Suchergebnisse

The aim of the article is to present the development of biometric technology as a consequence of 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA and issuing the PATRIOT ACT in 2001. Nowadays biometric technology is popular not only in the public security area (e.g. criminal data bases, face recognition surveillance systems) but is also used in everyday life (e.g. smartphones with touch ID/face recognition). The article shows both sides of biometric devices utilization: advantages and potential negative consequences for individuals.

The article deals with resonance, development, and changes in various forms of atheism in the works of Czech, especially Marxist, intellectuals in the second half of the 20th century. Attention is also paid to their influence on public opinion, especially in connection with a rise in negative attitude of a large part of the Czech public towards religion. The study is based primarily on historical and discursive analyses of the works of principal authors from the 1950s to 1989. Among the authors discussed are important figures such as Ivan Sviták, Milan Machovec, and Vítězslav Gardavský.

Both structures – government (or more broadly state) and local administration have been functioning in the contemporary Polish state for over 20 years. Hence, a natural analytical procedure is to review the structures and principles of operation, including, in particular, their efficiency and effectiveness. The subject of the article is to make a political science analysis in the context of postulates submitted (mainly by academic and scientific circles) relating to the modernization of public administration in Poland in the 21st century and to compare it with the administrative practice of the contemporary Polish state. Several research methods were used in the presented article: historical-descriptive analysis, legal-institutional analysis, comparative and systemic method.

Ensuring internal security is one of the core objectives of European integration in the context of the establishment of an area of freedom, security and justice of the European Union (E.U.). The aim of the internal security policy of the E.U. is to support Member States with regard to the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security. In the last 20 years in the area of internal security of the E.U. many important initiatives, political agendas and legal instruments at the E.U. level have arisen. This article aims to show the development of the internal security policy of the E.U., its most important guidelines and the challenges in the coming years.

The article is dedicated to Central Europe in the foreign policy of Belarus. In the process of shaping the concept of Belarus' foreign policy in the early 1990s, Minsk considered the Central European option. Already at that time, attention was paid to the region of Central Europe and the need to center the road between East and West. However, NATO enlargement in the region led to the choice of the eastern vector and to close cooperation with Russia. After 20 years of close integration, it turned out that the alliance with Russia is not perfect. Belarus has once again activated the Central European vector in foreign policy. Central Europe is a natural area for the pursuing Belarussian interest. Cooperation with neighboring countries (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary) is a positive impulse for comprehensive economic and possibly political reforms in the near future.

The restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic limited the functioning of society as a whole. For organizations working in the field of social activation, e.g., for older people, this meant that existing activities came to a stop. Was it, therefore, possible to continue activating older people? The aim of this study is to identify the ways in which selected organizations in Poland tried to cope with this situation through their Facebook pages. Posts from 20 accounts run by entities involved in the social activation of older people in four provincial cities were analyzed. As a result of a thematic analysis of the collected posts, it was possible to determine the spectrum in which the examined pages functioned, i.e., from a creator of reality providing the latest information, to a close friend who cares for, helps, and even talks to the recipients. Also connected to this was the form of activation carried out on the sites. The research revealed varying degrees of participation in activities conducted by organizations and institutions, and the conclusions presented here are a contribution to research into social media in public policy and the activation of older people.

Analysis of Ukraine's foreign and security policy (both doctrinal and practical) leads to a conclusion about the lack of coherence of its objectives and the inconsistencies in their implementation. The lack of a formed strategic culture is one of the reasons. The aim of the article is an analysis of Ukraine's strategic culture, its conditions, characteristics and evolution. The key conditions of Ukraine's strategic cultural are history, geopolitics and Russian aggression in 2014. Among the features of its strategic culture are: postcolonial state syndrome, Russia's syndrome and disposition, split identity and inconsistency in action. Distrust is also an important feature of Ukraine's strategic culture. Until 2014, continuity can be observed among other things, not only in the characteristics and behaviors typical of the post-colonial state but also in Russia's syndrome and disposition. For more than 20 years, Ukrainian politics has also been consistently erratic, which has manifested itself in the goals set as their implementation. After 6 years of Russian aggression, there are signs of changes in strategic culture and foreign and security policy. However, it takes time to observe the trend and consolidation of certain features.

The following debate took place on March 22, 2019 at the Warsaw School of Economics. The content of the Study on Spatial Chaos report provided the framework for the discussion. Its authors estimated the cost of spatial chaos at PLN 84.3 billion per year. They indicated the main mechanisms leading to the occurrence of this phenomenon.

The author analyses the design and imposition of the bank levy that came into effect on the 1st of February 2016 both from the economic and legal perspective. The author portrays its origin as well as the main solutions. The risks connected with their implementation involving the capacity to collect the tax are outlined. The author also presents the development of the design of taxation of the banking sector in Poland in the past dozen or more years. The author conducts a comparative analysis of the various tax designs that prove effective in many E.U. Member States. This allows to show the similarities and tell the differences between the various state-specific designs and the ones adopted in Poland. The paper is also concerned with the consequences that the bank levy might bring about in Poland. The author postulates that the analysis of its design flaws makes it possible to evade taxation. The author puts forward alternative concepts, which would make the provisions of the law more precise. The bank levy applicable in Poland has also been subject to an in-depth analysis in the context of tax avoidance.

The paper describes the Polish road to NATO which, contrary to the West's expectations and promises, was long and bumpy. The author presents and analyses various obstacles that hindered Polish accession to NATO. The author divides such challenges into objective and subjective barriers, but using other criteria, the author points to specific geopolitical, international, political, social, and military conditions. Furthermore, the author presents the stances of different countries on the enlargement of the North Atlantic Alliance after the Cold War, particularly the attitudes of the USA, Germany, France, the USSR, and Russia as these states were either more or less supportive of Polish efforts to join NATO or not supportive at all. In 1989-1999 the Alliance's position was slowly evolving from being initially unwilling to support Poland's accession to NATO to being sympathetic towards it. In the paper, the author poses a few research questions on the above-mentioned obstacles on the Polish road to NATO and a few theses and hypotheses. The author states that primarily the USSR, later the Russian Federation, was against Poland's accession to NATO. Initially, the West also opposed it. After 1989, its priority was to reunite Germany and stabilize military relations with Moscow through the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) and the elimination of Soviet military bases in post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.