ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the Subcarpathian province in the south-eastern part of Poland and some selected cities in this province: Rzeszów, Przemyśl and Sanok. It provides evidence that even relatively advanced decentralisation, as seen in Poland, does not always lead to progress in democratisation. Although the local and regional democracy in this province between 2010 and 2023 appeared relatively robust, with improvements in its institutions as well as some mechanisms specific to the participatory and deliberative democracy (e.g. participatory budgeting or public consultations), various democratic deficits were also present, some of which even expanded in subsequent years, particularly after 2015. These deficits pose a significant obstacle to the possibility of considering the analysed cities' democratic enclaves within the de-democratising country during the period 2015–2023, even though Rzeszów appeared to come closest to such a status. The analysis proves that two sets of factors affected the state of democracy in the Subcarpathian province – national and subnational. They sometimes jointly contributed to specific democratic deficits such as electoral malpractices, weakened mechanism of checks and balances and development of clientelism.
