Samorząd stanowy wsi w Polsce piastowskiej. Zadania i kompetencje

The local estate government in the countryside appeared in Poland at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, in the historical period when the disruption of the state unity caused the situation in which much more emphasis was put on the internal issues of the Polish society than on purely political affairs. There was a number of factors that contributed in the formation and the development of local countryside administration, among which the most important to be mentioned are regime, legal, economical, demographic, social, ideological and philosophical transformations. This institution was closely connected with the contemporaneous process of settlement based on a German law. The competences of the local countryside administration resulted from the colonization itself, the basis of which was a location act of a new local communal unit. One of the duties of the local administration was to provide the members of the local community with services whose main aim was to satisfy a basic need for security and protection, both according to the legal system as well as to the peasantry's interests. Local countryside administration, called upon by the volitional decision of the landowners and supervised by the state authorities, constituted a partial representation of the peasantry. Its activities were confined to few commissioned issues such as lower judiciary system and supervising the peasantry that were related to the peasantry's duties resulting from the feudal dependence.