Deficit of citizenship

Abstract

In this paper the self-government reform of 1990 and its subsequent corrections of 1999 and 2002 are analysed from a sociological perspective. The critical analysis focuses on two basic concepts of self-governance: (i) the concept based on decentralisation, democratisation and citizenfocused government as represented by the main author of the reform Jerzy Regulski, and (ii) the concept currently being developed at the British Institute of Local Government Studies authored by Michael Clark and John Stewart, proposing two types of relations between a local authority and local residents, and consequently two types of commune and municipality (gmina) management: one oriented on the inhabitant-client and one oriented on the citizen-client relationship. Based on the criticism of the reform articulated by Regulski fifteen years after its implementation, as well as on the current data and his own analysis, the author proposes that today, after another ten years, the same criticism pointing to the still insufficient treatment of local residents as the main focus, or object of self-government concern, has lost none of its topicality. The channels of the democratic articulation of the interests of different groups of commune and municipality (gmina) inhabitants do not function properly, which is particularly evident in big cities.