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The author - using empirical data - claims that a meritocratic approach to public governance in Poland does not seem deeply rooted. The research indicates that since mid-November 2015 until the beginning of November 2017 meritocratic rules have been totally ignored in governmental institutions including state-owned companies. Many legal regulations were enacted in order to introduce changes in managing bodies responsible for key public institutions as well as companies. The drive to improve their effectiveness were not of prime importance. The key criterion for promoting was based on the decision-maker's personal trust. There are many implications of the above-mentioned development, including a loss of trust to the state resulting in a moral degeneration from the perspective of political class as well society as a whole.

The article focuses on the theoretical and practical analysis of various levels of governance in higher education - at the systemic level, at the institutional level and at the level of public policy making in higher education system and universities. Both Poland and Ukraine are facing the common challenges of the urgent need to diminish bureaucracy at universities and to deregulate the system of higher education, which requires the necessary changes to the legal framework at the institutional and systemic levels. The article considers which tools in the process of transformation of higher education, both at the macro (governance in HES and public policy) and micro (governance and management in HEI) levels can be used in order to find effective solutions in the areas of management, governance and public policy in the higher education system.

The purpose of this article is to provide a detailed overview of the essential measures and regulations implemented by the European Union within the framework of its public policy on cybersecurity and make a comprehensive comparative analysis of the cybersecurity capabilities in E. U. Member States and their national strategies in this area. This article highlights multiple issues that should be the center of attention in regard to public policy on cybersecurity, which made it possible to evaluate the compliance of the existing 104 Zbigniew Chmielewski Studia z Polityki Publicznej regulations passed by the E. U. policy makers and the way it was approached. Based on the 2015 Software Alliance (BSA) survey and other available sources an analysis was made to evaluate the readiness of E. U. Member States to ensure security in cyberspace. Special attention was paid to "The Assumptions of Cybersecurity Strategy of the Republic of Poland", developed by the Ministry of Digitisation and published in February 2016.

This paper attempts to present a review of higher education reform processes in Poland in 1990-2015 and 2016-2018 (when a draft of the so‑called Act 2.0 was prepared) and an assessment of the domestic "art of reforms". As the author has adopted the perspective of the public policy science, she focuses on issues of public policy making, i.e. the development and strategic programming policy, drafting legislation, and accompanying public consultations. Furthermore, the paper discusses three past and one current attempt to reform higher education in the context of the political economy of reforms that are globally perceived as a benchmark. The long, nearly 30‑year period covered by the paper's analyses allowed the author to draw conclusions with regard to the evolution of higher education policy, highlighting the problem of its quality (standards) as a public policy.

The educational reform designed by Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (the Law and Justice political party) fits in a pattern of the previous Polish reforms, primarily due to the way they were introduced. The political rather than substantive factors determine their design, they are introduced too hastily, and the appointed experts are treated as an embellishment. This mode of operation is characteristic not only of Poland. The researchers cited in the text (J. Nelson, M. S. Archer, N. Luhmann) indicate its root causes and limited effectiveness. The state remains the most important player in shaping the educational system despite the attempts to reduce its influence on education under neo-liberal policies. However, the current analysis of its limited effectiveness should lay the foundations for a policy, which would take into account the need to reckon with the interests of other actors as well as to develop a long-term strategy.

The article discusses the Norwegian response to the neoliberal movement of privatising public education. Neoliberal trends in public services, including education, mainly manifest themselves in the affirmation of the economic efficiency in public services provision, increased participation of private and non-governmental organisations and the creation of quasi-markets. In Norway likewise in other Scandinavian countries the reform of public sector has not been strongly influenced by neoliberal ideology and the New Public Management. On the other hand, it was the political decentralisation and empowerment of local communities that shaped the organisation and management of the school system. The primary aim of the Norwegian education is to ensure equality and inclusion for all students, regardless of their gender, abilities, family background, nationality and health condition. !e article presents the historical path of public and non-public schooling in Norway illustrated by the statistical data concerning kindergartens, schools and pupils respectively. The central and local government still provides the vast majority of public education services and the non-public sector remains limited. Nevertheless in the last 10 years the rise in the number of private schools has been noticed, especially in bigger cities and more affluent dwellings. In its final part the article presents the recent developments in the privatisation policy conducted by the conservative government in Norway. It deliberates postulates relating to modification of administrative procedures leading to the establishment of private schools, widening the school choice for parents as well as diversification of the teachers' professional status. It also sketches examples of the utilisation of private-public partnerships in construction and operationof public schools.

The author describes and summarises the main theories relating to the specificity of the European Union structure as an internally complex organism which is being characterised by scientists as an international organisation as well as a confederation and a federation. Many researchers compare the process of the European Union formation to the nation-state formation, others compare the E.U. to the United States of America and many more indicate that the E.U. structure with its specific multi-level governance looks like a neo-medieval empire. What we can see in this empire is a network of overlapping systems of powers and areas of loyalty. The author points out that structurally the E.U. can be visualised as a model of multilevel governance and as such can be defined as a sui generis political system. So it is not analogous to the nation state but rather to a system of governance without a formal governing body. This notion is the result of a growing level of interdependence one can see in the international arena. In the second part of article, the author addresses the sovereignty issues which relate to the E.U. member states as well as the E.U. as a separate body. He reviews the theories which variously explain the process of European integration and its influence on internal policies within member states.

This paper focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the Polish education system for people with disabilities. To support academic education process, the task of the university is to create conditions which will allow students with disabilities to gain higher education. This will be a step forward into accommodating and participating in social and, most importantly, professional life. The theoretical part presents the institutional and legal conditions of the inclusive education policy, including a comparative analysis of the current legislation and Act 2.0. In the practical part, the model of the support system is presented as a case study on the example of a selected university. The conclusion contains suggestions and recommendations regarding planned legal changes.

The paper outlines socio-historical factors that led to the emergence of a new trend in doing research on disability issue – Disability Studies and the dissemination of a social definition of disability, on which the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is based. The main part of the text provides a critical analysis of the implementation process of article 24 CRPD at Polish universities with regard to relevant regulatory acts and using reasonable accommodations. Next, statistical data on students and PhD candidates with disabilities are presented. The main conclusions from thematic reports by the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights and by the disabled persons organizations are also presented. In the last part, the disability issue is discussed in the context of creating the Law on Higher Education 2.0 with the case study of amendment no. 47.

The article is an attempt to trace the changes taking place in vocational education in Poland, paying special attention to the possibilities of local and regional activities supporting vocational education. The conclusions presented in the text result from the author's expert experience related to the implementation of projects to support vocational education. The presented model of support for vocational education is currently carried out by the Bialystok Human Resources Training Foundation in the city of Białystok and Białystok Poviat as the Competence Centre of the Białystok Functional Area. The experience in the implementation of the project and its effectiveness is so universal that the project will be implemented throughout the Podlasie Voivodeship. It can also be a model for local government units running vocational schools.

The European Union does not have an autonomous and self-standing public policy concerning the protection of landscape. Instead, it adopts fragmentary and incidental measures meant to protect landscape. These measures are adopted within the frameworks of other EU policies, most importantly the EU environmental policy as well as other policies which are integrated with it (such as agricultural policy or policy concerned with special planning). In all these realms, the EU shares its powers with its member states. In some important areas, such as e.g. the property regime, the member states retained their exclusive competences. This particular distribution of powers makes the implementation of the extra-EU international law instruments rather difficult and not sufficiently effective to produce a worthwhile impact. These obligations have a limited influence because most of them are obligations of "a diligent pursue" rather than "firm result". As such, they are unlikely to give rise to direct application of respective conventional provisions. Notwithstanding, their importance is much more pronounced in the area of legal reasoning, where even the EU or domestic measures have to be interpreted in the light of the EU and/or its member states' obligations arising from international conventions on landscape protection.

The aim of our discussion is to look at the socio-economic analysis. It should be assumed that this is the basic resource of various types of knowledge (policy knowledge), which - in principle - is to provide the basis for making public decisions. As a result, these decisions are to be optimal or better than those decisions that are based only on intuition, belief, etc. This is, therefore, an analysis that is to be a resource of rationalized, verifiable knowledge from reliable sources.

The following publication elaborates on the notion of international tax competition and international tax avoidance in the light of cross-border public policy. In terms of intercommunity relations, tax competition may be defined as a phenomenon consisting in application of various tax instruments for the purpose of developing a state's economy and prosperity by means of increasing competitiveness of the domestic business activity or attracting foreign investments. Tax competition is a natural consequence of the processes of globalization since in the reality of growing business interrelations, tax considerations exert more and more influence over investment decisions of holding companies. It reveals the dissonance between the interests of the particular member states in the EU and the interest of the European Union as a whole. Usually it is difficult to mark the border between a harmful and an advantageous tax competition.