Suchergebnisse

The article is devoted to the analysis of factors that prevent or limit the development of broadly understood science. The following types of limitations have been distinguished: psychosocial, biological, political, resource barriers and the final nature of science. Biological barriers lie in human sensory endowment. Psychosocial barriers are determined by the conditions of the functioning of human societies. Resource barriers are constraints on economic and energy reserves. The problem of the scope of science is understood as the finite scope of the mysteries of science itself – the fact of a limited number of possible discoveries.

There is a significant regulation concerning spa-towns and/or health resorts in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Slovakia. In federal states (i.e. in Austria and Germany), this regulation is adopted at the federal and länder (i.e. regional) level, yet the latter one is definitely more intensive. The spa-related regulation in each state considered is meant to provide public warranty as to the quality of natural features of spa-towns or health resorts. In the same time, this regulation sets significant constraints with regard to the choice of development patterns available to spas. The resulting opportunity cost can, however, be covered by price premia chargeable in spas and by special taxes levied only in spas. The tax income arising from them, however, is earmarked as it can be designated for improvements of spa-related features and functions of a given town or site. In the countries considered, there is no specifically designed subvention scheme which could be used only by spa-towns or health resorts.

The main obstacles in the implementation of public policies emerge at the earlier stages of the agenda-setting and the formulation of goals due to institutional constraints. They comprise the ambiguities about the governing center and thus about the real actors of the public policy process. The government fully controls the legislation, although this results from a functional unity of the executive and the legislative powers rather than from formal regulations. The parliament gets deprived of its influence on public policy. The government, however, is not able to fulfill its functions, either. The evidence shows that the main actor in programming public policy is the administration, and the decision-taking process is dispersed among separate ministries without any real coordination and oversight. The law is an instrument of communicating decisions taken at the pre-legislative stage. The use of objective data and public consultations is occasional, although they could compensate for the declining role of the parliament. This makes the selection of proper policy instruments yet more difficult.

The article presents possible impact of the housing policy and the housing market on the situation of households during COVID-19. This impact was estimated as relatively small, with at least four levels of constraints with very different generality and scope and nature of the impact. These restrictions relate to the levels of the market paradigm of economic growth, housing policy understood in its strict sense, the positioning of households in complex socio-economic relations, and the investment and construction process. It was assumed that with the indicated restrictions, changes in the housing policy introduced in Poland in 2020 and 2021 and possible market reactions to them can only be considered in terms of the likely impact on households at an unknown time of the impact of the pandemic. Market reactions were illustrated with selected flow quantities regarding the number and investor structure of housing construction projects commenced after the year 2019. The aim of the paper is to signal and illustrate with available data the inadequacy of the current policy and mechanisms of the housing market in Poland. The general method of elaboration is based on querying, analyzing, and evaluating the up-to-date information in this regard from available sources.