Non-competitive Elections at the Local Level and the Incumbency Advantage of Mayors – Research Experiences from Poland

The objective of this paper is an attempt to answer if non-competitive elections to commune councils in Poland may be the result of incumbency advantage of mayors. The author assumes, that the effects of incumbency advantage of mayors in influence not only the competition for the office of mayor, but also the entire local political scene. These effects may weaken the competitiveness of elections and lead to the cartelisation of local political scenes. In extreme cases, it may even cause the degeneration of political pluralism and lead to non-competitive elections at both the executive and legislative levels. The paper analyses relationships between the competitiveness of elections at the local level and the incumbency advantage effect as exemplified by a group of small communes with up to 20,000 inhabitants and presents the findings of the conducted research in the form of case studies of 18 localities representing six regions of Poland.