Between Institutional Legacies and the Challenges of Europeanization: Governance and Learning in Regional and Environmental Policies in Poland

Poland is a unitary state with a population of approximately 38 million people. It is a presidential-parliamentary democracy, with the President as the head of the state, with the legislative powers vested in a bicameral Parliament and the executive functions of government exercised at the state level by the Council of Ministers. Its current administrative and territorial structures were established in 1998, when the territory was divided into 16 voivodships, 315 counties, 65 cities with county status and 2489 communes.