Wybrane aspekty podstaw funkcjonowania polskiej administracji samorządowej

Abstract

As a part of the public administration, local government represents one of the forms of decentralization. It is primarily based on constitutional principle of subsidiarity, autonomy in realizing its tasks and responsibility for their realization. The basic units of the territorial administrative division under the Polish legislation, municipalities and cities, have an important role to play here. These units have legal personality, judicially protected independence, and receive funds from public income which makes them independent from other government bodies and from the state. Nevertheless, cities are not sovereign in decision taking or law making processes and they merely carry out state enforced tasks. This structure strengthens the supervisory role of the central administration which is primarily focused on verification. The modern world enforces decentralization processes. The development of cities is based on active adaptation of innovations offered by information societies. At the beginning of the XXI century, municipal governments were indirectly forced to introduce new forms of public and local management. The fundamental dimension of these forms is embodied in a symbolic transition “from administration to management”.