Rationality as a Basic Condition for Public Finance Reform

Abstract

Rationality of public finance is impossible without a clear model concept of the state, its role and consequent scope of public tasks realized (main research hypothesis). Unfortunately, due to the lack of an unambiguously accepted and consistently implemented vision of the state, both the socio-economic shifts and the attempts to reform the public finance sector throughout the transformation process in Poland have been characterized by a far-reaching lack of cohesion – governments and parliaments have changed, political doctrines have changed, individual manifestos have turned out to contain internal contradictions. And although there has been a constant element of rationalizing public spending, and improving the state’s finances, the actions taken have turned out to be rather ineffective, and any results they do have are temporary and illusory, usually subordinated to current economic and political aims (supplementary hypothesis). The aim of this article is to analyze the nature and selected aspects of rationality in public finance, takinginto consideration the structural, procedural and stream levels of reforms carried out in the Polish public finance system. It will concentrate on an attempt to answer the question of whether making efforts at reform have effectively realized the requirements for the rationality of public finance.