Autor wskazuje na różne sposoby definiowania sprawiedliwości społecznej w kategoriach równości wyników lub równości szans, argumentując, że w ujęciu terytorialnym uzasadnione jest dążenie do wyrównywania szans poprzez ograniczenie wykluczenia społecznego, a nie minimalizowanie regionalnych dysproporcji w poziomie życia. Polemizuje z tezą Roberta Perdała i in. (2020), że preferencje polityczne mieszkańców Ziem Zachodnich i Północnych oraz wyborców zamieszkujących Polskę wschodnią i południowo-wschodnią wynikają z różnic w poziomie lub współczesnej dynamice rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego i odpowiadają podziałowi na rdzeń i peryferie, wskazując, iż to właśnie regiony północne i zachodnie cechuje najwolniejszy rozwój gospodarczy i nasilenie negatywnych zjawisk społecznych.
Sustainability of municipal finance implies steady revenue generation. Pinpointing their determinants creates the necessary background in their management and policy creation. Great municipal dependence on central government finance remains a serious challenge in the process of fiscal decentralisation. So far, studies have been focusing on the expenditure side, while revenues were treated mostly marginally. A random-effects Generalized Least Squares (GLS) panel regression for the period of 2015–2019 is estimated for targeting revenue determinants of municipalities in North Macedonia. Own and total tax revenues are modelled separately through the impact of capital expenditures, salary expenditures, active transparency index, municipality type, and local government’s ideology. The general results indicate that capital expenditure, municipal transparency, and the level of development are significant determinants of municipal revenues in both estimated models. Using such knowledge on municipal revenue reactions can help governments formulate policies that provide sustainable and effective fiscal decentralisation, lowering the pressure on central governments in developing economies.
Globalisation – characterised by dynamic economic growth, increasing exploitation of the natural environment, and deepening social inequalities – brings negative consequences and is strongly perceptible also in local communities. A new approach to development policy based on the idea of sustainable development must be incorporated into local governments’ strategies, programmes, and actions. We adopted exploratory approach to determine the level and identify the spatial patterns of sustainable development of Polish poviats. The aggregated (synthetic) indicators of economic, social, and environmental development were developed to analyse the spatial patterns of the poviats’ development trends. Our research shows that in Poland there are overwhelmingly more poviats characterised by lower development than those better developed in all three analysed categories. Hierarchical analysis using the Ward’s method revealed that Polish poviats can be divided into three relatively homogeneous clusters in terms of development levels. The largest group consists of poviats characterised by the relatively lowest level of sustainability in economic and social areas, and the highest – by environmental development. Analyses using the Moran method made it possible to determine the so-called spatial regimes of clusters. The captured spatial relationships indicate that selected poviats have a significant impact on the level of development in the neighbouring poviats.
Local governments in the Western Balkan countries are dependent on central governments’ transfers, with low fiscal autonomy and limited efforts for own-source revenue mobilisation. The paper identifies that besides central government transfers, other significant factors in determining municipal own-source revenues include central and local public investment, current expenditures, human development index, and population density. Municipal own-source revenue is adversely affected by intergovernmental transfers, implying their de-incentivising effect in collecting local revenues. Local capital expenditure is a significant and strong determinant with a higher strength than central government investments, suggesting their importance for local fiscal autonomy. The human development index as a composite measure, unlike GDP per capita, positively affects the municipal fiscal autonomy.
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.
The paper aims to discuss the major trends in changes of regional differences of economic wellbeing and the resulting spatial mobility of population as well as some regional consequences of these processes. The research is based on an empirical methodology, and visual analysis of mapped data is the main research method. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, fast decrease of employment in industry and agriculture has damaged, first of all, peripheral regions and, later, resulted in mass emigration, which is still evident in most Lithuanian municipalities. The decrease of the number of jobs in these sectors and its increase in those located in different places meant that most residents of non-metropolitan regions had to find new jobs outside the localities in which they resided. This resulted in growing mobility of the population, expressed by growing foreign emigration, inner migrations, and commuting, which continue to shape the social structure of the country to the present day, as spatial structures change more slowly than modes of production. Differences in wellbeing, which appeared at the end of the 20th century, played a role in accelerating emigration processes, which are still damaging local labour supply and economic development in many regions.
Since the very beginning of their establishment, municipalities, counties and regions (voivodeships) have been struggling with financial problems. Unfortunately, these problems affect the performance of the tasks assigned to these administrative units, including the standard of provided services and investment activities. Although extensive, the scale of the unsatisfied needs in LGUs varies between individual units, including municipalities. Thus, the positive financial results (the balance at the closure of the fiscal year) achieved by local government units in Poland in the recent years, as well as their future, offer an intriguing topic of research. The purpose of this paper is to identify the causes that: 1) underpin the re-evaluation of the LGU goals (from the implementation of the local government mission to achieving a budget surplus), and 2) allow the positive result of the LGU budget to finance goals other than investment-related ones. In order to achieve this, the study covers and illustrates, using the empirical data from the years 2007-2016, the types of possible LGU budget results, LGU activities that could contribute to the closure to LGU budgets with a positive result, directions of using budget surpluses and the so-called uncommitted funds, as well as local governments’ debt in terms of the intergenerational solidarity concept of its repayment and its perceived optimal structure.
Celem pracy jest identyfikacja geograficznego wymiaru (nie)sprawiedliwości społecznej w kontekście istniejących, trwałych zróżnicowań poziomu rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego w Polsce w ujęciu geograficzno-historycznym i ich konsekwencji dla polityki rozwoju na poziomie regionalnym i lokalnym. Praca składa się z dwóch zasadniczych części. W części pierwszej prowadzi się syntetyczne rozważania nad geograficznym wymiarem sprawiedliwości społecznej. W części drugiej podjęto próbę egzemplifikacji geograficznego wymiaru (nie)sprawiedliwości społecznej poprzez analizę rozkładu przestrzennego poziomu rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego (wskaźnik syntetyczny) i wybranych wskaźników cząstkowych. Dodatkowo dokonano weryfikacji występowania zależności pomiędzy poziomem rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego a poziomem poparcia politycznego dla frakcji politycznych głoszących hasła „sprawiedliwości społecznej”. Wyniki przeprowadzonych badań potwierdzają występowanie w polskiej przestrzeni dużych zróżnicowań rozwojowych. Ich trwałość determinowana jest historycznie i pomimo upływu czasu ich układ niezmiennie odpowiada przebiegowi granic reliktowych z okresu zaborów. Brak z jednej strony minimalizacji tych różnic, a z drugiej strony utrzymujący się ograniczony wpływ wzrostu gospodarczego na wzrost dochodów, zwłaszcza w obszarach słabszych ekonomicznie, powodują pogłębiające się niezadowolenie społeczne. Prowadzi to w rezultacie do wniosku, że przedmiotowe zróżnicowania stanowią w Polsce geograficzny wymiar (nie)sprawiedliwości społecznej.