Polish Political Science Yearbook

12

Authors: Elżbieta Posłuszna

The paper characterises contemporary fighting anarchism from the ideological, tactical, and organisational perspectives. An analysis is carried out that examines the activities of the groups revoking insurrectionism, which today entails three ideological trends, namely social, individualistic (illegalism), and ecological. In the author’s intention, the characteristics should serve practical goals, i.e., forming a prognosis regarding the phenomenon's future and drawing possible ways to counteract its proliferation in a further perspective. Contemporary anarchism, due to its intellectual allure (liberationist individualism), broadening the scope of its goals (with the liberation of non-human beings), adopting loose organisational forms, as well as employing the leaderless resistance strategy and swarming, is a phenomenon that has significant development potential. The development of anarchism, due to ongoing socio-political processes (the collapse of the existing mechanisms of social control and political representation, globalisation, informatisation) and the widely spreading ideology of individualism will lead to, as it seems, progressive radicalism, both in ideology and used methods.

13

Authors: Jakub Grzegorz Firlus

This paper aims to determine whether the war in Ukraine will affect the scope of judicial verification of public administration in Poland. According to new legislation (the socalled Aid Act), which Polish Parliament passed shortly after February 24, 2022, the Polish municipalities (cities) are entitled to provide aid for local foreign communities, especially those within the borders of Ukraine. The basis for such aid will take the form of a proper municipal or city council resolution. The main issue concerning this form of aid is the necessity of applying Ukrainian law, at least in the context of decoding who is entitled to be a beneficiary. Against this background, it is vital to determine whether such circumstances as war and humanitarian reasons should affect the scope of judicial review. In theory, two approaches are available, formalism and judicial relativism which both are inappropriate. The author argues that the doctrine of deference, as understood by justice A. Scalia must be applied to secure both rule of law principle and the legitimacy of administrative courts in Poland. The main subject of the analysis was the content of the law, which was the starting point for analysing the views of the doctrine and jurisprudence. Due to the international nature of the issue, it was necessary to refer to the achievements of Ukrainian law.

14

Authors: Anita Adamczyk, Fuad Jomma

Syria is one of many countries in the Middle East diverse in terms of religion, nationality, and ethnicity. Internal divisions emerged when Syria reclaimed independence in 1946, but the differences inside Syrian society have become a taboo. One of the reasons for that was Arab nationalism, which claimed that they were all Arabs. The Syrian authorities managed to maintain the appearance of national homogeneity owing to these claims. This article aims to show the uniqueness of Arab nationalism, which is not characteristic of one country but of numerous states sharing a common past, language, and their citizens belonging to the family of the Arab nation. As a case study for Syria, this article analyses the basic concepts relevant to the subject (nationalism, the nation from the perspective of Islam, and Arab thought), the roots of pan-Arabism in Syria and its presence in the public and legal space. It also attempts to demonstrate that Arab nationalism helped the Syrian authorities (represented by the Alawite minority) blur national, ethnic, and religious differences and thus preserve the unity of society and state.

17

Authors: Anna Borucka, Marta Chapska, Ewa Żaboklicka, Rafał Parczewski

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted governments to take radical measures to contain the virus and protect their citizens. These included successive restrictions on social distance, which have led to closing many enterprises in various industries and dismissing their employees. Introducing restrictions has significantly weakened many countries’ economies. Stock markets have noted sharp declines. Therefore, public protection has led to severe consequences for the labour market. Attempts at defining them have been undertaken in the body of literature. However, they focus mainly on analysing selected indicators. According to the authors, it is worth analysing the correlation between the number of deaths as the variable that best reflects the disease’s severity and selected unemployment rates. It was assumed that the number of deaths is a factor significantly distinguishing the periods before and after the pandemic. Therefore, it is possible to assess the correlation between the pandemic and the labour market condition.

21

Authors: Bogusław Jagusiak

One of the many divisions of security exposed in the literature dealing with it is the ambivalent division into positive and negative security, which sometimes, somehow combined and mutually limiting, manifest themselves in normal and real security. Starting from this distinction, I develop their descriptions based on Erich Fromm’s explanations of a healthy, sick, and normal society. Simultaneously, I argue that sick societies pursue negative security by preferring war and destruction, while healthy societies pursue positive security by preferring love, peace, and creative activity. It is a preference based on striving, in the case of a healthy society and positive security, “to be”, as Fromm states, and in the case of a sick society and negative security, “to have”, and finally, in the case of normal security, to mutually limiting “to have” and “to be”. I deepen this description by referring to the thought of Bertrand Russell, in which positive and good security is defined “as one that should be by itself”, and negative and bad “as one that should not be by itself”. On the other hand, by bolding and broadening this description, I associate positive security (based on “to be”) with the concept of “civilisation of love”, “civilization of life”, and “civilization of brotherhood”, while negative security (embedded in “to have”) with “civilisation of killing”, “civilisation of overkilling”, and “civilisation of death”, and finally, normal security (embedded on mutually limiting “to be” and “to have”) with the liberal civilisation of security and control.

22

Authors: Clifford Angell Bates, Trevor Shelley

We argue that the current understanding of politics is caught in a tug of war between “economistic” and “postmodern” views, neither of which captures the distinctiveness of political rule and consequently instills confusion among citizens and misplaced expectations from leaders. Drawing largely on Aristotle, who warned precisely against this error, we consider the logic of mastery and contrast it to paternal rule. Then we discuss the voluntary nature of economic activity to distinguish it from the involuntary nature of mastery, before turning to discuss the political proper, which is a combination or mixture of these two that nevertheless makes it qualitatively distinct. These distinctions help us to better appreciate what is a likeness between political and economic, on the one hand, and between political and paternal, on the other while realising that political rule is not exhausted by either economic or paternal alone. The paper seeks to show that political rule finds itself as an in-between condition that balances itself against despotic, mastery, and the kind of care that paternal rule points to.