Local development strategies of counties in the context of regional smart specialization

Among the current trends related to strategic management in local government, besides the general trend of the development of strategic planning, noticeable even in the number of enacted strategic documents, introduction the concept of smart specialization should be mentioned. Smart specializations are appointed for all regions of the European Union, the Polish regions also. This arises from the provisions of EU law. In the article, the authors take up the problem of application of the concept of smart specialization at the local level. In this study, they analyzed the latest development strategies of Polish counties. Both, the examples of adopting regional specializations and trying to create own one had been searched. It turned out that both approaches to including specialization in county strategies are rare. Moreover, smart specialisations usually are not the keynote of the whole document, they exist only in its individual parts. Despite that, the authors analyzed more precisely these documents which contain specialisation and this analysis revealed some interesting aspects, e.g. a differentiated approach to the subject, despite a small number of analysed documents. Additionally, the authors compared the examples of two county strategies with strategies for functional urban areas. This comparison showed that there is a place to think about specialization in local planning system. Deficiencies of this element in the strategy can be compensated at least partly in the other documents. However, more broadly, the study confirmed the hypothesis that thinking in terms of specialization is still not widespread at the county level in Poland