THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS IN FINANCING THE PROTECTION AND CARE OF MONUMENTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/EiP.2026.18Keywords
local government tasks, monument protection, care of monuments, own tasks of municipalities, own tasks of provincesAbstract
Motivation: As a result of legal modifications, changes have occurred in the management of cultural heritage in Poland. The tasks related to the protection and care of monuments have been decentralized. Currently, they are financed not only by the government sector but also by the local government sector, i.e. municipalities (communes), counties, and voivodeships. These entities have various financing options for this task: through current or investment funds, as well as through own expenditures or grants allocated to entities outside the public finance sector
Aim: to determine how different types of local government units (LGUs) allocate funds for the protection and care of historic monuments.
Results: The system of financing monument protection in Poland is highly concentrated among large local government units (LGUs): voivodeships and cities with county rights (CCR). Smaller LGUs, especially rural communes, have limited capacity to finance heritage protection, despite often having many valuable sites in need of support. This structure can lead to underfunding of monuments in rural areas and smaller towns. Over the long term, there has been an increase in total spending on cultural heritage, national and local government policies playing a key role.
References
Act of 23 July 2003 on the protection and care of monuments, Journal of Laws of 2024, item 1292.
Ahmad, Y. (2006). The Scope and Definitions of Heritage: From Tangible to Intangible. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12(3), 292–300. doi: 10.1080/13527250600604639.
Antoszczyszyn, M. (2017). Social Interest in The Polish Doctrine of Monument. IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 245 052056, doi:10.1088/1757-899X/245/5/052056.
Barnes, S. J. (2022). Heritage protection and tourism income: The tourism heritage Kuznets curve. Tourism Review, 77(7), 1823–1844. doi: 10.1108/TR-03-2022-0125
Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, CETS no. 199, Council of Europe (October 27, 2005)
Błaszczyk, B., Błaszczyk, I., Chojnacki, W. (2023). Tax incentives to promote national heritage protection by the private sector. Transformacje, 4(119), 200–214.
Cudny, W., & Appelblad, H. (2019). Monuments and their functions in urban public space. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography, 73(5), 273–289. doi: 10.1080/00291951.2019.1694976
Dunn, O. J. (1964). Multiple Comparisons Using Rank Sums. Technometrics, 6(3), 241–252. doi: 10.2307/1266041.
Eun, C. S. (2015). Culture and R². Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 110, 145-153. doi: 10.1016/j.jebo.2014.11.002
Faludi, A. (2013). Territorial Cohesion and Subsidiarity under the European Union Treaties: A Critique of the 'Territorialism' Underlying. Regional Studies, 47(9), 1594–1606. doi: 10.1080/00343404.2012.657170.
Finocchiaro Castro, M., Guccio, C. & Rizzo, I. (2011). Public intervention on heritage conservation and determinants of heritage authorities’ performance: a semi-parametric analysis. International Tax and Public Finance, 18(1), 1–16. doi: 10.1007/s10797-010-9132-1.
Fisher, R. A. (1922). The goodness of fit of regression formulae, and the distribution of regression coefficients. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 85(4), 597-612. doi: 10.2307/2341124.
Freese, J., & Peterson, D. A. (2017). Replication in social science. Annual Review of Sociology, 43, 147-165. doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053450
Geertjes, G. J. (2023). The Scope of city autonomy in the Constitutions of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom: informality, subsidiarity, identity. Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 15(2), 283–304. doi: 10.1007/s40803-023-00195-z.
Gelman, A., & Hill, J. (2007). Data analysis using regression and multilevel/hierarchical models. Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511790942
Glass, G. V. (1965). A Ranking variable analogue of biserial correlation: implications for short-cut item analysis. Journal of Educational Measurement, 2(1), 91–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1433839.
Guziejewska, B., & Majdzińska, A. (2018). The model of municipal education expenditures in Poland. Policy, budget and demography. Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, 13(3), 523–541. doi: 10.24136/eq.2018.026.
Hailemeskel Teshome Abebe. (2020). The Derivation and Choice of Appropriate Test Statistic (Z, t, F and Chi-Square Test). Research Methodology. Mathematics Letters, 5(3), 33-40. doi: 10.11648/j.ml.20190503.11.
Hatice A. D., Nihan B., & Turan M.T., (2024). The Statistical Assessment of Variables Affecting Conservation Condition for Historic Houses. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Statistics: Theory and Applications (ICSTA'24) Barcelona, Spain – August 19 - 21, Paper No. 160. doi: 10.11159/icsta24.160.
Kostakis, I., & Lolos, S. (2024). Uncovering the impact of cultural heritage on economic growth: Empirical evidence from Greek regions, 2000–2019. The Annals of Regional Science, 73(4), 1209–1239. doi: 10.1007/s00168-024-01310-5.
Kruskal, W. H., & Wallis, W. A. (1952). Use of ranks in one-criterion variance analysis. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 47(260), 583–621. doi: 10.2307/2280779.
Mekonnen, H., Bires, Z. & Berhanu, K. (2022). Practices and challenges of cultural heritage conservation in historical and religious heritage sites: evidence from North Shoa Zone, Amhara Region, Ethiopia. Heritage Science 10(172), 1-22, (2022). doi: 10.1186/s40494-022-00802-6.
Montalto, V., Tacao Moura, C. J., Langedijk, S., & Saisana, M. (2019). Culture counts: An empirical approach to measure the cultural and creative vitality of European cities. Cities, 89, 167-185. doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2019.01.019
Ofiarska, M. (2018). National Fund for the Protection of Heritage Monuments – principles for the establishment and operation. Prawo Budżetowe Państwa i Samorządu, 6(4), 11–33. doi: 10.12775/PBPS.2018.020
Oudenampsen, M. (2025). An Austere Nation? Dutch Public Choice Theory and European Monetary Union. Contemporary European History, 1–15. Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/S0960777324000638.
Prieto Ibáñez, A. J., Silva, A., Brito, J. d., Macías Bernal, J. M. & Alejandre Sánchez, F. J. (2017). Multiple linear regression and fuzzy logic models applied to the functional service life prediction of cultural heritage. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 27, 20-35. doi: 10.1016/j.culher.2017.03.004.
Sekuła, A. (2015). General grants and development – a relationship without a future? The effects of the structure of general grants on the development of local government units in Poland. Lex Localis - Journal of Local Self-Government, 13(4), pp. 915 – 932. doi: 10.4335/13.3.915-932(2015).
Sekuła, A., & Basińska, B. (2016). More freedom – more investments: The relationship between the extent of fiscal autonomy with respect to own revenues and investment expenditures of Polish communes and cities with county rights. Argumenta Oeconomica, (1[36]), 241–260. doi: 10.15611/aoe.2016.1.10
Sodangi, M., Khamidi, M. F., Idrus, A. & Ashola, O. A. (2015). Development of maintenance cost prediction model for heritage buildings. Jurnal Teknologi, 74(2), 51–57. doi: 10.11113/jt.v74.4523.
Suchecki, A. M. (2019). Spatiotemporal analysis of Polish municipal budget expenditure on selected categories of cultural institutions in the years 2003 to 2016. Journal of Public Governance, 48(2), 37-44. doi: 10.15678/ZP.2019.48.2.04.
Schmidt, K., Walz, A., Martín-López, B., & Sachse, R. (2017). Testing socio-cultural valuation methods of ecosystem services to explain land use preferences. Ecosystem Services, 26, 270-288. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.06.008
Tahoon, D., El-Zohairy, A. & Hendawy, H. I. (2024). Cost impact comparative analysis via BIM between heritage regular maintenance projects and long-term restoration projects - a case study. Heritage, 7, 50-75. doi: 10.3390/heritage7010002.
Williams, r.. (2006). Review of Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables Using Stata, Second Edition, by Long and Freese. Stata Journal. 6. 273-278. 10.1177/1536867X0600600208.
VanBlarcom, B. L., & Kayahan, C. (2011). Assessing the economic impact of a UNESCO World Heritage designation. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 6(2), 143–164. doi: 10.1080/1743873X.2011.561858.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Alicja Sekuła, Katarzyna Kubiszewska
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 57
Number of citations: 0
