Local Economy in Theory and Practice Local Development Governance Aspects. PN 283

The contemporary paradigm of local development assumes the active involvement of public authorities, in particular the communal ones, in its creation. This is contemporarily referred to as local development governance and approached as an abundant and still evolving set of methods and techniques applied in local scale development creation, as well as the accompanying assessment criteria. The role of such factors is emphasised in the discussed involvement as: local community life quality, non-material factors, social participation and partnership. Equally important in this matter are also the diversification of socially accepted values through traditional economic values enrichment by new social, environmental and other values. Therefore, it is beyond any doubt that the idea of local development governance is directly related to integrated development concepts.

For this reason, both in Poland and in many other countries, especially in the dynamically developing, local development governance is more and more frequently referred to as the causative factor underlying not only local development processes, but also regional, national or even global development ones. In such situations, the research focused on theoretical and practical problems, related to the above processes’ success, is of particular significance. In spite of the growing number of publications discussing this particular subject matter, there is still high demand both in terms of its theory modelling and its practical verification. Therefore, the need arises to extend not only the objective knowledge resources within the framework of this governance, but also the underlying subjective knowledge layers offered by scientists, local and supra-local authorities.

One of the responses to this demand is the scientific conference, organized annually by the Department of Regional Economy of the Wrocław University of Economics, entitled “Local and regional economy in theory and practice”. In its 20th jubilee edition – record breaking in terms of interest and participation – over 100 scientists took part from Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Italy, as well as several dozen Polish local authorities representatives, doctoral courses participants and students from all over the country. This publication represents one of a collection of seven which include research results conducted and presented by the conference participants. It offers papers discussing different problems of local development creation in Poland and abroad which are covered within the category of local development governance. We have the pleasure and honour to offer it to its future readers hoping that its content will become useful in the course of both scientific research and local government practice.

• konkurencyjność
• rozwój lokalny
• finanse lokalne