Polish Public Administration
| Published date | 01 September 1923 |
| Date | 01 September 1923 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1923.tb03037.x |
| Author | Edgar R. Brown |
The
Journal
of
8
Public
Administration
0.
Polish
Public
Administration
BY
EDGAR
R.
BROWN
STEAM from the melting-pot, our modern Europe lies astonishingly
A
hazy before the view of contemporary Englishmen, and Poland is
far from the least obscure.
I
am vastly indebted, therefore,
to
Dr.
W.
K.
Kumaniecki, Professor
of
the University of Cracow and formerly Polish Minister of Education,
for supplying the greater part of the information upon which these notes
are based, and to Professor Roman Dyboski, of the Cracow Chair of
English Literature, for the considerable work of translation. The
resultant article is the first serious introduction, in English, to the new
machinery of the Polish public services and, perhaps, may be offered
with some courage and considerable propriety for the attention of
members of the Institute of Public Administration.
In the Middle Ages Poland possessed that rarity,
a
parliamentary
system, and from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries she was
a
first-class European Power, but there followed defeat, the division of
her territory between Germany, Austria, and Russia, and more than
a
century of subjection from the deprival of her last remnant of adminis-
trative independence in
1864
until the proclamation of the Republic
on
the 9th November, 1918.
“
The Polish race has many gifts,” writes Lord Weardale,
“
but
perhaps its enduring faith is its most remarkable characteristic.”
Sur-
rounded by the threatenings and the realities of invasion and upheaval,
the architects
of
administrative organization tackled Herculean tasks.
The Polish peoples, in partition, were accustomed to three main systems
of economic policy, education, currency, administration, and law, and
each of these was again divided. Austrian Poland had received
a
measure of self-government in the later nineteenth century, with pro-
vincial differences between Galicia and Silesia and in German and Russian
Poland a medley of decrees, some recent and war-imposed, some dating
from before the Congress of Vienna, was extant when dictatorial powers
were accepted by Marshal Pilsudski, who gave way,
in
1922, t‘o a President
elected by the two chambers of Parliament.
A
Provisional Government, organized
in
Warsaw under German
occupation, had issued,
in
June, 1918,
a
set of temporary regulations for
the Civil Service,
and
these remained in force until the 17th February,
1922, when
a
Bill
was passed defining the status
of
the civil servant.
Another
Bill
of
that
date organized Disciplinary Courts and directed
procedure
in
the Sexvice, but these
laws
did
not extend to teachers,
228
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