The Territorial Self-Government and the Division of State Powers under the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997

Territorial self-government is an institution deeply entrenched in the fabric of civil society. As a result, the state should guarantee that institution’s right to evolve naturally, following the development of and attainment of successive maturity stages by Polish civil society. Consequently, according to the constitution-maker’s intentions, the constitutional regime of territorial self-government should not be an inhibitive factor for the natural processes accompanying the civil society’s development within self-governing communities, but it should allow for the ossification of such processes in territorial self-government laws. In this paper, the possibility of implementing the above assumption and the powers of territorial self-government are considered through the prism of the principles of the division of state powers and decentralization of public authorities. The considerations lead to the conclusion that there are systemic foundations for the separation of self-government authority within the vertical division of state power.

Territorial self-government as a pillar of the democratic state – reflections on the idea of local self-government in the light of the self-governing traditions of the Second Republic of Poland

Territorial self-government has been widely analyzed in Polish literature of the interwar period. At that time, its three theories were formulated: naturalistic, state and political. The first one contrasted the self-government with the state, stressing that municipality is historically older than the latter and, as a result, independent; it is the state that derives its powers from the municipality, and not conversely. The second theory advanced a thesis that state power is exercised by state authorities, including through local communities with a separate legal status. Self-governance was thus to be expressed in the idea of decentralizing public authority. Although it identified self-government with state administration, the third theory demanded that self-governmental powers be exercised by independent officials, regarding their independence as a guarantee of effective exercise of the powers attributed to self-government. Investigations made at that time into the essence, nature, and form of self-government remained valid until the present day, determining democratic values as the basis for territorial self-government’s status in the current Constitution of Poland.