Celem artykułu jest weryfikacja czynników decydujących o specyfice chwiejności wyborczej na poziomie samorządowym. Polityka lokalna kieruje się innymi prawami, odmiennymi kanałami dociera do wyborców, inaczej ich aktywizuje. W większej mierze dostępne są jej mechanizmy bliższe obywatelom, dotykające bezpośrednio ich codziennego życia. Artykuł podejmuje analizę uwarunkowań, które odgrywają istotną rolę w generowaniu modeli zachowań wyborczych na poziomie lokalnym. Przedstawiona refleksja obejmuje czynniki wynikające z drugorzędności wyborów samorządowych, szczególne motywacje wyborcze obywateli, tematy kampanijne oraz specyfikę tworzenia komitetów i generowania kandydatów niezwiązanych z partiami politycznymi. Refleksję poprzedza przedstawienie głównych zagadnień teoretycznych związanych z chwiejnością wyborczą.

Korupcja polityczna jest zjawiskiem mogącym wpływać na proces rozliczalności wertykalnej. Jej oddziaływanie jest związane z wpływem na 3 komponenty: informacyjny, ewaluacyjny i administracyjny. Rządzący na poziomie lokalnym mogą osłabiać efekty rozliczalności wertykalnej, wpływając na jej przebieg. W przypadku wystąpienia korupcji politycznej najskuteczniejszym sposobem przeciwdziałania efektywności rozliczalności wertykalnej jest instrumentalne kreowanie komponentu informacyjnego. Odbywa się ono poprzez asymetrię informacyjną i zarządzanie niepewnością komunikacyjną. W przypadku komponentu ewaluacyjnego mechanizm osłabiania rozliczalności zakłada odejście od modelu głosowania ekonomicznego na rzeczy aksjologicznego lub socjotropicznego. Relatywnie najsłabsze możliwości osłabiania procesu rozliczalności wertykalnej występują w przypadku komponentu administracyjnego i odwołują się do intencjonalnych zmian elementów systemu wyborczego.

Pathologies and abuses accompany elections and are connected with the electoral system both in its narrow and broad sense. Moreover, they stem from a human nature and a degree of democratic principles consolidation. Cohabitation is conditioned by the electoral system and, in the case of the proportional allocation of seats, it arises more often than in the majority system with single member constituencies. The phenomenon itself is not always pathological. However, such an adverse situation develops when it comes to clashes, neither substantive nor creative, between the municipal bodies and, in consequence, the interests of the local community are jeopardised. Elections at the municipal level are also accompanied by other pathologies and abuses including: coercing votes when voting by proxy, adding voters to an electoral roll, bringing residents to a polling place, paying for one’s votes, preying on the naïvety of voters which can take grotesque forms or brutalising an election campaign caused by the mediatisation of local policy. The above-mentioned phenomena were examined and presented in the paper based on the analysis of statistical data, articles from the local press and, most essentially for the discussed subject, a rich material collected thanks to the in-depth interviews conducted by the authors.

The role of electoral commissioner in the process of dividing municipalities into electoral districts for municipality council elections according to Electoral Code

The Electoral Code of 2011 made a significant change in the existing rules for the conduct of elections of councilors to municipal councils introducing the principle that these elections in most municipalities in Poland will be held in single-member districts. This has caused the need for a new division of the municipalities into electoral districts, according the rules described in Electoral Code and in the guidelines of National Electoral Commission. The electoral commissioners are important in this process, because their task is to oversee the obey the electoral law by the local authorities. Their powers include i.e. the right to resolve complaints about municipal council resolution concerning the division of the municipality into electoral districts and the right to replace the municipal resolution by their own resolution if the local authority failed to perform its obligations on time or in a manner consistent with the law. The granting of these competencies to the electoral commissioners raises serious doubts as to whether the provisions of Electoral Code are not inconsistent with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, and does not violate the supervisory powers of voivodes. The goal of this paper is to show the role of electoral commissioner in the process of dividing municipalities into electoral districts for municipality council elections according to Electoral Code, especially according to the line of the Constitutional Court expressed in the justification of the sentence in the case P 5/14.

Institutional and legal conditions of local elections in Ukraine in 2015

In this article the author analyzes the institutional and legal conditions of local “government” elections in Ukraine in 2015. Special attention is given to the determinants of formal elections to local government bodies. Indicates the specific nature of the local elections in 2015 (up today). The local elections in Ukraine in 2015 were held under the conditions of reforming local self-government. The main goal of the reform is the socalled decentralization. Local government reforms ensure the creation of associations of territorial communities of villages (cities, settlements). For the first time in the elections they took part association of territorial communities. In addition, the Ukrainian authorities have failed to conduct elections on the entire territory of the country. No votes were cast in Autonomous Republic of Crimea, due to the annexation of the peninsula by the Russian Federation in 2014. Elections to local self-government bodies were also not carried out in part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, due to the ongoing armed conflict in Donbass since 2014.

Elections of the major of Zielona Gora in 2018

The authors analyze in the article the election of the major of Zielona Gora in 2018. They pay attention to changes in electoral law, often significant for the rivalry in a campaign. They emphasize the role of mayors who have been in office for several terms. Janusz Kubicki is such a mayor. He has held this position since 2006. The analysis of the elections in 2018 was preceded by the elaboration of the election process in the years 2002–2014.

The article presents the result of quantitative research on local government elections in Poland carried out on October 21 and November 4, 2018. Its goal is to examine the proportions of lists registered by political parties and nonpartisan electoral committees and the mandates they have obtained. This proportion shows the degree of presence of political parties in local governments of various levels and sizes. The data were selected so that all provinces in Poland were examined (16), a number of districts were randomly selected (in provinces with less than 20 districts, data from half districts were examined, in provinces with over 20 districts, from one third). Within the selected districts, all communes were examined. The quantitative research shows that local governments elected in 2018 are not political only in small and medium-sized communes, in which the councils are made up mostly of councilors who were candidates from nonpartisan committees.

Artykuł stanowi próbę oceny skutków wprowadzenia zmian w systemie wyborczym organów jednostek samorządu terytorialnego wynikających z ustawy o zmianie niektórych ustaw w celu zwiększenia udziału obywateli w procesie wybierania, funkcjonowania i kontrolowania niektórych organów publicznych przyjętej w 2018 roku. Autorzy weryfikują hipotezy postawione przed zastosowaniem nowego systemu w praktyce, dotyczące wpływu zmian na proporcjonalność wyborów oraz możliwości uzyskania samodzielnej większości przez jedno ugrupowanie w organach stanowiących na poziomie gminy oraz ryzyka całkowitej dominacji jednego podmiotu w tym organie. Ocenie poddano również wpływ ograniczenia możliwości wykorzystywania biernego prawa wyborczego w wyborach do rad przez osoby kandydujące do organu wykonawczego w gminie.

(Dis)proportionality of the Polish Local Elections

Studies on disproportionality of proportional electoral systems proves prove that district magnitude is a key variable determining deviations from proportionality in election results. This paper will shows how district magnitude affects electoral disproportionality by employing empirical data from Polish local elections in 2018. The analysis will prove that Polish “proportional” electoral system to local councils leads to highly disproportional results.

This paper seeks to extend previous analyses of localism of candidates. To our knowledge, this is the first study of the ‘friends and neighbours’ voting (FNV) effect in Central and Eastern Europe employing the data of the candidate’s exact place of residence and using dispersion of votes between electoral precincts, as in Poland votes in each precinct are counted and published separately. The basic hypothesis of the paper was that the place of residence is a factor that significantly affects the spatial distribution of votes. Using spatial autocorrelation, we identify spatial clusters of votes for specific candidates. The conducted research indicates that the intensity of the FNV effect differs between candidates. This local bonus, which in fact is the FNV effect, is an attribute of selected candidates. It can be seen that a candidate’s locality is a more important attribute influencing voting results in certain city districts, while in others it is of limited importance. This mechanism may be explained to some extent by referring to the notion of motivation to win personal votes and party strategies of the selectors. Moreover, it was proved that the spatial distribution of votes of candidates who have their place of residence in the area from which they stand for election is significantly different from the distribution of votes among non-resident candidates.

Bilocation beneficiaries. Conditions and consequences of dual candidacy to different local government units

Dual candidacy to the local executive (the commune head, the mayor, the city president) and higher levels of local legislative (county councils, provincial assemblies) – which we call „bilocation” – was prohibited by the amendments to the Electoral Code adopted in 2018. The scale of this phenomenon nor its consequences have never been subject to systematic analysis before, although it appeared as early as 2002, along with direct elections of mayors. Our paper shows who – and with what success – used this possibility in the previous elections, in particular in 2014. Bilocations turned out to be common, though not dominant practice. Their political ramifications were significant, yet the pattern they form – complex and far from intuitive. Our analysis shows that excluding such a possibility did not remedy existing pathologies but could have contributed to the negative phenomena visible in the 2018 elections.

Impact of Changes in the Electoral System in 2018 on the Political Position of Presidential Parties in Municipalities over 20,000 Inhabitants

The aim of the paper is to assess the impact of changes introduced in 2018 to the electoral system used in elections of the councils of municipals over 20,000 inhabitants on the political position of the parties backing selected mayors and presidents of cities. This research perspective is justified by the special role of these groups resulting from the system of the commune, in particular the method of election and irrevocability of the executive, that is forced to try to gain control over the decision-making process in the council. The study used the Shapley-Shubik strength index as that reflects the actual strength of a political party in a collegiate body better than the number of seats or participation in a mandate set. The results of the survey confirmed that the analyzed change weakened the position of the presidential parties in most of the analyzed aspects.

The purpose of this paper was to present ideas related to the creation of a self-government party in Poland, bringing together representatives of local authorities, community activists and all those for whom the idea of local self-government built „from the bottom up” was close to their hearts. The idea of creating a local government party appeared several times in discussions of members of Liga Krajowa association, which was an active entity on the political scene, a member of Electoral Action Solidarity of the Right, from the list of which League had its parliamentary representation. These concepts first appeared at the basis of the association's formation and then had a close connection with its further presence on the political scene. The local government party was supposed to be an electoral platform with a specific right-wing and centre-right political orientation, as well as to be the most important support for representatives of local authorities, but all efforts in this regard failed.

The paper concerns the subject of the early mayoral elections at the town level in Ruda Śląska, held in September 2022. As a background for the presentation of the central case, the article refers to other earlier mayoral elections held in the same term (after the elections of 2018). The main aim of the analysis is to verify the research hypothesis that early elections of town mayors, held in Poland after 2018, confirm that application of the principle of direct elections favors candidates independent of state-wide parties. The source material for the research consisted mainly of documents of the National Electoral Commission, as well as Polish legal acts related to local electoral processes. The authors have investigated selected sources using the content analysis method. To achieve the research aim, results for particular elections were compared.

The Notion of a Community Organization in the Context of Election Code Provisions

The concept of “community organization” appears in the election code as one of the entities authorized to create election committees in local elections, although it has not been precisely defined. The aim of the article is to analyze this concept more closely and to determine the characteristics of a community organization based on the jurisprudence and doctrinal views in the field of constitutional law and other branches of law, particularly administrative law. As a result of the considerations carried out, significant features of the discussed organizations have been defined, including a regulated legal status, perdurance, conducting activities in the social interest, and a fundamental purpose other than conducting economic activities. It was also highlighted that some features previously indicated in the doctrine, such as the personal substrate or the association of individuals only, are of no significance.