The division of the country into smaller territorial units is crucial for effective public administration. It facilitates decision making, both centrally and locally, and affects the effective management of resources.
Today, the territorial division of the state is created through decisions taken at the level of central authorities, which take the form of relevant legal acts, especially laws. In Poland, during the Piast and Jagiellonian period, for hundreds of years, the state was made into voivodships, lands and districts, and so completely differed from past centuries. Territorial districts - lands in which a complete hierarchy of civil servants was maintained with governors at their head, began to be called voivodships in the fifteenth century. Where there was no governor’s rate, it was about lands.
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In each province, except for Russia, there were several coughing (castles, headed by coughing). In the second half of the XV century. instead, there were povets. Their creation was the result of the organization of land courts. Povet formed a judicial district. Over time, the county became an administrative district.
The nobles were subordinate to the population living on their lands, which, however, did not provide any services to the government. This was the result of the granting of immunities to the feudal lords by limiting the power of the courts and royal officials over the population subordinate to the feudal lord. The village thus gained little autonomy. The governing bodies here were general meetings and the head of the community with a clerk.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
We can say that the foundations of a three-level administrative division were created during this period. It was it, although organized in different ways, that prevailed in the period after the partition. The Principality of Warsaw was divided into departments and districts. A local government was created, which formed councils of departments and counties, as well as municipal councils in large cities, as well as urban and rural. These bodies dealt mainly with local affairs, the budget and taxes. In eight voivodships, the council was in the hands of collegial regional commissions.
In the Prussian part of Poland, the administrative division was as follows: the province was divided into districts in which the districts functioned, and at the lower level of the commune. In Galicia, initially there were provinces, division into districts and magistrates. In the constitutional era, this division gave way to a division into free royal cities, districts and municipalities.
Republic
As part of the administrative division of Poland until 1939, 16 major voivodships were created, in which Warsaw was allocated as an independent administrative unit. They were divided into districts, which, in turn, included communes. A characteristic feature of the organization of management was the combination of most special departments with general government. This concerned special departments that dealt with issues such as:
- industry;
- trade;
- Agriculture;
- culture
- art;
- social Security;
- religious issues.
The combination of special administrative departments with general government bodies meant that local leaders acted within the main unit (voivodships, communes, districts) under the leadership of the voivodship and elders, that is, general government bodies at the level of these territorial units.
The governor acted in two ways: he was the representative of the government in the region and the head of the general and those. departments of special management, which were combined with him. He was personally subordinate to the Minister of the Interior. The provincial office was an auxiliary apparatus of the governor. The provincial council consisted of members delegated by the local government.
The Provincial Department consisted of the voivode and three members elected by the Council and two officials. The administrative apparatus of Warsaw, which was not part of the voivodship, was organized completely differently. The head of the metropolitan administration was the government commissioner of the capital, acting as a body of first and second instance. In 1928, Warsaw was divided into city districts, in which the general administration used city old age as administrative bodies of the first instance.
In 1939, the administrative division of Poland continued to remain three-tier.
After occupation
In the history of post-war Poland, there are several stages in the formation of the country's governance system. Their time limits are determined by reforms that significantly changed either the competencies of individual bodies or the entire structure of the administrative apparatus.
The first stage covers 1944-1950, when the administrative apparatus was restored on the basis of the principles set forth in the manifesto of the Polish Committee for National Liberation (PKWN) of July 22, 1944.
The manifesto said that the PKNO exercises power through provincial, district, municipal people's councils and through its authorized representatives. At that time, the system of local government was formed as follows: national councils of voivodships, districts and communities acted as local representative bodies, creating a single system, which was headed by the National Council at the central level.
In 1946, 14 provinces and two separate cities were identified - Warsaw and Lodz. The division was three-tier, which means that, in addition to the voivodships, there were districts and communes. In this form, the country existed until 1950, when another administrative division of Poland was introduced, in which, as in the case of the previous reform, the rule of three degrees was applied.
The next reform, which introduced changes, this time to the network of the main unit, was carried out in 1954. At that time, all existing communes (about 3,000) were abolished, and in their place there were gangs and neighborhoods. The goal of the 1954 reform was to accelerate the collectivization of agriculture and bring lower-level decision-making bodies closer to citizens. As a result, none of the goals were achieved.
Another negative effect of the reform was an increase in the number of special forces. It was not possible to adapt to the new basic division into groups of school networks, medical centers, fire services, which, as a rule, were based on the former communal territorial system. The reform of 1954 was considered erroneous and gradually returned to the decisions taken as a result of it.
In 1950-1975, there was a three-level administrative division of Poland into voivodships (there were 17 and five excluded cities - Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw), more than 300 districts (counties) and (until 1954) about 3,000 communes replaced in 1954
Fundamental changes occurred in 1975 in connection with the entry into force of the Law of May 28, 1975 on the two-level administrative division of the state and the amendment to the Law on National Councils. Powers were abolished, delegating the tasks and powers of their authorities to the gmins and provinces. The last 49 were created, including three urban voivodships (including also neighboring municipalities and cities) - Warsaw, Krakow and Lodz, and the small Wroclaw Voivodeship, covering both the city and the surrounding communes, where the functions of the regional authorities were performed by the Wroclaw City Council and Mayor.
Elimination of counties
Introduced in 1975, the two-level administrative-territorial division of Poland meant a break with the tradition of three-level division, when the district (district) was an intermediate link between the commune and the voivodship. Their liquidation, as it turned out later, was of a formal nature, since in reality their tasks were carried out by the administrative districts in which the organs of general government operated.
The last decade of the twentieth century
In 1990, the national councils were liquidated, and territorial self-government was renewed in accordance with the Law of March 8, 1990 on local self-government.
The culmination of the reconstruction of the administrative apparatus is undoubtedly the restoration of a three-level territorial division, which - as demonstrated in these considerations - has functioned throughout the existence of the Polish state (with the exception of 1975-1998)
Current state
Work on the introduction of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistical Purposes was related to the negotiations on Poland's accession to the European Union, which began in March 1998. It led, in particular, to the need to adapt the Polish statistical unit of the country to the rules established by Eurostat (i.e. the classification of territorial units for statistics - NUTS).
This work was also related to the introduction of the new administrative division of Poland on January 1, 1999, which restored the districts as the second level of administrative division and reduced the number of voivodships from 49 to 16. Until December 31, 1998, statistics were collected for administrative division units (for voivodships and municipality), as well as for macro-regions grouping several voivodships (in 1998 there were 10 such macro-regions).
The new territorial division used for statistical purposes was developed as part of the new administrative division of Poland. It was finally introduced by Decree of the Council of Ministers of July 13, 2000 and entered into force on August 8, 2000.
The entire territory of the state was divided into five territorial levels - three higher levels were called regional levels: NTS 1 - the whole country, NTS 2 - voivodships, NTS 3 - subregions combining the districts and two lower local levels (NTS 4 - districts, NTS 5 - communes with additional urban areas and rural areas of urban and rural communes, as well as quarters and representative offices of individual cities).
As of January 1, 2017, the administrative division of Poland out of 4,231 NTS units was as follows:
- 6 units at NTS level 1.
- 16 units at the NTS 2 level.
- 72 units at the NTS 3 level.
- 380 units at the NTS 4 level.
- 3 757 units at the NTS 5 level (i.e. 2 478 municipalities, 621 urban part of urban and rural communes, 621 rural part of urban and rural communes, 18 districts of Warsaw and 19 representative offices of four cities).