The Quality of Local Institutions: The Case of Poland

Abstract

There is a growing consensus within both policy and academic circles, including various schools of political, legal, and economic thought, that institutions matter and that the quality of institutions and governments makes an important difference for economic development. However, while the institutional literature has extensively discussed different types of institutions and their importance, only a few quantitative measures of formal institutions and their quality are available. What is more, most analyses referring to the quality of public institutions concern the national or regional level and the issue at the local level is relatively understudied. The purpose of the article is to fill this gap in two ways. The first one is to identify territorial differentiation of the quality of public institutions at the local level in Poland; the second one, to explain the reasons of the differentiation of institutional capacities in the context of historical, cultural, and social factors. The research has shown that the quality of public institutions is highly related to historical circumstances. However, although their impact is strong, the historical conditions are definitely not the only factor influencing local institutional capital in Poland, as they appear to be deeply affected also by the level of urbanization and the degree of human capital.