Party Strategies and Administrative-Territorial Reforms in Poland

Abstract

How well do electoral competition, ideological divides and territory-based cleavages explain the strategies of administrative-territorial reform chosen by political parties in Poland? The role of these logics is explored in the creation of regions and regional self-governments (1999), local electoral reform (2002), rules of adopting regional development projects (2006) and the creation of metropolitan regions (2008). The paper provides evidence supporting the significance of vote- and office-seeking strategies, the rise of a national conservative opposition to decentralisation associated with the weakening of the post-communist divide, and parties representing distinct eastern and western constituencies. Since its creation, subnational government has become more dominated by state-wide parties and has stabilised the emerging bloc party system on the central level.

Notes

1 .Jerzy Regulski, professor of urban economics and urban planning, led the Solidarity delegation in the Roundtable negotiations with the Communist government on local government reform.

2 .Calculations based on the maps in Zarycki (2002: 37) and Zarycki and Nowak (2000: 349). Since the boundaries of voivodships do not exactly coincide with the boundaries of the historic regions, only voivodships with more than half of their territory inside Congress Poland were counted.

3 .The vote shares of AWS and UW across the 52 electoral districts in the 1997 Sejm elections were much less correlated (–0.180) – i.e. complementary – than the shares of SLD and PSL in 1993.

4 .Available at http://www.poprzedniastrona.premier.gov.pl/archiwum/english/4751_5088.htm (accessed 20 March 2012).

5 .In the voivodship elections held on 12 November 2006, the governing coalition obtained majorities only in two voivodship assemblies (Małopolskie, Podkarpackie). PiS was able to participate in eight regional governing coalitions and its candidates became marshals in four voivodships (Flis 2010: 132–35).

6 .Warsaw, Łódz, Kraków, Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot, Poznań, Wrocław, Katowice.

7 .Apart from blocking the metropolitan regions, PSL was also able to prevent PO from introducing direct elections of heads of districts and single-member electoral districts for all subnational self-governments (Swianiewicz 2009: 210; 2011: 494).