ABSTRACT
The aim of the chapter is to construct theoretical methods for discussing the role of municipal self-governments during the pandemic. The author analyzes the current literature on this category, the organizational and legal framework in which municipal self-governments had to function, and indicators explaining the scale of involvement of these governments. This allows an assessment of the extent to which municipal self-governments in Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia understood and coped with the challenge. The chapter designs three models of combating the pandemic, intended to maintain the validity of the identification and comparisons between different municipal self-governments. In addition, by working with empirical cases of these models, similarities and differences between models are established, a typology of combating the pandemic is developed, and a classification framework for categories is developed. As a result, the author solves the research problem, which concerns the answers to the questions: what models were created at the urban level, what were the relations of municipal self-governments with the central government and entities of the local crisis management system, and what was the effectiveness of the actions taken by municipal self-governments. The last part presents an analysis of the relationship between models and the post-pandemic recovery carried out by municipal self-governments.
