LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT AS A PUBLIC GOOD (Samorzad lokalny - dobro publiczne)

The main thesis of the paper is that local low-level government or self-government can become a public good if it satisfies certain conditions. It is, however, necessary to abandon standard defining criteria of a public good concentrating on the criteria of the lack of exclusion and the lack of competition. For this analysis, two models of interdisciplinary character have been used, each containing seven components: Model I: Governmental macro-structure, with components: institutional and legal order, social trust, economic policy, public goods, income diversity, consensus reaching abilities, grey area activities. Model II Local micro-sphere, with components: relation of local government to environment, the extent of local decision power, efficiency of local government, mobility of local society, the self consciousness of local society, the local role of public goods, the attitude towards others. Each component can have diverse weight: weighting scale from 1 to 10 is proposed. We can define a limit of total weight for the transformation of local self-government into public good at the level of 75–80 points.