbours at both sides of the border. Finally, it attempts to assess the degree of citizens identification with the border area.
This article aims to explore residents’ preferences and perceptions of the actual styles of local political leadership in Poland over the past decades. In particular, it analyses the size of the gap between preferred and perceived leadership styles. The paper uses a classification developed by Peter John and Alistair Cole distinguishing city boss, visionary, care-taker, and consensus facilitator styles. The primary empirical material comes from a nationwide survey of residents conducted in December 2022 and surveys in a few case study cities conducted in the spring and summer of 2023. In addition, previously published results from surveys conducted using similar methods are used. The results indicate a growing preference for consensus facilitator style, assuming an inclusive style for both policy preparation and policy implementation. The size of the ‘expectations gap’ is explained by the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents (age, education) and the size of the city. Younger and better educated respondents have a particularly high expectation that mayors should involve different stakeholders in the preparation and implementation of local policies, while at the same time being more critical in assessing the actual behaviour of local authorities.
