Metropolization, Local Development and Local Government in Warsaw

International audience; Poland achieved in 1998 the territorial and administrative reform in preparation for the European integration. The Polish people voted already four times in the local elections (1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002), out of which the last two included the three existing tiers of the new administrative system. In this respect, Poland was during the 1990s in advance, as compared to other post-socialist countries. But this efficiency stops at the gate of the capital city: the administrative and territorial structure of Warsaw was changed in 1990, 1994 and, then, in 1998. It was locked into an extremely complicated and paralyzing situation until the last reform in 2002. How can we explain this delay?The topic of this paper is not to explain the political reasons of the administrative imbroglio around Warsaw, but to explore its significance, taking into account the hypothesis that the halting reform of the capital city is a result of the tension between two pressures: metropolization on one hand, and creation of the local government on the other, two trends that lay in the core of the structural transformation of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe.