O znaczeniu sprawnej komunikacji lokalnej dla budowania społeczeństwa obywatelskiego

Abstract

The conception of a local self-government, which has been pursued in Poland since 1990, entails the empowerment of local communities. It is founded on the conviction about a significant role of citizens’ activity in the fulillment of statutory tasks by institutions. With this empowerment, a local community is close in its concept to civic society, which has been Poland’s goal since the transformation initiated in 1989. However, for this idea to be put into practice, legal framework granting citizens the right to act is not sufficient enough. It is vital that suitable attitudes be worked out together with awareness essential for subjective, rational and active participation in local life, the foundation of which is efficient communication, understood as a bilateral process rather than passing on information from the authorities to citizens. The communication processes, which are extremely important in developing the participatory conception of self-government, are the subject of this study.