Kisiel Wiesław (red.), The restoration of municipal self-governments in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in the 1990s

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland started the difficult process of the reinvention of democratic municipal self-government from scratch in the 1990s. . The European Charter of Local Self-Government was a guide of great value for democratic parties in the national parliaments. This papers reviews the enormous efforts to adapt the very general EChLSG model into national legislations. We focus our research on the history of the first few years of municipal self-government. It is worth looking back on the initial years to better appreciate the current form of municipal democracy in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland .

After half a century of centralised management under the Soviet regime, restoration of local self-government began as early as 1989. On 8.08.1989, the Estonian Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution on the implementation of administrative reform,...