Political Priorities of Public Administration, Welfare-state and Constitutional Democracy after the 2020-2021 Pandemic

Author(s): Andrasz TERSEK / Language(s): English Issue: 16/2021

At the time of the official Coronavirus, 2020-2021 Pandemic emergency measures and general restrictions on the freedom of movement and the other fundamental human and constitutional rights and freedoms were and still are in place. The question of what kind of world will we enter after the official end of the Pandemic was quickly raised. The problem of fear intensified. This is not only a social problem but also a legal one: people have a fundamental human right to protection against fear. The absolute short-term priorities of public administration in all EU and Council of Europe Member States will have to be focused on ensuring that fear and anxiety do not become a new epidemic. Concern for the efficiency and quality of the public health system should be strengthened and improved. Including mental health care and suicide prevention, care for the well-being of the elderly and terminally ill, people with disabilities (in general and disabled workers), care for children, especially children with special needs, and care for large, diversified, and quality palliative care. Also, a need exists for a changed and improved legal policy regarding the system of education, scientific research, and employment. Last but not least, care must be taken not to take fundamental human rights and freedoms for granted. The health crisis will result in a new economic crisis. It should not be accepted as the end of the Welfare (Social) State. It is a new opportunity to defend social and economic human rights and to create the common European Welfare State. Right now, new ideas are needed –even crazy ideas. We need a kind of utopia. And faith and hope in it, which will be the driving force of active action. The experience of the Pandemic must not prevent or take this away from us.

CIVIL SOCIETY: A MECHANISM FOR MAINTAINING THE HEALTH OF THE STATE OF LAW

Author(s): Cătălina Szekely / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The state of law represents a desideratum of the modern society, to which one relates whenever they claim rights and freedoms or respect the obligations that come with these rights and freedoms. The state of law knows various developments in different legal systems, as each society comes with its own particularities, but the fundamental principles are the same everywhere. When the state, through its representatives, shows signs of deviating from these principles, civil society manifests as a mechanism to ensure a healthy legal state, a mechanism whose strength can determine the very development of the state of law.

De-contextualisation fuels controversy:

Author(s): Sara Ödmark / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

Humour has a unique way of delineating social boundaries, and comedy can function as a double-edged sword; it can strengthen bonds and bring people together, or divide through provocation and violation of social norms. As a consequence, humour controversies are telling events that contain the possibility of highlighting cultural and political sensibilities – even more in the current political landscape, with increasing media fragmentation. This study analysed four humour functions through the theoretical lens of media framing, via three cases of humorous content that caused controversies in the Swedish news media. These cases were one divisive radio roast of a politician, one TV satire segment that was received as racist, and one audio podcast with young women who challenged a Swedish political consensus climate. Framing is the power of media to select and highlight certain aspects of issues, and by extension, shape public opinion. By subjecting the media coverage of these three controversies to a qualitative content analysis, the framing was examined and discussed in the light of four humour functions: identification, clarification, enforcement, and differentiation (Meyer 2000). Furthermore, the study examined the media context and the role it played in the framing of the controversies. One main finding was that the most uniting humour function of identification could be transformed into the most dividing humour function of differentiation through a shift in media context.

Power and satire in the front-page images of Mariano Rajoy:

Author(s): Manuel Garin,Daniel Pérez-Pamies / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

This article explores the use of photography and visual motifs as forms of political humour in contemporary media. By studying the representation of former Prime Minister of Spain Mariano Rajoy in the front pages of three Spanish newspapers (El Mundo, El País and La Vanguardia) between 2011 and 2017, the paper identifies and questions the liaisons between power and satire present in the so-called “serious” press, focusing on how different photographic traits concerning layout, composition and gestures reflect ideological choices. This photographic satire developed by printed media is then framed within a figurative tradition that goes back to Spanish royal portraiture, from Velázquez to Goya, which employs common strategies for the visual depiction of power, including satirical and humorous attributes to push specific political agendas. This examination, based on the quantified study and the visual analysis of more than 7,500 front pages, is part of the national research project Visual Motifs in the Public Sphere: Production and Circulation of Images of Power in Spain, 2011-2017. In order to determine a useful procedural approach to satirical expressions in photographs, defining which front pages invoke a remarkable satirical content, this article also presents a comparative study and a categorisation based on formal (im)balances related to the concepts of visual motif and humour.

The Danish Cartoons, Charlie Hebdo and the culture wars:

Author(s): Mark John Rolfe / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

A considerable body of academic literature has lauded political satirists as rebellious defenders of democracy and free speech against an establishment. Although satire is not always rebellious, this reputation of satirists and of satire may itself be the object of partisan capture. In this article, it is the object of capture by right-wing populists. In that respect, satire and the meta-discourse about satire can be used like any political rhetoric in gathering like-minded allies, claiming standards, and fighting opponents. With the Danish cartoons crisis of 2005-2006 and the Charlie Hebdo massacre of 2015, proponents of culture wars rhetoric added satire to their list of Western cultural legacies that needed defence against Islamic terrorism as well as left authoritarian elites who suppressed free speech through political correctness. They constructed simplistic global political dichotomies about satire, free speech, and civilisation and lifted events out of local contexts in a process of global framing. The culture war rhetoric was absolutist in support of free speech and satire on the international level. But the national level reveals the hortatory and partisan side to this rhetoric and the complexities that belie the absolutist stand. Nations are the arenas where struggles over free speech and political humour are played out.

Fandom versus citizenship:

Author(s): Delia Chiaro,Nikita LOBANOV / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

This paper examines occurrences of humour in Twitter-fed celebrity-follower communities. Using a small, one-month sample of the Twitter feeds of 12 British celebrities, we examined political and humorous content of celebrity tweets and the first five responses from their followers. From this preliminary study, we found that the notion of “weirdisation” strongly emerges, together with the new conceptual tool of “shards of humour”.

The Concept of Nation: the Main Tends of Genesis in the 18th – early 20th Centuries in the Discourse of non-Marxist Paradigms

Author(s): Vyacheslav Vilkov / Language(s): English Issue: 8/2021

In contrast to the approaches presented in the scientific literature, the article, based on a complex of methods (systematic, comparative, discursive and content analysis, prescriptions of scientism and the principle of historicism) of the humanities and social sciences, suggests the results of a system-oriented analysis of the evolution and transformations of the most influential meanings and senses of the concept “nation” used throughout the history of Europe and the world, which were theoretically developed in the philosophical and political thought, human sciences and political doctrines of the 18th – early 20th centuries for cognition, as well as ideological, legal and mental/psychological support of the two main ways of nation genesis and national-state building, in particular “from nation to state” and “from state to nation.” Historically, a large-scale scientific approach allowed to define the main stages and dominant trends in the development of interpretations of such national communities as cultural (ethnic) social groups and political (civil) communities, thus revealing their relationship with concepts, mythologems, and ideologems, such as “the people,” “national revival,” “the sovereignty of the people,” “national state,” “nationalism” and “patriotism.” Another scientific novelty of the article is the generalized presentation and theoretical evaluation in the context of the centuries-old genesis of the theoretical ideas about the nations, specifics of the Austro-Marxist approach of the early twentieth century. The material of the article may be particularly relevant for a scientifically balanced, ideologically unbiased, adequate understanding of the processes of development of philosophical, social, and political thought both in the Western world and in modern Ukraine since independence.

Depopulacja i starzenie się społeczeństw jako przedmiot badań nauk społecznych na przykładzie fińskiej Laponii

Author(s): Krzysztof Kaczmarek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 52/2021

The aim of the article was to present the depopulation process of Finnish Lapland against the background of the whole of Finland and the European Union. The possible effects of this process have also been analyzed. The research was based on official statistics on the demographics of Finland and demographic forecasts compiled by Finnish scientific institutions. The results of the analyzes indicated that, apart from a few urbanized areas, Finnish Lapland will be depopulated in the coming decades. The depopulation of the region will endanger the functioning of the local government units in Lapland. At the same time, the activities aimed at increasing the demographic balance have not brought the assumed effects so far.

Selection Of Optimal Model For Iraqi Banking Loans Through Model Selection Of Bayesian Quantile Regression

Author(s): Fadel Hamid Hadi Alhusseini / Language(s): English Issue: 28/2017

Banking loans are a provided to organizations or individuals. Banking loans are organized by contract agreement between banks and organizations or individuals to guarantee a specific interest rate. Therefore, banking loans are affected by a set of external and internal factors. Identifying the variables that affect banking loans the most is useful for analysis purposes. Identifying the important variables it’s a challenging process and in order to overcome this issue, we employed the model selection of quantile regression for modelling the relationship between banking loans and a set of independent variables (factors) through computing relative importance to model variables studied by using the function (SSVSquantreg) within package MCMCpack.

Wpływ pandemii COVID-19 na polski sektor kolejowy

Author(s): Elżbieta Małecka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 34 (2)/2021

The aim of the paper is to show the changes in the Polish railway sector related to the COVID- 19 pandemic. It presents the statistical perspective of the changes concerning passenger transport and cargo shipments as well as legislative changes related to the adoption of the so-called Covid Acts influencing the railway transport sector. The analysis includes institutional and legal solutions included in the Act of 2 March 2020 on specific solutions related to the prevention of, counteracting and combating COVID-19, other infectious diseases and the crises caused by them (Dz.U. (Journal of Laws) item 374, as amended) and in the Act of 16 April 2020 on specific support instruments related to the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (Dz.U. (Journal of Laws) item 695, as amended). The discussion included, among other things, the influence of the state of the COVID-19 epidemic on administrative proceedings before the President of the Office of Rail Transport. Another issue concerned the proposals of changes in the regulations in relation to the state of epidemic put forward by the Office of Rail Transport. The paper presents the results of the author’s own research involving an email interview with Mr. Marcin Trela, Director of the Legal Department of the Office of Rail Transport. Provisions of the law and official documents serve as the main plane for the discussion. The following methods were applied in the study: examination of the law in force, analysis and synthesis. The legal solutions introduced should be viewed as credit-worthy, however, the constantly changing situation leads to new amendments. Proceeding with new solutions too fast leads to many inconsistencies and problems with the application of the improvements introduced.

Ogólnopolska konferencja naukowa „Problemy teorii i praktyki tworzenia prawa w Polsce. Konferencja poświęcona pamięci Doktora Macieja Kłodawskiego”, Szczecin, 14 maja 2021 roku

Author(s): Paweł M. Nowotko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 35 (3)/2021

Nie tylko imigranci, czyli programy i działania skandynawskich prawicowych populistów

Author(s): Piotr Wiśniewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

In the second decade of the 21st century, populism is a very popular issue both in political science and in everyday media discourse. It is associated with crises: economic and liberal democracies, which has led to an increase in the im¬portance of anti-liberal and nationalist forces in the world. Also in Scandinavian countries we are dealing with such a phenomenon, although it should be empha¬sized that it did not arise there only in the 21st century. This article aims to present some of the postulates and actions of the largest Scandinavian right-wing populist parties and to define what political ideology they are closest to. As anti-immigration rhetoric is the main part of their program, the content of the article emphasizes other aspects that also affect the activities and popularity of these groups. These are economic, moral and environmental issues, as well as the attitude towards inter¬national organizations. For the purposes of this article, political programs as well as statements and activities of the more prominent representatives of the party in question were analyzed.

Émile Souvestre’s Le monde tel qu’il sera en l’an 3000: a reflection of the fears raised by industrial capitalism

Author(s): Nicolas Mary / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

Le monde tel qu’il sera en l’an 3000, written by Émile Souvestre in 1845, is known as the first French dystopian novel. To give his fellow citizens a warning, the author projects into the future, an exacerbated contemporary situation. This journey through time is part of a vast debate that opposes not only utopias and dystopias, but also the social and political sciences. Le monde tel qu’il sera... can thus be understood as a refutation of the ideological constructions which are based on an unshakeable faith in the future. Influenced by Saint-Simon, Souvestre considers that technical progress can lead to the ideal city only if it is combined with moral progress, to which he aims to contribute by demonstrating to his contemporaries the appalling consequences of the providentialism that dominates the mid-19th century.

Political ideas of Serbian writers in Dragan Simeunović‘s History of Serbian political thought

Author(s): Marko Nedić / Language(s): English,Serbian Issue: 4/2021

Hejt i symbole religijne. Obrażanie przez prowokację jako nowy problem społeczny

Author(s): Anna Leszczuk-Fiedziukiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 37/2021

The main purpose of this article is to analyse the medial discourse connected with new ways of presenting religious symbols and social reactions to this. Religious symbols are used by communities that want to stand out in society. The research questions consider whether these events, treated by Catholics as scandalous and offensive, could be examples of a new form of hate speech in the Polish public sphere. If so, this would involve an evolution from the language sphere to the visual sphere and, therefore, would be a crucial shift in a cultural war in our society. The diagnosis of phenomena related to events perceived as “provocations” indicates that we are dealing with a new social problem. This problem involves people associated with the Catholic Church, the police, the court, and the prosecutor’s office because the authors of initiatives are accused of offending religious feelings, which, according to Art. 196 of the Criminal Code is a crime in Poland.

Eucharystia Kościoła rzymskokatolickiego w Niemczech w dobie pandemii COVID-19

Author(s): Andrzej Glombica / Language(s): Polish Issue: 37/2021

This article draws on the experiences of the Federal Republic of Germany and provides a theological reflection on the consequences of political decisions made in response to the spread of COVID-19. The research primarily concerns the relationship between the importance of the communal celebration of the Eucharist and the limitation on contact imposed on the grounds of protecting human life and health. Due to the novelty of the subject, the sources are generally accessible internet materials. The starting point is a calendar of specific decisions by the state authorities and the reactions of the German Bishops’ Conference to these secular regulations, followed by the comment made by German Roman Catholic theologians on the situation. Of these, more attention has been paid to the controversial responses – made by the Bishop of Magdeburg Gerard Feige, Archbishop of Cologne Cardinal and Doctor of Theology Rainer Woelki, and dogmatist Julia Knop – rather than those that are theologically insightful or correct. All this has been juxtaposed with the Church’s official teaching on the communal celebration of the Eucharist and its basic assumption, i.e., the predominance of the divine element over the human element. This article shows that state measures, ecclesial behaviour, and theological discussions can all be interpreted as a practical negation of the saving nature of the Eucharist. This presentation concludes with the question of what is more important: celebrating the Eucharist, receiving Holy Communion, experiencing community, or further weeks of strictly limited social contact, including in religious gatherings. This question is also an invitation to undertake further, in-depth reflection not only on the economic, social, and emotional effects of the pandemic but also – and perhaps primarily – on the spiritual ones.

Reakcja na zagrożenie koronawirusem – analiza publikowanych treści w początkowej fazie epidemii na oficjalnej stronie Konferencji Episkopatu Polski

Author(s): Rafał Jakub Pastwa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 37/2021

The mediatisation of reality has embraced societies and institutions, including religious institutions and religion. This has increased the importance of religious communication, which is part of a broad and complex process of social communication. Its strong position and importance have grown with the development of communication technologies and the popularity of the mass media, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The decrease in the number of believers in churches in Poland in March 2020 made the media the dominant platform for religious communication. The processes of the mediatisation of religion and the mediatisation of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland strengthen the position of the media in the transfer of religious content and in creating the image of a church institution. The emergence of COVID-19 in Poland in 2020 triggered a reaction from numerous institutions, including the media. On the official website of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, numerous administrative and pastoral messages appeared, which constituted a specific instruction for the faithful from both the pastoral and institutional perspectives. They were also of interest to the media and the public. The dominance of administrative and pastoral texts published on the website episkopat.pl in the analysed period is in line with the nature and mission of the Church, which cannot be reduced to either a temporal and institutional perspective or a spiritual and salvific perspective alone. The analysis of the content quality allows us to notice a slight shift of emphasis towards the temporal perspective, while in the analysed messages, institutional language, defined by the author as the “language of distance,” prevails.

„Mimo drzwi zamkniętych” (J 20,26). Refleksja nad duchowością komunii w warunkach izolacji społecznej na przykładzie Ruchu Focolari

Author(s): Katarzyna Wasiutyńska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 37/2021

The period of social isolation due to the pandemic limited the opportunities for meetings between small and large communities and left a deep mark on the form of experiencing the spirituality of communion, which is one of the most characteristic features of the post-Conciliar Church. An example is the Focolare Movement, where the privileged path to union with God is the relationship of love for one’s neighbour, in which Jesus’ promise is fulfilled that he stands among those gathered in his name (cf. Mt 18:20). Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare, saw in modern technological advances the possibility of developing Christian love, which by its nature is universal. The period of the pandemic marked an unexpected breakthrough in this aspect, as well as in the wider understanding and practice of ecclesial communion. The abolition or prolonged limitation of physical meetings has led to the intensive use of other means of communication, making the virtual space a potential place for communal spiritual experience and concrete action for the benefit of others. A remarkable event in its course and fruitfulness, carried out remotely, was the General Assembly of the Movement, which, according to the Statutes, takes place every six years and is the supreme organ of power. The common discernment typical of Focolarini implies, as a fruit of mutual love, the presence of the Risen One, who makes the voice of the Holy Spirit resound with all power. The adaptation of the forms of the spirituality of communion to external circumstances shows an irresistible need to share a spiritual experience and, if it is authentic, leads to a deepening of the relationship with God and between persons, despite the difficulties.

Geopolityka jako paradygmat stosunków międzynarodowych. Perspektywy rozwoju

Author(s): Tomasz Pawłuszko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2021

The article attempts to portray the geopolitical paradigm to define its role in the contemporary discourse on international relations. The topic seems important because for about 30 years we have been dealing with the return of geopolitics to scientific, expert, political, media, and civic debate. This is happening both in Poland and in the world discourse. The text shows the genesis of geopolitical reflection and discusses its main trends: classical geopolitics, critical geopolitics and geoeconomics. The author tries to assess the condition of contemporary geopolitics as a paradigm of international studies and define the levels of possible integration of this field of knowledge in Poland.

Recenzja książki: Bogdan Góralczyk. (2021). Nowy Długi Marsz. Chiny ery Xi Jinpinga. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog, ss. 338.

Author(s): Bogusław Węgliński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2021