Co samorząd musi w komunikacji? : o komunikacyjnych aspektach realizacji postulatu upodmiotowienia społeczności lokalnych

Abstract

The Polish conception of the local government entails the empowerment of local communities. While this empowerment is usually understood only in terms of legal personality, it is crucial for the unimpeded operation of the local government, even in this extremely narrow understanding of subjectivity, that there exist open channels of communication between the representatives of the local authorities and civil servants and the local communities. Regrettably, the communication duties of the local governments have been codified by the legislature in a rather narrow way, and most of them can be only implicitly derived from the tasks of particular institutions and contemporary requirements for the development of a civil society and democracy as such. The article, then, constitutes an attempt at pinpointing the sources of communication responsibilities of local government bodies, from which derive particular tasks which need to be addressed by the communication policies of particular institutions. Moreover, the article briefly characterizes the state of contemporary local communications in Poland as well as provides advice for further development of local authorities in that regard.