Henrik Toft Jensen

From Centralised State to Local Government the Case of Poland in the Light of Western European Experience

Several countries in Western Europe have experienced a restructuring of local and regional government. In Scandinavia local government has been a cornerstone in the building of the welfare society. In the last couple of years Poland (and other Eastern European countries) has been restructured to reduce the central state and to give more power to the private sector and the local government. It is argued that coordination at the local-government level is important for a relevant economic and political response to local problems. A framework is provided for an understanding of the development of the central and local states at the cost of activities performed earlier by the family and the local community, but also as a support (in service and regulation) to activities of the private sector. Second, it is argued that the new EC slogan, ‘a Europe of regions’, has the purpose of strengthening the regional level economically and politically and thereby of dismantling and weakening the national state in order to strengthen the EC. Third, the problems and scope of the Polish local-government reform are illustrated, from vertical control to horizontal coordination. There are difficulties in building powerful local governments at a time when they have nearly no money and are unable to provide the social services which used to be provided through the state firms. There is now a political vacuum for which the upcoming new private sector and the new local governments fight.