ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC SERVICES PROVISION BY LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN THE YEARS 2007–2013

The aim of this article is a multi-faceted analysis of efficiency of public services provision on the example of Polish local governments and on the basis of local governments ranking published by daily newspaper “Rzeczpospolita”. The ranking list shows the local governments which care the most about development and quality of life. The established research period 2007–2013 will allow to answer the questions: did the leaders of ranking change and did the financial crisis in 2008–2009 have a significant impact on quality of life, and therefore on the efficiency of public services provision in the researched local governments? In the first part of this article the author considers the difficulties in defining the quality of life and public service efficiency. This chapter also presents research methods on the efficiency of public services provision used in the literature. The next part of the article includes the characteristic of local governments ranking list as a wide dataset, which characterizes efficiency of public services provision. The third part contains the analysis of the effectiveness of public services provision in the Polish local governments divided into three categories: cities with district rights, urban and rural municipalities, rural municipalities. In the last chapter of the article, a reader can be find the characteristic of the best fifteen cities with district rights in the public services provision and thus in developing the quality of life of residents.