Encyklopedia Administracji Publicznej MW Pivot Skin

STATE THEORY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT – a concept originating in the second half of the 19th century on the ground of the German science. The basis of this theory was the critique of the naturalistic theory of local government. The opinion that the municipality is a creation primary to the state was rejected, since the local government in today’s understanding was created de facto in the 19th century. It was argued that the fact that the local self-government is linked to the national structures can be evidenced by the word “self-government” originating from the German Selbstverwaltung (which can be translated as “independent management”), used for describing the local public administration which was not directly performed by the government structures. It was assumed that the state was created first, and the local government (as a state’s product) is one of the forms of performing public administration. Thus, the municipality should not be contrasted with the state because it is a decentralized public administration, which has a basis in the provisions of the law, that is performer by local bodies independent hierarchically from other bodies and it is self-governing within the frameworks of the act of law and general legal order. It is the state that defines the scope of tasks to be entrusted to the units of local government, because the local government as a decentralized state administration cannot replace the state in areas such as financial, defence or foreign policy. In the state theory it is believed that the scope of competences of a municipality can be defined. In this context, supervision becomes an important element, which should take form of control whether the units of local government are implementing the task entrusted to them by the state. It needs to be underlined that the state theory of local government was not monolithic. Among the representative of this current there were differences in opinions on many issues – one of them was the institution of municipality’s legal personality. According to J. Panejko, its legal personality could constitute the internal essence of self-government only when one recognizes that within the local government there are units separate from the state with their own superior prerogatives that do not come from the state. On the other hand, what T. Bigo understood as a self-government was the entity that comprises a group of people with legal personality. The representatives of the state theory included: Jerzy Panejko, Tadeusz Bigo, Maurycy Jaroszyński [ M. Jęczarek ].

Literature: T. Bigo, Związki publiczno-prawne w świetle ustawodawstwa polskiego [Public-law associations in the light of the Polish legislation], Warszawa 1990 ■ J. Panejko, Geneza i podstawy samorządu europejskiego [Genesis and bases of the European self-government], Wilno 1934 ■ J. Staryszak, Prawo nadzoru nad administracją samorządową w Polsce [The right of supervision over local-government administration in Poland], Warszawa 1931.