Abstract
The aim of the article is to analyze the activities of municipal self-government administration aimed at counteracting the destructive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic during the co-called first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020–June 2020). The article focuses on Polish cities with poviat rights. It presents the results of a nationwide survey in which the representatives of 47 city offices participated. It is supplemented with the analysis of the content of documents (laws, regulations and recommendations) and the elements of a comparative analysis. The conducted research procedure does not allow to confirm the hypothesis. There is no scheme of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic which consists of “bottom-up” activities of municipal self-government carried out in the areas of urban policy which are most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It turns out that most of the activities carried out are “top-down” activities that fit – as the respondents claimed – with the solutions adopted by the central government administration.
Highlights
Due to the crisis of the modern democratic state, understood as the functional erosion of the traditional highly centralized and hierarchical structure, other and not so obvious levels and forms of organization of political, economic and social life gain significance (Bartolini, 2015, p. 381)
The COVID-19 pandemic is important as it ‘paralyzes’, in an unprecedented and unexplored scale, the contemporary urban policy defined as a complex of activities targeted at meeting the needs of residents (World Health Organization, 2020a)
The spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is, according to the opinions formulated by epidemiologists, and economists, political scientists, sociologists and lawyers, one of the greatest development challenges faced by the modern state
Summary
Due to the crisis of the modern democratic state, understood as the functional erosion of the traditional highly centralized and hierarchical structure, other and not so obvious levels and forms of organization of political, economic and social life gain significance (Bartolini, 2015, p. 381). It should be noted that the so-called first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland had much less serious consequences, both in terms of health, economic and social issues, than could be observed in other European countries, e.g. in Italy For this reason, it is impossible to really compare the reaction of the local municipal administration with the reaction observed in countries much more “experienced” by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Functioning of cities to the same or even comparable extent as it was in West Africa and Asia (see Trzaskowska, 2008) In this sense, the so-called first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland can be treated as a challenge with unprecedented repercussions
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