Uwarunkowania rozwoju klastrów w specjalnych strefach ekonomicznych w Polsce

Globalization is the major challenge the economies of all countries currently face. The process of globalization, however, does not exclude an economy of strong regional and local character. The regions and their development became subject to the rules of market economy and free competition. However, the mechanism of an open market has a lot of limitations which consequentially leads to occurrence of so-called market failure the manifestation of which are differences in regional development constituting grounds to allow for intervention of a country within the framework of regional policy. Special economic zones are a form of state interventionism in Poland. Development of clusters is one of the concepts the operation of SEZs in Poland is currently based on. The aim of this article is to present factors conditioning emergence and development of clusters in Polish SEZs. In the article, the theoretical issues connected with subject matter of a region, regional policy, clusters as well as emergence and functioning of special economic zones were discussed. In further section of the article a characterization of Polish economic zones was conducted and results of their functioning in the context of their impact on emergence and development of clusters were presented.