ABSTRACT
This introductory section of the monograph outlines its main objectives – analysis of the state of democracy of selected Polish cities and provinces in 2010–2023 and the national impact on this state. It also poses the research questions and hypotheses. Moreover, it explains the choice of Poland – the understudied case of a country with an interesting territorial system, experiencing both democratisation and democratic backsliding. The introduction discusses also a two-pillar theoretical framework of the book concerning democratisation/de-democratisation and territorial politics as well as its conceptual framework consisting of four models of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory and deliberative. Besides, it presents the details of the monograph's qualitative methodological approach – in terms of data collection (media, focus group Interviews and individual semi-structured interviews) and data analysis (content analysis and process tracing). The last part includes the book structure consisting of five main chapters devoted to selected provinces and conclusions, including comparison of investigated cases.
