Polish Political Science Yearbook

4

Authors: Radoslaw Łukasz Zych

Conference Report

10

Authors: Brygida Kuźniak, Ihor Zeman

: The article aims to address the following question: in the case of a war in Ukraine, is public international law an obstacle to the application of combined international enforcement action within the framework of the collective security system under the auspices of the United Nations, or whether such impediments lie elsewhere? Russia’s presence in the Security Council as a permanent member, and thus endowed with the privilege of vetoing resolutions, paralyses this body. Therefore, the subject of the analysis is what other actions of the United Nations are permitted by law. It is important for assessing the status of the UN as a collective actor in international relations, the main objective of which, under Art. 1 of the UN Charter, is “to maintain international peace and security, and, to that end: to take effective collective measures for (…) the suppression of acts of aggression”. Bearing in mind the fact that international law is a consensual legal order, the article assesses its available compulsory mechanisms and instruments. The supplementary objective is to determine whether it is permissible to use the term “war” with regard to the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

13

Authors: Wojciech Wróblewski

Contemporary terrorism is characterised by a complex and networked model of operation. While the main objectives of terrorist acts remain the same, the attack environment, tactics and tools are changing. The international community is taking steps to strengthen counter-terrorism systems, but these are peaceful solutions. These models do not consider the conditions of hybrid armed conflicts in which terrorism is an element of combat tactics. It is a relatively new phenomenon and particularly dangerous for the civilian population. The acts of terror in hybrid warfare are not mechanisms with a simple scheme of action, and, as we try to show in this article, they represent a deliberate and broad spectrum of action. Therefore, there is an urgent need to understand terrorism in the context of the threat of hybrid war (especially when terrorist acts complement hybrid tactics or significantly replace conventional tactics). This type of threat must be recognised before achieving its strategic goals. From the substantive point of view, the article studies the problem of terrorism as one of the threats of an armed conflict in Ukraine, commonly known as hybrid war.

15

Authors: Robert Piec, Barbara Szykuła-Piec, Izabella Helena Grabowska-Lepczak, Weronika Jakubczak

The pandemic that broke out in 2019 had a significant impact on the lives of all social groups around the world. The imposed restrictions and mandatory quarantine were crucial to limit the virus’s spread. The research comprises an analysis of the psychosocial impact exerted by the pandemic that attempted to determine the response to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. For this purpose, a study on social resilience in the pandemic era was worked out. The study consisted of several parts: stress and the sense of safety, education, trust and defined needs and the mass media in COVID-19. The research team decided to present the study’s results in a series of articles that will contribute to forming a complete picture of the community in the context of the analysed variables. The paper is the first in this series. It contains an analysis of variables intended to determine the level of the experienced sense of safety and its constituent, i.e., stress, and the identification of socio-demographic data strongly influencing the studied variables. The study comprised 559 individuals who were surveyed between May 2020 and November 2020 with the use of an online survey questionnaire. SPSS Statistics version 21.0 and PQStat were used to conduct statistical analyses and correlate and assess the correlation of responses. Also used were Chisquare, Fisher’s test and Pearson’s linear correlation coefficient. A logistic regression analysis was carried out for dichotomous variables. The results of the study indicate that the level of experienced stress is influenced by age, place of residence, gender and job security. The sense of safety is inversely correlated with stress, i.e., as stress increases, the sense of safety decreases, indicating a need to undertake appropriate measures to reduce stress. It may be interesting to compare the level of stress with, among other things, information retrieval from different sources. These results will be presented in the subsequent studies.

17

Authors: Roman Bäcker

Social protests in Poland not only in communist times must be considered one of the most important events. They were the most visible manifestation of the constant tension between the ruling party and a significant part of Polish society. At the same time, they were closely correlated with internal transformations within this party. The changes in the position of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, and thus the reconfiguration of the relations of forces between interest groups within the party-state apparatus, were temporarily convergent with the largest social protests. At the same time, social protests in the times of the Polish People’s Republic and later can also be considered important stages in acquiring (or reducing) political subjectivity by large social groups not associated with the ruling party. Mass demonstrations during the pandemic will also be analysed to enrich the comparative approach.

22

Authors: Michał Marcin Kubiak

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the elderly in a special way. On the one hand, it contributed to the increase in health deficits and those related to social isolation. On the other hand, it also had a significant impact on the level and methods of support provided to seniors. The pandemic situation turned out to be a particular challenge for local governments and non-governmental organisations operating in various areas of senior policy. The general aim of the article was to analyse the state’s initiatives aimed at counteracting the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic addressed to seniors and examples of activities of the local government and the civil sector cooperating with it for the benefit of this group of people. In turn, the specific objective was to identify and understand the greatest difficulties that seniors had during the pandemic and the role played by the non-governmental organisation (both during the pandemic and as an entity of potential support in the future, which was particularly interesting given the European Union promoting services provided in the local environment). In connection with the specific objective, qualitative research was carried out using the in-depth interview method. The interviews were based on scripts that concerned four areas: problems and experiences of the elderly during the pandemic, help and support, communication, health, and well-being.