The concept of self-government system in Poland assumes an important role for municipalities, which is the basic territorial unit of community of residents. It is the area where, with the help of democratically elected authorities, the basic needs of local communities shall be fulfilled. One of these needs, and at the same time, the own task of municipality, is to ensure public order and security of citizens. According to legislation, the proper measure supposed to be the communal police (municipal police in municipalities), which is a local uniformed formation, providing administrative-ordinal tasks. The first units of the communal police were formed in Poland in 1991. For all these years, however, they did not become a common service in the country. The communal police function just in one-fourth of municipalities and generally focus the heaviest negative emotions and social opinion of all the uniformed services. The author of the study, indicating causes of this situation, comments their underestimated by citizens role in shaping public order and security of local societies, juxtaposing it with the state of civic consciousness.
The modern world is very complex and complicated matter. New communication technologies have changed perception of time and space, the states and their governments are no longer the main actors on a public life stage. Unimaginably rapid progress of science and technology has been the main reason for which more and more people do not understand or have clear difficulties in assimilating and using the achievements of civilization. Economy based on knowledge and development of innovative society forced modern homo sapiens to faster absorption of changes, flexibility in action and much greater mobility than ever before.
The genesis of the notion of “global” is reviewed. Actual programs of global actors are considered, including Alexander the Great as well as corporate initiatives for a “New World Order.” What motivates and drives the adoption of a global orientation? The power of the example of Polish civil society to throw off communism is examined. The imperative of global international mutual support and sustainable future cocreation rather than models of competition and domination is the resulting conclusion.
In spite of its apparently growing popularity, street art still remains largely unexplored both in its aesthetic, and social dimension. The article is an attempt to capture the hybrid socio-artistic sense of this global phenomenon with the use of the concept of social enclaves. For that purpose, the authoress looks into its relation to the art world, on one hand, and civil society, on the other. She shortly presents the origins of street art, as well as its artistic repertoire and social reception. She provides an insight into the present-day processes of its institutionalization and commercialization, which, however, do not seem to weaken the street artists’ primary motivation for bringing changes in their aesthetic and social surrounding. Also some other features of street art, such as: anti-elitism, grassroots and dialogical quality, not infrequently – participation, and above all – attachment to civil values, allow her to classify this practice as social art, that is art with a public-good aim.
This study presents the municipal electoral regulations for Moravia and Silesia, as well as the specific electoral rules for the so called statutory towns. It then focuses on the actual course of the municipal elections, in which competing parties made use of all means in the struggle for political power, including loopholes in the law and obvious frauds. The specific political culture of the municipal elections is portrayed in detail based on the example of the municipality of Zábřeh nad Odrou (nowadays part of Ostrava) in the early 20th century.
W artykule została przeprowadzona analiza porównawcza przechodzenia ku demokracji na Ukrainie i w państwach Europy Środkowo‑Wschodniej, w kajach bałtyckich i na Bałkanach; zostały zbadane przyczyny powodzenia tego procesu w krajach członkowskich byłego Układu Warszawskiego i Rady Wzajemnej Pomocy Gospodarczej oraz połowiczności sukcesu na Ukrainie. Przeprowadzona analiza wykazała, że model społeczeństwa i państwa, który powstał na Ukrainie po ogłoszeniu niepodległości – tzw. lumpen‑oligarchiczny, według wzorców rosyjsko‑sowieckich, był daleki od optymalnego, a pozorne atuty gospodarki Ukraińskiej Socjalistycznej Republiki Sowieckiej okazały się słabościami dla niepodległego państwa. Szczególną uwagę zwrócono na określenie roli „rewolucji godności” z 2014 r. w przezwyciężeniu kryzysu politycznego na Ukrainie.
The article presents an idea, definition and history of evolution of the citizens advice in Poland. It emphasizes the value of the citizens advice as a supporting form of stimulation for individual and family to act in favour of overcoming difficult and crisis situations.
Political communication is an indispensable quality of highly organized democratic society. However, in modern societies, to achieve optimal efficiency of political communication, it has to refer to social bonds, values and symbols characteristic for this exact society. Therefore, it is hard to accept these models of democratic society, which indicate some kind of common, the same in different environment, model of efficient political communication. The author presents a hypothesis saying that this efficiency depends on attributes of specific society. Hence, each general model must be adopted to those attributes. The author cites Polish society as an example and attempts to point out that qualities of culture, tradition and social values determine political communication effectiveness. Such political communication, if adjusted to specific social bonds, not only causes transmission of political ideas but also stimulates social activity and reinforces civil society.
In the paper the author singles out three types of social order, that is the way of a social organization from the political power point of view: 1) religious order, 2) masterful order, and 3) civil order. The basic form of the social order is the state. According to the author the main difference between, from one had, the first two types, and the third from the other, lies in different political relation between the government and the rank and file members of the state. In the case of the first two types – religious and masterful – all members, “citizens”, are subject to the state, whereas in the case of civil order – the state is subject to its citizens. Poland after demise of communism has developed apparently a civil state, but Polish civil society has been still rather weak. The author of the essay is searching for the roots of this weakness in the Polish history.
The purpose of this article is to specify the complex social phenomenon, defined as surveillance society. Its strong manifestation within society should be considered a threat to the civil liberty; in a broad sense it is a threat to participatory democracy and civil society. These are the reasons that convinced the author to attempt a reconstruction of the causes of this phenomenon and analysis of its conditions. In a certain sense, reflections presented in this article are of a warning character. In modern Europe the issue of surveillance society can be considered a recent problem. However, it is not only Europe, but the whole globalized world that is facing major challenges which are brought with technology that allows for taking away people’s privacy, freedom, property and right to defence against “floating surveillance.” Resolving this issue is a challenge of the future, but nonetheless, to save individuals from the omnipotence of authority — political, legal and institutional solutions should be searched for now.
The article thoroughly discusses the aspects of multicultural upbringing and education as a dominant trend in modern Pedagogy. Multicultural approach promotes the peoples’ rights for multiple cultures and cultural pluralism theory. As the author concludes, ‘Today there is no come back to pure national cultures’. All education should then be open to cultural differences. Multicultural pedagogy encompasses vast areas of concepts and it addressed to all, not only minorities.
In this paper the Author analyzes new social movement labeled the “Inquisitives”. It apparently has its roots in political thought and in philosophy of “the right to know”. New Zealand adopted the Official Information Act in 1980 to give citizens the formal right to inquire about the public affairs. As society has evolved under constant technological pressure so has evolved the way in which people get information. The information society strives for information about political issues, and about political‑public affairs. The Author of this paper suggests that a new social movement has been operating globally, considering the particular case of the Inquisitives movement in New Zealand. The paper aims to explore its genesis, background, roles, functions, political values, motives and goals.
The article contains a comparative analysis of the civil society index of selected countries. The analysis is based on diagrams produced by CIVICUS — a supranational network of non-governmental organisations, which supports civil society actions all over the world. The author has also used the data on civil society in Poland gathered in a report by the Klon/Jawor Association. He has carried out an original analysis of the data characterising Polish civil society, using a taxonomic method and observing the criteria of four basic social dimensions: structure, environment, values and impact (effects of actions).
The author of the following article points some necessary conditions which must be fulfilled in order to make the decentralization of internal security, which concerns the fight against crime, efficient. Very often strategies concerning crime prevention which were elaborated by different central institutions are unsuccessful. It happens because the essence of the phenomenon is not taken into account and the strategies are limited to a simple pattern of transferring competence to the local government of the lowest level. Such a move very often turns out to be insufficient because a country, while creating a strategy, assume an existence of a strong local society which can bear the common responsibility for the performance of the tasks concerning the fight against crime but which also do not want to or cannot manage it, which in turn make the level of crime and society’s frustration higher. The author thinks that a developed society, based on knowledge, conscious of its role and responsibility should become an equal partner for the state institutions within creating proper mechanisms, which will enable the whole country to function as a complex social organism. According to the author one should not identify the security only with individual or collective human behaviour. Its nature also relates to the organization of social life and living conditions in order not to allow cases of emergency or cases which provoke such emergency to arise. Within this aspect, entities of the local government, after prior consultation with the police, should make investments in favour of security – especially within monitoring of endangered places or new architectural and town planning solutions.
The article discusses the relationships between a sense of alienation and the use of mass media. This discussion was triggered by the idea of the media's significant power in the lives of individuals and their ability to meet fundamental needs. Given the fact that the level of a sense of alienation implies the level of citizens' socio-political activity, defining the role of the media focuses on their importance in the process of building a civil society.
Civil society (CS) is the main medium in which active citizenship can flourish and have an impact on good governance and democracy. The communist past has played a major role in CS underdevelopment across Eastern European countries but research primarily targeting the elites has explained little of how citizenry has developed and mapped little of the cross-country variation. This paper attempts to increase understanding, looking at the case of Albania, where low levels of active citizenships are documented1, as the main indicator of this underdevelopment. Data from in-depth interviews with key informants explain that it results from a combination of historical factors with current determinants such as the low perceived level of impact, the transparency of CS actors and the political influence believed to often dictate their agendas. These and additional explorations of gender and age differences lead to suggested new strategies to boost active citizenship in the country.
This paper presents the state of civil society in Slovakia based on the analysis for the fourth comparative report of the European Union-Russia Civil Society Forum. Using standard research methods (desk research, structured interviews and focus group), the paper provides a brief civil society overview on history, statistics and funding. Further, it analyses legal and political conditions for civil society organisations facing the problems of the growth of far right populism. The interviews were conducted with the representatives of fifteen Slovak civil society organisations of various sizes (from local to national) and from various fields of activity (education, social services and inclusion, cultures, human rights, environment protection, social entrepreneurship, employment, social housing, healthcare). To verify results and findings from the interviews and formulate additional conclusions, a focus group with was seven experts was organised. Using these methods, the paper identifies the biggest challenges and possible solutions underpinning the current situation of civil society in Slovakia.
Rural development is closely connected with the development possibilities of residential locations. Broken social ties are projected into its earlier development. The socialist way of life (from the end of the WW II until the end of the eighties) was ideologically formed by collectivist models. Social organisations were highly formalised and controlled from above. Thousands of new social organisations have emerged in the villages and in towns since 1989, mostly involving cultural, sports and social activities. Civil initiatives were slow in winning recognition in rural areas and some types of initiatives are still missing. A new impulse for their progress was the accession of the Czech Republic into the EU in 2004. Information is drawn from the sociological research projects of the Sociological Laboratory, Czech University of Life Sciences.
This study is devoted to the ways the concept of civil society may be used in Czech historiography. It analyses the conceptualisation of the term in Czech historical research over the last forty years and makes reference to certain signifi cant ambiguities associated with the term civil society. The use of the term civil society in Czech historiography is still oriented predominantly toward the German concepts of the 1980s and ‘90s - that is, toward an understanding of civil society as a certain form of society-wide organisation. The author argues against this conception and proposes that civil society should be grasped not as a certain form of social organisation, but rather as a specific pattern of conduct, or perhaps even as a specific social sector. In the context of current debates in the Anglo-Saxon and German-language spheres, he then presents several basic ways of defi ning civil society and sketches out possible fresh uses of the concept of civil society for historical analysis.
CS
Studie se zabývá způsoby užívání konceptu občanské společnosti v české historiografii. Rozebírá konceptualizaci termínu v českém vědeckém výzkumu v posledních čtyřiceti letech a odkazuje k významným nejednoznačnostem, které se s termínem občanská společnost pojí. Užívání pojmu občanská společnost v české historiografii stále odkazuje k německým konceptům z let osmdesátých a devadesátých - to jest, chápání občanské společnosti jako zvláštní formy celospolečenské organizace. Autor se vymezuje vůči této koncepci a navrhuje občanskou společnost, která spíš než jistý druh společenské organizace, bude specifickým vzorem jednání, nebo dokonce zvláštním sektorem společnosti. Dále pak v kontextu současných diskusí z anglosaského a německojazyčného okruhu představuje několik základních vymezení občanské společnosti a načrtává možné využití čerstvého pohledu na koncepci občanské společnosti pro historickou analýzu.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.