Suchergebnisse

The issue of conflicts of memory is one of the more clearly outlined areas in contemporary Polish discourses of memory. One of its manifestations is Herstory, which involves discovering the forgotten history of women and restoring their rightful place in the public sphere, which also translates directly into issues of social and national identity, and historical policy. In the article we try to decide whether and to what extent herstory as a research approach create a caesura in the memory studies? We put the thesis about the existence of two oppositional currents – the alternative and radical turns of memory, and we are proving that herstory does not so much fit into this opposition as it functions across it, building pluralist discourse. Due to the specific nature of the data used in the text and their transdisciplinary nature, and given the anthropological and political research perspectives that are close to us, we base our research and conclusions on Gadamer's hermeneutics, without which it is difficult to speak of both interpretationism and herstory itself.

The analysis of the issue of political culture shows the spectrum of the functioning of society. In Poland, the process of changing the political culture has been visible since 1989. The perspective of integration and conflict shows the dynamics of social changes in Poland after 1989. Review of Karol B. Janowski book is a set of subjective assessments by the author. The ratings relate to the reading experience. The assessments were supplemented with comments on the occurrences that Karol B. Janowski treats as crucial for Polish political culture.

The subject of the article is an analysis of the attitude of selected radical left movements in the world towards the war in Ukraine. The aim of the article is to identify and systematize the attitudes of the radical left organizations to the war in Ukraine. The author assumed that these attitudes were different, and their differentiation was a consequence of ideological differences, as well as the political context and narrative environment in which these organizations operated. The methods used to verify the hypothesis were a critical analysis of source texts and an aspect analysis.

The main objective of the article is to show that the temporary symbiosis between centres of political power and organized crime leads to the development of permanent, corrupt and opaque networks. Focusing on the countries of the Western Balkans, the author points to the reasons for the development of organized crime in the region and then to the conditions created in the post-conflict period that resulted in the failure of effective attempts to stop organized crime and the corruption that facilitates it in the these countries. The article also points out that the creation of symbiotic relationships between political elites and organized crime groups leads to a 'state capture.' The unresolved problems of corruption and organized crime, in turn, have a direct impact on these countries' EU-integration processes.

Both Russian authorities and Russian society have a sense of harm associated with the position of Russia in the world. They do not agree with the dominant role of the West. To a large extent it is associated with a sense of Russian pride. The consequence of this situation is the growing confrontation between the Russian Federation and the West. Currently, the theatre of confrontation is i.a. the conflict in the east of Ukraine and the war in Syria. The intensification of military tension is also observed, the confirmation of which is the violation of the airspace of NATO members. The author of this article undertook research effort associated with the determination of the fields of confrontation between Russia and the West.

For past decades the two major consumers of Ukrainian products have been the CIS countries and the EU, both making up to 55% of the foreign trade turnover. An enactment of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area in 2016 has significantly boosted the trade between Ukraine and the EU Member States and, from other hand, has indirectly contributed to the reduction of trade with key CIS partners. In result, basically, has occurred a reorientation of Ukrainian trade from Eastern partners to Western. The analysis of the foreign trade of Ukraine for the period 2010–2019 has proved the thesis that Ukraine has gained first of all quantitatively in trade integration with the EU and lost first of all qualitatively in diminished trade with the CIS.

I join those who claim that the category of political culture in science is confusing and useless, and that its isolation for research purposes is pointless2. I omit the history of the notion of political culture, I do not deal with its definitions, I do not refer to the classification, I do not consider what should be adapted to political culture from one or another understood culture in a general sense. My focus is on showing that what is called "political culture" is essentially nothing other than politics, policy, polity or the selected elements that contribute it.

EU membership has been a compelling goal for the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia), related to the bloc's stability, economic prosperity and higher standard of living. Each of these countries pursues its own process of EU accession while being also a part of the regional initiatives under the auspices of the EU. This paper provides an overview of the EU accession process of the Western Balkan countries, focusing on their individual achievements and challenges, as well as common features and problems. Also, the content andprospects of regional integration of the Western Balkans through the Regional Economic Area (REA) programme, along with the role of the EU in supporting the regional perspective are discussed. The parallel Western Balkans engagement in both processes supports arguments for the prioritisation of the individual countries' accession to the EU over Western Balkans regional integration, distinguishing also the challenges of both processes. The methodology for the elaboration of this paper includes methods of analysis and synthesis, based on extensive desk research of available materials.

The primary purpose of this article is to explain the meaning and consequences of foreign fighters' participation from Western Balkan countries (WB6) in armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq. In the first part, the issue of foreign fighters is discussed in historical terms. The author focuses on the examples of the Soviet inva-sion of Afghanistan and the ethno-religious conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the second part of the text, the definition framework of foreign fighters' concept and its evolution towards foreign terrorist-fighters is dis-cussed. Then, a detailed analysis of the main problem is conducted, and several research questions are an-swered: 1) What is the scale of the phenomenon of Balkan volunteers (e.g., their number, the structure of origin, and others) in comparison to fighters from other regions? 2) What are their motivations and goals, and what are their recruitment process and ways of moving into the war zone? 3) What is the threat posed by returning fight-ers to the security of the Western Balkans, and how do individual states counteract this phenomenon? The au-thor uses mainly the following research methods: critical content analysis (literature, scientific articles, docu-ments, reports, press materials), and historical and comparative analysis. The author's visits to this country in 2018-2020 constituted an essential contribution to the part concerning the case of Kosovo.

The paper discusses the origins and course of the current crisis in Mali. The author outlines the reasons for the structural weakness of Mali, resulting from the shape of the borderline drawn at the time of decolonization, the confrontation between the Tuareg and the central government, the impact of the collapse of Gaddafi's dictatorship in Libya at the onset of a new stage in the confrontation, the role of Islamist groups in northern Mali, and the course of French intervention there. The case of Mali as an almost classic 'fallen state' is treated separately. ; W artykule omówiono genezę i przebieg bieżącego kryzysu politycznego w Mali. Autor nakreślił przyczyny strukturalnej słabości Mali wynikające z dokonanego w czasie dekolonizacji wytyczenia granic, przebieg konfrontacji między Tuaregami a rządem centralnym, wpływ upadku dyktatury Kadafiego w Libii na otwarcie nowej fazy konfrontacji, rolę ugrupowań islamistycznych na północy Mali oraz przebieg francuskiej interwencji w tym państwie. W sposób odrębny potraktowany został przypadek Mali jako klasycznego niemal "państwa upadłego".

By focusing on the Western Balkans, this paper asks two questions: first, how small states that are both EU members and candidates for membership understand their role within this normatively powered order and, second, what their roles and agency mean for the order they are socialised into via democratic norms. The notions of hierarchies and orders are conceptualised in this paper as processes of norm diffusion and understood within the socialisation of democratic norms, which, according to the literature, can be institutionalised, rejected, or modified locally. First, I argue that such measurements can help us understand how the EU's practices shape the broader understanding of its actorness in normative and strategic terms toward the Western Balkans. Second, I scrutinise national strategies related to the processes of state-building, security, economy, and society to demonstrate how Serbia and Croatia present their agency as supporting and affirming of the prevalent conception of order in norm localisation, or being more critical of it in the process of localised norm contestation. Third, the effects of EU approaches that provide more tactical and technical views of Europeanisation, rather than (a strategic) full thrust on enlargement, are discussed in the conclusion by bringing the comparative insights together and parsing them by means of the shelter theory for small states.