In search of the contemporary shape of self-government

Abstract

The twenty-fifth anniversary of self-government in Poland is a good occasion to reflect on the road we have travelled so far. While we still remember well the intentions of the creators of the system (members of the First Senate) we can now compare them with the current state of affairs
and the status quo of government in Poland today. Two concepts have always been there since the beginning. Whereas the original solutions were to be inscribed in the tradition of Polish self-government, everything was done from the very start to draw as much as possible from the achievements of legal political thinking, later manifested in the provisions of the European Charter on Local Self-Government – a document which is the quintessence of the Western model of a local authority. Self-government is an institution characteristic of Western civilisation, practically unknown elsewhere, and it extends the principles of representation onto the local space inhabited by its citizens. Examples offered in the article illustrate how the initially planned model of government in Poland, rooted in the city fathers model has, in the course of subsequent reforms, been losing its original Western clarity in favour of the previous host model of local authority that characterised the past system.