Wpływy francuskie w administracji Księstwa Warszawskiego
French Influences in the Administration of the Warsaw Duchy

Summary/Abstract: French influences in the administration of the Warsaw Duchy revealed themselves chiefly in the legal and constitutional order. They concerned the organizational principles applied in the administration, the conception of the organization of the central government, the appointment of the Ministers Council, the Council of State, the two-instance administrative legislature and other forms of control, as well as the shape of the territorial administration. In practice this boiled down exclusively to an adaptation of the French model of administration through adjusting it to the political and social conditions of the Duchy. Consequently, the reception of the French solutions had a superficial character and was in fact limited to the adoption of their external systemic forms. The model of the French administration was also modifi ed by taking into consideration Polish political traditions. In reality efforts were made to attain a compromise, in the effect of which an autonomous, Polish administrative system with clear links to the French model had been created. According to the main assumption of its authors, the system in question was to ascertain the speed, flexibility and uniformity of operation of the entire administrative state apparatus.

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