A powiat is the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland, equivalent to a county, district or prefecture in other countries. The term "powiat" is most often translated into English as "county" or "district". A powiat is part of a larger unit, the voivodeship or province. A powiat is usually subdivided into gminas. Major towns and cities, however, function as separate counties in their own right, without subdivision into gminas. They are termed "city counties" and have roughly the same status as former county boroughs in the UK. The other type of powiats are termed "land counties". As of 2018, there were 380 powiat-level entities: 314 land counties, and 66 city counties. For a complete alphabetical listing, see "List of Polish counties". For tables of counties by voivodeship, see the articles on the individual voivodeships.
History
The history of Polish powiats goes back to the second half of the 14th century. They remained the basic unit of territorial organization in Poland, then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, until the latter's partitioning in 1795. In the 19th century, the powiats continued to function in the part of Poland that had been incorporated into the Russian Empire —the equivalent of the Russian "uyezd" and the Ukrainian "povit"—and, in the German-governed Grand Duchy of Poznań, as the Polish equivalent of the German "Kreis". After Poland regained independence in 1918, the powiats were again the second-level territorial units. Powiats were abolished in 1975 in favor of a larger number of voivodeships, but were reintroduced on 1 January 1999. This reform also created 16 larger voivodeships.
Functioning
Legislative power within a powiat is vested in an elected council, while local executive power is vested in an executive board headed by the starosta, elected by the council. The administrative offices headed by the starosta are called the starostwo. However, in city counties these institutions do not exist separatelytheir powers and functions are exercised by the city council, the directly electedmayor, and the city offices. In some cases a powiat has its seat outside its own territory. For example, Poznań County has its offices in Poznań, although Poznań is itself a city county, and is therefore not part of Poznań County. Powiats have relatively limited powers, since many local and regional matters are dealt with either at gmina or voivodeship level. Some of the main areas in which the powiat authorities have decision-making powers and competences include:
The Polish the name of a county, in the administrative sense, consists of the wordpowiat followed by a masculine-genderadjective. In most cases, this is the adjective formed from the name of the town or city where the county has its seat. Thus the county with its seat at the town of Kutno is named powiat kutnowski. If the name of the seat comprises a noun followed by an adjective, as in Maków Mazowiecki, the adjective will generally be formed from the noun only. There are also a few counties whose names are derived from the names of two towns, from the name of a city and a geographical adjective, or a mountain range. There is more than one way to render such names into English. A common method is to translate the names as "", as in the examples above. Thus in most cases the English name for a powiat consists of the name of the city or town which is its seat, followed by the word County. Note that different counties sometimes have the same name in Polish, since the names of different towns may have the same derived adjective. For example, the counties with their seats at Grodzisk Wielkopolski and Grodzisk Mazowiecki are both called powiat grodziski, and those with seats at Brzeg and Brzesko are both called powiat brzeski. In English this ambiguity either does not occur or can be avoided by using the complete name of the seat.
