The article focuses on the beliefs of the regional political elites in Poland about the models of democracy, operationalised as opinions about political representation, direct democracy and elite integration. The empirical basis is a questionnaire survey of 400 members of regional political elites carried out in 2017. The sample consists of 400 councillors of the 2014-2018 term of regional (voivodship) assemblies and town councils of big cities. The data show that an incoherence of views characterises the regional political elite: they do not form a more general vision of the democratic process, and detailed opinions on representation, direct democracy and elite integration poorly correlate with independent variables, including those describing political affiliations, i.e. party affinity or location on the left-right scale. The primary explanation for this incoherent image is the thesis about the lack of professionalisation of the regional elite.
The purpose of this article is to analyse opinions and attitudes of inhabitants of a Silesian town of Tychy toward the civil society and local democracy. Basing on sociological research done in the spring 2003 and reinterpretation of sociological research of the town, the article shows an activity related to and awareness of these issues among the local community in times of democracy and free market economy. The example of Tychy is specific because during the socialist period sociologists emphasised the fact that it was a socialist town. After political transition, scientists and researchers have pointed that urban community has a disintegrated character and that social bonds must be created in order to cope with regional development. The present article is especially focused on changes which have taken place over the past few years in Tychy.
Local referenda are a special form of direct democracy in Poland. As a result of some legal solutions and in the light of practice, now reaching back for over ten years, they must be considered as a populist and ineffective instrument. This refers primarily to the referenda on recalling local authorities such as city council and mayor, accounting for 85%-90% of all such events. The practice of local referenda in Poland embraces approximately 400 cases. During the first three terms in office of the territorial self-government (1990-2002), 347 referenda concerned recalling the communal councils. Such referenda may be initiated only by the residents of the commune. Only 37 of these referenda proved to be decisive, as their attendance turnout exceeded 30%. The effectiveness of referenda is limited mostly to small towns (up to 20 thousand residents), where the threshold turnout is usually reached.
The language question are phenomena resulting from contacts of two or more languages on the same territory or in the same community. It consists in co-existence and/or conflicts of languages and in language policies carried out by national and regional governments, and by ethnic movements aiming at maintaining or changing the language situation on a given territory. The main issues linked to the language question in the contemporary world are the following: 1) domination of the English language as an international language, supported by the globalisation and facilitating the globalisation. The domination of English puts on unequal footing people of the world and causes dissatisfaction of some parts of non-English native speakers; 2) extinction of languages as a result of assimilation of small ethno-linguistic groups. This phenomenon generates alarm of some groups of scientists and public opinion; 3) language barrier hampering development of education, economy and democracy in many parts of the world, especially in the post-colonial countries; 4) international migrations. These put migrants themselves and societies and governments of recipient countries in front of the question of the attitude towards maintaining of the cultural and linguistic identity of the migrants, this question being solved in different ways in different countries and historical periods.
The method and rules of elections of village heads and village council-members, which are conducted at meetings of village residents, are one of the last examples of direct democracy. Even though this form of democracy has been studied and described previously, the electoral rivalry within rural communities is marginalized; therefore, it is little known. The paper tries to define the features of electoral competition and analyze rivalry at this level of government. It has been based on a case study of one commune and three research methods have been used: direct observation, document analysis and personal interviews. Additionally, the paper presents sociological and demographic studies on some of the newly elected village heads and their councils.
The impact of ICT use is an important aspect of studies concerning the transformation of contemporary democracy. The paper presents results of the research project on the development of e-government in Polish self-government institutions, carried out between 2005 and 2012. Websites of all Polish territorial counties as well as all the communes in two voivodships were analyzed within the project. Results of the research indicate that the sophistication of the ICT use grows at both levels of self–government. At the same time significant regional differences in the development of e–government can be observed. Thus, the mode ICT is used by self-government institutions is the additional dimension of digital divide at local level.
The paper presents the basic consequences of the introduction of single-member districts (the FPTP system) in municipal elections in Poland. The authors analyze the results of the 2010 and 2014 elections (before and after the electoral reform). Basing on the difference-in-differences research scheme, the paper presents changes in the municipalities where either block- -voting or proportional representation systems were replaced by the FPTP. The empirical analyses demonstrate that the change from the BV to the FPTP system brought only marginal effects. The replacement of the PR system by the FPTP was more visible. Quite paradoxically, it increased the number of committees competing in the elections. However, the disproportionality and the share of wasted votes increased significantly, while the fragmentation of local councils decreased. In the municipalities previously using a proportional representation system, the number of candidates decreased visibly; contrary to the initial assumptions, its impact was neutral to the share of elected female councillors. The introduction of the FPTP system significantly limited the already weak presence of nation-wide political parties in local councils.
The authors consider the problem of limited supply of candidates for mayors. Since 2002, most electoral committees in Polish municipalities have only participated in the elections for municipal councils and not for the principal executive office. Between 2002 and 2010, there was also a growing share of municipalities in which only one candidate ran. The logistic regression analysis demonstrates that the electoral committees’ decision whether or not to nominate a candidate is influenced by their size (popularity), as well as the size of the municipality. If there is a dominating committee and competing incumbents, it is less probable that another candidate would run. It is evident that the well-known effect of incumbency advantage works not only during the elections but also before them (when candidates are registered).
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.
The purpose of the research presented in the article is to assess the effects of the 2015 amalgamation of the Zielona Góra city with the rural commune of the same name on the quality of local democracy. The second goal is to examine the phenomenon of free riding on the common pool in the context of the local-level territorial reform. The analysis, based on a quasi-experimental scheme using the synthetic control method, unlike previous studies, did not confirm the free riding hypothesis. The results of the study also indicate that the strategy implemented in Zielona Góra can be useful in achieving an intermediate political goal, which is to ensure the residents’ approval of the reform and legitimization of its results.
