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Legal and Functional Determinants of Cooperation Between Polish and Ukrainian Local Governments Since 1990

The social, economic, and political changes which occurred in both Poland and in Ukraine after 1989, led to the formation of mutual relations at various levels and in various spheres of public, social, and economic life. Subsequent administrative reforms introduced from the beginning of the 1990s had an impact on the development of the decentralization and democratization of the public sector. In Poland, these processes took place much more effectively than in Ukraine. Despite this, from the very beginning of the changes, the newly created communes, and after 1998, the poviats and voivodships, undertook cooperation with self-governing partners in Ukraine. In the last three decades, local and regional communities in Ukraine have become an important partner for Polish local and regional governments. Polish-Ukrainian self-government cooperation is implemented in many forms, based on various models and with different results. It also faces many barriers on legal, institutional, and psychological levels. The main obstacle is undoubtedly Ukraine's lack of membership in the European Union, as well as sometimes mutual misunderstanding and non-acceptance of historical experiences. The main goal of the study is to analyze the currently functioning forms of cooperation between local governments from Poland and Ukraine. The main thesis of this article is based on the assumption that despite the many opportunities existing for partnership and cooperation, local governments from Poland and Ukraine establish bilateral and multilateral cooperation too seldom. This is related to many barriers that hinder the development and initiation of cooperation, and affect its quality and expected outcomes. To verify the assumed thesis, institutional and legal methods, document analysis, factor analysis, and comparative methods were used.