ABSTRACT
Decentralisation has always figured prominently in the reformist rhetoric of post-communist countries after 1989. As with historic debates in Germany, Austria, Spain or Portugal, where centralisation was often identified with autocracy (Hesse & Sharpe, 1991), in post-communist countries there has been a frequent identification of lack of local autonomy – an extremely centralist mode of state administration – with the tradition of the communist state. But this broad commitment to decentralisation after 1989 has often remained a verbal declaration only, and while in some countries local government reforms were quite rapid and deep, in others they have not changed centralist administrative structures. As Pe´teri & Zentai (2002: 15) note, ‘besides . . . broad principles, rarely was there any political consensus on a comprehensive model of state architecture, let alone elaborate blueprints for its establishment’. This observation relates to the
lack of consensus within individual reforming countries, but even more to the lack of a common vision across the region. In this contribution the approach to territorial reform in Poland and
Ukraine will be described and compared in an attempt to draw out lessons of wider relevance regarding the factors that may propel or hinder convergence. For several reasons, Poland and Ukraine provide interesting cases for comparison. Apart from Russia, they are two the largest countries in post-communist Europe (in terms of both area and population size). Currently, they show some similarities in territorial organisation. At the same time they provide examples of two very different modes of local government reform, and – as a pair – they are fairly representative of the variation in decentralisation processes in Eastern Europe. Poland – unlike Ukraine – was never a part of the Soviet Union, but
remained a semi-independent state after the Second World War. This allowed greater openness in terms of contacts with the world beyond the ‘iron curtain’, so new ideas (including those related to decentralisation and management in the public sector) could more easily spread to Poland than to Ukraine. Secondly, an intellectual opposition against the official doctrine became much more widespread in Poland, especially after 1980 when the Solidarnosc trade union was established. This made possible intense ‘underground’ discussions about necessary reforms to the state throughout the decade of 1980s, and – somewhat naively interpreted – self-government played an important role in these discussions, paving the way for eventual reforms in the post-1989 reality. At the same time, the massive ‘Solidarity’ movement and widespread opposition movement after the introduction of martial law in December 1981 created in Poland the foundations of underground civic society, strengthening social capital and producing alternative political elites which after 1989 could take over power not only at a central, but often also at a local level. These factors were absent (or present to a much lesser extent) in Ukraine.
Although the cause of Ukrainian independence had a long history and was supported by a mass movement (‘Rukh’), its active supporters were concentrated in the capital and in the nationalist heartlands of Western Ukraine. Independence was thus much more under the control of the existing bureaucracy than in Poland, albeit now re-branded along nationalist lines. For all its political and geo-political significance, Ukrainian independence in 1991 did not lead to any fundamental change in the hierarchical administrative culture and personalised management style inherited from the previous regime. The traditional administrative culture was not confined to the Russophone regions of Eastern Ukraine, although this part of the country had stronger historical links with the Soviet Union than did the Western regions that had been under Austrian and (after 1918) Polish rule. The cultural divisions between Eastern and Western Ukraine led to fears of possible dissolution in the early years after
