Suchergebnisse

The main purpose of the article is to present the evolution of legal regulations regarding national minorities in Ukraine, the structure of these minorities and the dynamics of demographic change. The authors analyzed the geographical distribution as well as the political, cultural and educational activity of the most numerous national minorities. They presented the main reasons for the increase or decrease in the size of the largest national groups. The political and legal foundations of minority activities, the specificity of the organization of their educational institutions, national-cultural associations and ethnic parties were analyzed. Particular attention was paid to the problematic provisions of the new Education Act (2017), which reduced the status of languages of national minorities in education and led to the deterioration of relations with individual countries with which minorities are associated. The authors discussed the most severe problems in bilateral relations arising from Ukraine's policy towards minorities and some ideas on how to solve them. The main methods of improving nationality policy in contemporary Ukraine were also presented.

This article is concerned with the relationship between more than 30 years of universal direct election to the post of President of the Republic of Poland and the essence of the roles associated with that position. The hypothesis put forward for testing has been that elections of the above kind give rise to distortions in the systemic model associated with the Polish Presidency. The legitimisation of the President at the ballot box reinforces the efforts of many holders of the office to introduce ruling-related elements of the Presidency in practice, in the context of the political system. Elections also strengthen relations between the President and his political camp, in this way undermining the presidential arbitration function. In essence, an election campaign is subject to mechanisms of "Prime Minister-isation", whereby a candidate for President usually presents (feels obliged to present) a programme appropriate for an organ truly engaged in the pursuit of state policy.

The category of the system of government in Poland requires reference to 'the governance style' of the right, and to the tendency that has appeared in international politics in recent years to call it populist nationalism. The objective of this paper is to show that in the case of Poland after 2015, the thesis of the retreat of democracy has no factual grounds, and it can be countered through the use of evidence. The system of government in Poland after the Law and Justice party came to power cannot be described as a contradiction to democracy. Citizens are not being manipulated and deceived. They are aware of the content of decisions made by the executive branch. The opposition is able to act freely, and it is supported by independent private media. There are many veto points in the political system. The government can count on public support that is stronger than that of the governments from the period before 2015.

The purpose of the article is to analyse the role of the public prosecutor's office as an institution that is specifically embedded in between certain elements of the political system, particularly between the executive and judiciary powers. For this reason, the public prosecutor's office can be regarded, together with courts, as an institution that aims to be actively involved in administering justice and an instrument of the executive power to guarantee internal security and to execute internal functions of the state. The public prosecutor's office, given its specific operation area, is expected to prosecute crimes effectively as well as safeguard the rule of law, which may be threatened by the infringing actions of not only individuals and criminal groups but also of officials and state institutions. Hence, with respect to the accountability of the public prosecutor's office, it should be more independent of the executive power which is subject to political rules. It appears, however, that separating it officially from the executive power does not have to lead automatically to the public prosecutor's office independence of political influence when other direct (the Prime Minister's and the Minister of Justice's authority over the Attorney General) and indirect mechanisms of prosecutors' political dependency (clientelism, politicisation and political bonds of prosecutors with politicians) exist.

Turkey has adopted the presidential system over parliamentarism in 2018 with the promise that the new system would bring more stability, democracy, and economic growth. As being the most recent country which changed its government system through a referendum to presidentialism, Turkey constitutes a very important example to be analyzed in order to see the effects of it after a long-adopted parliamentary period in the 21st century. This paper compares the basic features of democracy as well as the democratic presidential systems with the example of Turkey and aims at finding out if the presidentialism has performed well and if not, why, in the light of examples and chosen indicators. Findings of this study suggest that presidential system led to a "consolidation of power" which in its nature is anti-democratic. Analysis of certain indicators show that presidentialism did not perform well in Turkey on democratic, political as well as economic fronts.

Civil society organizations and grassroot initiatives have not stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept Poland voluntary organizations and spontaneous civic initiatives have demonstrated huge potential of solidarity embodied in the Polish society and its readiness to genuine, creative and effective responses. The article highlights the irreplaceable role of voluntary organizations and spontaneous citizen led activities during the pandemic and before 2020 in mobilizing social support, providing frontline help and essential services and to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Civil society organisations and grassroot initiatives provided food, personal protection equipment and essential sanitary items, often filling the gap when public administration was slow to respond. The article outlines the central and local governments policies aimed at creating an enabling environment for the work of civil society to respond to the spread of COVID-19.

The objective of the paper is to indicate selected issues related to the construction of the political system of the future Polish state in 1918. Parallel to the construction of the political system, struggles for independence and the borders of the state, which was reborn after 123 years of captivity, continued. The emergence of centers of power and political institutions in the conditions of geopolitical changes of the last phase of the Great War of 1914–1918 was of utmost importance for the process of shaping the political system. The main links in this process were the Provisional Council of State and the Regency Council.

The research objective of this article is to address the question of whether, and if so, to what extent, the system of protection of national and religious minorities created after World War I under the League of Nations, covering only some of its member states, was an instrument of modernization of the states obliged to this protection? Modernization in the legal sense – in relation to legal solution the guarantee the rights of minorities and in the political sense – did it serve the peaceful coexistence of various national and religious groups within these countries and prevented the separatist tendencies manifested by some of the minorities? Have legal solutions been reflected in political practice? The article refers to the analysis of scientific literature and the analysis of the so called Little Treaty of Versailles of 1919 and the legal and comparative study of other legal acts. The territorial scope of the research covers: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary. The temporal range covers the years 1918-1939. The obtained research result does not allow to give an unambiguously affirmative answer to the question whether the post – Versailles system of protection of national and religious minorities contributed to the legal and political modernization in the described countries.

Since the beginning of the political transition in Poland an unproductive discussion has been continued concerning the role of economic self-government in the system of local government. The current legal regulations do not provide business chambers with the status of public legal unions. They tend to be based on the facultative nature of the ties between entrepreneurs, which is the main cause of the weakness of the Polish economic self-government, or rather the economic quasi-self-government. The consequential structural and programmatic weakness of entrepreneurs' organisation seems to be the major obstacle in creating an effective system of local governance that could equalise the excessively asymmetric relations between the local government and the representation of entrepreneurs. It is beyond doubt that the lack of such structures in the area of public institutions is the main reason for marginalising them by the government and local authorities, which do not see the need to make any concessions for the diffused economic environment. Given this context, the most rational solution seems to be the creation of a common economic self-government, which will be incorporated into the system of public authorities.

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 aim of the paper is to show how the peculiarities of the Venezuelan political system, expressed by Nicolas Maduro and implemented by forces concentrated around this person, affect in-ternational security. The article shows that there is a close correlation between the illiberal political system of contemporary Venezuela and the behavior of the authorities of this country on the interna-tional forum. The degree of military involvement of the Russian Federation in Venezuela was as-sessed. It has been shown that the political system of contemporary Venezuela is petrified by the features of the authoritarian system; thus these features become the source of its weakness. This, in turn, enables countries supporting Maduro's rule to strengthen their positions in this country, which Russia also benefits from. Russia benefits, however, from this situation with a visible reserve resulting from the awareness of the total economic inertia of this, nominally, one of Latin America's richest countries. It was emphasized that Moscow is increasingly taking a wait-and-see position towards Ca-racas, realizing the growing uncertainty about the investments made so far in the country.

The subject of this article is the presentation of the essence of Russian imperialismin the thought of Władysław Studnicki. It seems that in today's geopolitical situationtheissues related to the analysis of Russia's expansion have become extremely importantThe author of this article assumed that the thoughts formulated on the subject by theabove-mentioned thinker remain valid today. The method used to verify the hypothesis wasa critical analysis of source texts and an aspect analysis of one of the Polish researchersof the history and political system of Russia