Introduction

An administrative structure with strong historical roots

Since 1989, with the restoration of independence and democracy, the Polish territorial structure and multi-level governance system have strongly evolved. After 45 years of centralisation, Poland has pursued political and fiscal decentralisation reforms and the scope and role of subnational governments in policy delivery have increased significantly in the last years. The principle of local self-government represents one of the pillars of Poland’s transition from the communist era to democracy. The process of decentralisation is often recognised as one of the most successful aspects of this transition (Baro Riba and Mangin, 2019[8]). However, the decentralization process has not been implemented without difficulties due to the high value conferred to the central state, seen as a guarantee of the homogeneity of the national territory. Indeed, even though the country borders were so often changed during the recent last two centuries, the notion of “territory” is deeply anchored in the national memory (Assembly of European Regions, 2017[9]; OECD, 2020[10]).

The first legislative package of local democracy and autonomy of municipalities (gminas) was enacted in 1990 resulting in the first democratic elections of almost 2 500 local councils in May of that year. The law on local prerogatives, adopted in March 1990, was achieved by restoring the former subregional units, which were abolished by the communist government in 1975 (Assembly of European Regions, 2017[9]). This law delivered more strategic capacities to LSGUs and gave them large responsibilities in terms of spatial planning, infrastructure development, utilities, municipal housing, social services, education, environmental protection, basic healthcare and recreation and culture. However, this dynamic was not accompanied by a transfer of funds (OECD, 2020[10]).

In Poland, the second wave of decentralisation (regionalisation) reforms took place in 1998-99. For regionalisation reforms, the core debate related to the number of voivodeships. Most stakeholders understood the necessity of reducing the size of the regions to restore the historical intermediary level, the county (powiat), abolished in 1975. Finally, the legislative package enacted in January 1990, restored the county as another subnational tier of local self-government (i.e. supra-municipal), which was traditional in Poland, and created 16 self-government voivodeships (regions) managed by Marshals that replaced 49 former small voivodeships managed by the national administration (Sześciło, Dawid and Kulesza, Michał, 2012[11]).

Since the first election of county and voivodeship councils in 1999, Poland has a three-tier system of subnational governments, where municipalities and counties perform the functions of local governments. The 16 voivodeships, which form the largest territorial division of administration in the country, respond to tradition and historical administrative divisions, resulting in a system of territorial governments that society could approve (Sześciło, Dawid and Kulesza, Michał, 2012[11]). What is remarkable about the system’s architecture is the capacity that is left for all levels to be independent from the other. Such a feature complies with the very historical legacy of freedom of the administrative levels in the country but has very often been blamed for fostering paralysis and blockage (OECD, 2020[10]).

The often-recognised successful implementation of decentralisation reforms in the country is partially due to the way it was designed, with a large involvement of a wide range of stakeholders. Polish authorities organised important public discussions before the adoption of the law, representing an important period of deep democratic debate. A large spectrum of participants was invited to discuss and the arguments used were often drawn from the national and local past. During these debates, it was also interesting to see how the local people had a clear idea of their own regional interest and identity. As a result, the law was passed expediently in July 1998.

While the role of voivodeships has been progressively strengthened with the decentralisation of new tasks, it is still limited when compared with regions of other OECD countries. Since 2007, voivodeships are fully responsible for a big share of European Union cohesion funds. In January 2009, the Act on Voivodeship and Governmental Administration in Voivodeship (Government of Poland, 2009[12]) was passed to strengthen and devolve greater powers to Poland’s regions in the areas of transport and environment. Since then, discussions are ongoing regarding reform of funding mechanisms, the introduction of financial incentives for mergers, the design of cost-cutting and efficiency programmes and the creation of metropolitan governance bodies. However, regional government spending remains among the lowest in the OECD area (together with New Zealand and Turkey), representing 0.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 1.6% of public spending compared to 3.7% and 8.7% respectively on average for OECD unitary countries (OECD, 2020[13]).

The current administrative and territorial organisation of regions and municipalities

Poland’s regional and local self-government levels are relatively new. As explained in the previous section, a series of decentralisation reforms (in 1990 and 1998) after the end of the communist era led to the first municipal elections and the creation of the regional and local self-government unit levels (OECD, 2018[2]). The regional self-government level is formed by 16 regions/voivodeships (województwo), while the local self-government level is formed by counties (powiats) and municipalities (gminas). Such governance/decentralisation reforms provided subnational self-government units with an increasingly important role in the provision of infrastructure and services.

Inspired by the Finnish and French systems, among others, Poland has a dual system - both decentralised and deconcentrated. It is deconcentrated as the national government has a representative (the voivode) in each of 16 voivodeships. Similar to the prefect in the French system, the voivode is politically appointed by the prime minister and heads the voivodeship office. The voivode is mainly in charge of the ex post control of public funds and safety provision. At the same time, the system is decentralised as the 16 voivodeships have their own authority as regional self-governments. They are headed by the marshal (president of the region), who is a political figure elected by the voivodeship assembly. The marshal sets and drives the regional policy of the whole voivodeship, organises the tasks of the marshal office and represents the voivodeship externally. The marshal office, a self-governing organisation in the voivodeship, is a body executing the tasks designated by the marshal and the voivodeship’s elected members.

At the intermediate level of government, one finds the county (powiat), which is a local self-government unit led by the head of the county (starosta). The head of the county is elected by the county council and is responsible for driving the development of the county within the framework of the regional development strategy of the voivodeship.

The lowest level of government in Poland is the municipality (gmina), the LSGU that benefits from a right to develop its own development strategy. According to the Law on the Principles of Implementing Development Policy (2020), the strategy can be developed by a single municipality or jointly by a group of municipalities that create a supra-local development strategy in order to improve co-ordination. The municipality is responsible for all public matters of local importance in its territory, including local public transport, electricity, waterworks, health, education, housing, etc. The municipal office is headed by the mayor or president (a formal title depending on the type and size of municipalities but with no difference in competences) who is elected by citizens. The entire territorial organisation of subnational government units in Poland is described in Figure 0.1.

Figure 0.1. Territorial organisation of subnational self-government units in Poland

Note: Data are presented as of 1 January 2021 (there are annual changes in the number of municipalities by type). The Capital City of Warsaw is the object of specific regulations and, according to the law governing the structure of the city, Warsaw currently enjoys the status of a city with county rights. The division of tasks between Warsaw and its districts is not specifically defined on a statutory level, so Warsaw City Council decides which tasks will be assigned to the districts.

Source: Author’s own elaboration

Poland’s territorial classification of municipalities

Poland’s National Official Register of the Territorial Division of the Country (TERYT) on the basis of which the Polish System of Coding of Territorial and Statistical Units (KTS) is based, divides the country into six territorial levels, or seven if we include Poland as a level “0” (Table 0.1). It includes a national administration with a two-tier system, a two-tier system, a national government based in the capital and delegated authorities of the national government to the voivodeships (i.e. 16 voivodeship offices – 1 in each of the 16 voivodeships). Poland also has a self-government administration with a three-tier system with a regional and two local levels of government. At the regional level it is composed of 16 voivodeships (regional self-government units in regions). At local level it consists of two types of local self-government units (LSGUs):

• 380 counties (LSGUs at the county level in all of the 16 voivodeships and, including 314 counties and 66 cities with county status);

• 2 477 municipalities (LSGUs at the municipal level in each of the 16 voivodeships).1

The lowest administrative level, the municipality, is divided into three categories: urban, rural and mixed (urban-rural). Since 2020, rural municipalities account for most of the municipalities (62%), above the number of mixed (26%) and urban (12%) municipalities. According to the official Polish categorisation, rural areas comprise rural municipalities and the rural parts of mixed municipalities, while urban areas comprise urban municipalities and the urban part of mixed municipalities.

The average number of inhabitants per municipality in Poland (15 507 in 2018) is above the average in OECD (9 700 inhabitants) and EU (5 880 for the 28 countries) countries. Polish municipalities have on average about 3 times more land area (123 square kilometres) than the average of EU municipalities (49) yet are smaller when compared to the OECD average (211). In contrast with OECD and EU averages, Poland has a relatively lower share of municipalities with fewer than 5 000 inhabitants (26% vs. 44% in the OECD and 48% in the EU) with most Polish municipalities (60%) being medium-sized administrative units (5 000 to 20 0000 inhabitants).

The OECD’s territorial classification of municipalities in Poland

The current territorial classification in Poland is based on qualitative criteria and does not differentiate among different types of rural municipalities. Moving forward, this section introduces a revised territorial classification for Polish municipalities used for this report, which leverages a functional approach by applying the OECD territorial and FUA typology.

In order to capture the functional interactions across the territory, the report uses the FUA definition, which was developed by the European Commission (EC) and the OECD (Box 0.1). Functional Urban Area (FUAs) consists of a densely inhabited core and its commuting zone whose labour market is highly integrated with the core. FUAs are powerful tools to compare socio-economic and spatial trends in cities (Box 0.1). FUAs often have a large internal market, driven by higher-value globally connected services, while areas outside FUAs have different degrees of rurality and higher reliance on primary sectors. According to the OECD typology, Poland has 58 FUAs (Figure 0.2), where the large majority (37) are small FUAs (less than 250 000 inhabitants) and the rest (21) are medium- and large-sized FUAs (with more than 250 000 inhabitants) (Table 0.2). This large number of small- and medium-sized FUAs underlines the dispersed nature of Poland’s settlement structure. TL3 regions cover the entire territory within countries, while Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) only capture a sub-sample of the territory.

Figure 0.2. Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) of Poland according to OECD typology

Note: FUAs are composed of their core and its commuting zone. The core of FUAs is measured as one or more local units that have at least 50% of their residents inside an urban centre, this latter is a set of contiguous, high density (1 500 residents per square kilometre) grid cells with a population of 50 000 inhabitants in the contiguous cells.

Source: OECD (2020[16]), “Regional demography”, https://doi.org/10.1787/a8f15243-en.

To better understand Poland’s territorial trends and facilitate regional comparability across OECD countries, the analysis in this chapter adopts the OECD regional classification (Territorial level 2 (TL2) and Territorial level 3 (TL3) (Box 0.2). This classification identifies two levels of geographic units within OECD countries: i) large regions (TL2), which generally represent the first administrative tier of subnational government; and ii) small regions (TL3). Both levels of regions encompass the entire national territory. Annexe 1.A displays the classification of Poland’s TL3 regions (Box 0.2).

This OECD territorial classification defines metropolitan TL3 regions non-and metropolitan TL3 regions based on the presence and access to Functional Urban Area (FUAs). Metropolitan regions are the TL3 regions where more than 50% of the population live in a FUA, while non-metropolitan regions have less than 50% of its population living in a FUA.2 This territorial typology acknowledges the existence of a rural-urban continuum, so regions are differentiated based on the degree of rurality, which means that even metropolitan regions have a share of population living in rural places. In addition, the typology uses accessibility as a defining characteristic of regions, taking into account the relative location of rural places with respect to FUAs. As such, it differentiates amongst different types of non-metropolitan regions – those close to cities and those that are remote Box 0.3.

This report uses the OECD/EU methodology of FUAs and the OECD TL2 and TL3 regional classification for international comparisons of Poland’s FUA’s and metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions. All metropolitan regions, non-metropolitan regions close to a FUA, non-metropolitan regions with/near a small FUA and non-metropolitan regions remote are TL3 regions, so the report won’t specify “TL3” when those types of regions are mentioned. Reference will be made to “large FUAs” when referring to FUAs above 1 million inhabitants, “medium FUAs” when referring to FUAs between 250 000 and 1 million inhabitants and “small FUAs” when referring to FUAs below 250 000 inhabitants. Municipalities will be grouped according to the alternative OECD municipal classification proposed for this particular study.

An alternative territorial approach for the classification of municipalities in Poland

To better capture the commonalities among local self-government units in terms of economic opportunities and challenges, the OECD has developed an alternative territorial classification for municipalities in Poland. It classifies municipalities beyond administrative, political and historical reasons and adopts a typology based on economic functionality, population size and accessibility (see more details in Box 0.4).

In Poland, the TERYT classification of municipalities and rural/urban areas is used for official statistics and applied in most academic research and policy analysis in Poland. However, Poland’s territorial typology has scope for improvement as it relies on qualitative criteria to classify urban and rural municipalities and lacks differentiation in the degree of rurality among municipalities, as highlighted in the OECD Rural Policy Review (2018[2]) (Box 0.3).

Box 0.3. Areas of improvement in Poland’s municipal classification

As identified in the OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Poland (2018[2]), the TERYT classification of municipalities could improve certain aspects:

1. 1. The typology relies on qualitative criteria. Urban status is conferred to municipalities through political (supported by local residents/self-government) and administrative procedures, regardless of quantitative or objective characteristics of the municipalities. The process also involves historical reasons when assigning urban status (cities with county status or the traditional administrative regional centres).

2. 2. There is no differentiation among different types of rural. Rural municipalities with significant linkages with an urban centre are not distinguished from rural municipalities that are remotely located.

3. 3. The “mixed municipality” classification, i.e. urban-rural municipality, creates limitations and distortions for policy analysis and research. Rural parts of mixed municipalities are incorporated into the definition of rural areas. However, certain statistical variables, such as municipal revenue and expenditure as well as the allocation of EU funds, are often not available at this municipality level. Such situation can bias some analyses. For example, the average accessibility of rural dwellers to public services is overestimated because services are often located in the urban part of urban-rural municipalities.

Source: OECD (2018[2]), OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Poland 2018, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264289925-en.

Drawing from the classification of FUAs, the alternative OECD territorial classification for municipalities in Poland identifies three types of municipalities, based on quantitative and functional characteristics (Please see the full methodology in Box 0.4). Some of these types of municipalities are divided in subtypes, according to population size, creating a total of 5 subtypes of municipalities. The following describe the different municipalities according to the OECD alternative territorial classification for Poland (in parenthesis a simplified name that this report will refer to in figures and tables):

1. 1. Municipalities inside FUAs:

   1. a. Big municipalities inside FUAs (In FUA big): Municipalities inside FUAs with more than 20 000 inhabitants.

   2. b. Small municipalities inside FUAs (In FUA small): Municipalities inside FUAs with fewer than 20 000 inhabitants.

2. 2. Municipalities outside FUAs with high accessibility:

   1. a. Big municipalities outside FUAs with high accessibility (Out FUA high access big): Municipalities outside FUAs with high accessibility and more than 20 000 inhabitants. A municipality is classified with high accessibility if the level of population it can reach within a 90-minute drive is above the bottom 10th percentile of the population distribution that all Polish municipalities can reach within a 90-minute drive.

   2. b. Small municipalities outside FUAs with high accessibility (Out FUA high access small): Municipalities outside FUAs with high accessibility and fewer than 20 000 inhabitants. A municipality is classified with high accessibility if the level of population it can reach within a 90-minute drive is above the bottom 10th percentile of the population distribution that all Polish municipalities can reach within a 90-minute drive.

3. 3. Municipalities outside FUAs with low accessibility (Out FUA low access): Municipalities outside FUAs with low accessibility, regardless of their population size. Some 7% of these municipalities have more than 20 000 inhabitants. A municipality is classified with low accessibility if the level of population it can reach within a 90-minute drive is below the bottom 10th percentile of the population distribution that all Polish municipalities can reach within a 90-minute drive.

Box 0.4. Alternative OECD territorial classification for municipalities in Poland

The alternative classification follows a three-step process:

1. 1. Identifying municipalities inside and outside FUAs. The methodology identifies municipalities inside and outside FUAs (city and commuting zone).

2. 2. Measuring accessibility for municipalities outside FUAs. The methodology measures the level of accessibility to population settlements by following three steps:

   • Population within a 90-minute drive around each municipality: it calculates all the population that can be reached from the centroid of each municipality outside FUAs within a 90-minute drive by car in every direction.

   • Threshold of population reached: It then calculates the bottom 10th percentile of the distribution of the population that all Polish municipalities can reach within a 90-minute drive.

   • Classify low accessibility and high accessibility municipalities: A municipality is classified with low accessibility if the level of population reached within a 90-minute drive is below that 10th percentile. Above the threshold, the municipality is classified with high accessibility.

The previous two steps identify three types of municipalities:

1. 1. Inside FUAs

2. 2. Outside FUAS, with high accessibility to FUAs.

3. 3. Outside FUAS, with low accessibility to FUAs.

In order to account for unique characteristics of municipalities, the methodology differentiates those municipalities inside FUAs and outside FUAs by size of population. The municipalities outside FUAs with low accessibility are not differentiated by size of population given their relatively homogenous distribution in size. Therefore the final step to classify municipalities by size of population is as follows:

1. 3. Dividing municipalities with high accessibility outside FUAs and municipalities inside FUAs by population size. The methodology identifies municipalities outside FUAs with high accessibility and municipalities inside FUAs that are relatively large and small in terms of population. To define the population threshold, the methodology follows Poland’s population distribution of all municipalities and Poland’s official threshold to differentiate among small and medium/large cities (20 000 inhabitants). Therefore, municipalities with a population of more than 20 000 inhabitants are classified as big and those with a population of fewer than 20 000 inhabitants as small.

The previous three steps identify five subtypes of municipalities:

1. 1. Big municipalities inside FUAs

2. 2. Small municipalities inside FUAs

3. 3. Big municipalities outside FUAS, with high accessibility to FUAs.

4. 4. Small municipalities outside FUAS, with high accessibility to FUAs

5. 5. Municipalities outside FUAS, with low accessibility to FUAs.

These five subtypes of municipalities introduce a new lens to look at municipalities in Poland by differentiating among municipalities inside and outside FUAs, large or small in terms of population and high or low level of accessibility to population settlements. This classification brings a number of policy advantages:

1. 1. Enabling to identify and group municipalities based on measurable characteristics. Shifting from administrative, political and historic classification (see Chapter 6 for further discussion) to one based on economic functionality, size and accessibility.

2. 2. Identifying different types of rural municipalities in the territory (close to and far from FUAs).

3. 3. Allowing identification of common challenges and opportunities across groups of municipalities of certain type, which can lead to common policy approaches and cross-learning mechanisms from the peers among relevant types of municipalities.

According to this alternative OECD classification, most of Poland’s population lives inside FUAs (56%). Particularly, big municipalities in FUAs concentrate the majority of Poland’s population (41.6%) within a small number of municipal units (6% of total municipalities). The second-largest subtype in terms of population are small municipalities outside FUAs with high accessibility (out FUA with high access), which host 23.7% of the population in 49% of Poland’s municipalities. Figure 0.3 describes the geographical distribution of municipalities in each of the five types.

Table 0.3. OECD territorial classification for municipalities in Poland
Distribution of municipalities and population per OECD typology in 2018
Municipal (gminas) classification	Number of municipalities (2018)	Share over total municipalities (%)	Population (2018, millions)	Population (%)
In FUA big	161	6	15.97	41.6
In FUA small	592	24	5.48	14.3
Out FUA high access big	154	6	4.91	12.8
Out FUA high access small	1 204	49	9.11	23.7
Out FUA low access	367	15	2.94	7.7
In FUA (sum)	753	30	21.4	56
Out FUA (sum)	1 725	70	17.0	44
Note: The table presents data by 15 November 2018 (there are annual changes in the number of municipalities by type).
Source: Authors’ own elaboration based on the population and number of municipalities from Statistics Poland (2020[20]), Regional Statistics, https://stat.gov.pl/en/regional-statistics/ (accessed on 15 November 2020).

Figure 0.3. OECD classification of municipalities in Poland

Municipalities by types and share of population across the territory of Poland, 2018

Source: Authors’ own elaboration based on OECD (2020[17]), “Metropolitan areas”, https://doi.org/10.1787/data-00531-en; OpenStreetMap; Polish State Railways (PKP); International Transport Forum air model.