Przegląd Politologiczny, 2015, nr 4

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    Polish Aristocratic Identity as a Discourse of Ideology: A Critical Discourse Analysis Approach
    (Wydział Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa UAM, 2015) Květina, Jan
    Critical discourse analysis (CDA) can be considered the contemporary, dominant approach to the study of national identity, which presupposes that a nation is an imagined community which is produced and reproduced discursively. Moreover, CDA denies the traditional dichotomy between political and cultural nations, which is viewed solely as a purpose-built consequence of power. With regard to the fact that most researchers who use CDA limit their approaches to the modern context of the 20th century, it is desirable to ask to what extent one can apply methods of CDA to pre-modern national identities. The clarification of this issue should be deemed the main aim of this study, which holds that the Polish aristocratic nation is a convenient case for this kind of research, because its elites had to reflect not only the loss of statehood, and thus the programme of future desired development, but also the causes of previous failure. The analysis of the conflicts between conservative national attitudes during the 19th century should therefore define who was considered a Pole and to what extent national identity was based on ideological and discursive assumptions.
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    Relationalism in Political Theory and Research: The Challenge of Networked Politics and Policy-Making
    (Wydział Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa UAM, 2015) Schneider, Volker
    Political theory and research approaches are in most cases not explicit in all respects, but are usually shaped by implicit background theories and scientific worldviews, e.g. presuppositions and paradigms. Examples are idealism, materialism or institutionalism. A fairly new perspective in this regard is relationalism. This way of thinking, in its ontological orientation, conceives the world only in terms of relations. Research programmes with a relationalist orientation put this idea into practice with methods of social network analysis which are more and more used also in political science. Several variants of this new -ism and type of network thinking are presented in this paper in a critical perspective. Relationalism is ultimately seen as fruitful perspective, but is seen as limited in its explanatory power, though. It should therefore always be combined with other approaches and perspectives.
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    Skinner and Rosanvallon: Reconciling the History of Political Thought with Political Philosophy
    (Wydział Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa UAM, 2015) Hörcher, Ferenc
    This paper addresses the issue of whether a proper history of political thought should avoid any contact with substantive political philosophy, as it was vehemently claimed earlier by Cambridge historians of political thought, or not. It argues that (A) a strong political or philosophical bias might kill the credibility of a reliable history of political thought, but (B), in this genre, it is by definition impossible to avoid taking on board politico-philosophical concerns. What is more, the paper also tries to show (C) the relevance of political philosophy for the history of political thought and vice versa. In particular, it will argue along the following two lines: (a) Without a political philosophical self-positioning any reconstruction of the history of political thought remains underdetermined and therefore uninstructive, and (b) without a look at the history of political thought political philosophy remains blind, alienated, theoretically unfounded and therefore potentially even dangerous. Methodologically, the paper aims to recapture some of the conclusions of the debates of the relationship of the two disciplines, with special attention to the French and British contexts (more particularly to the oeuvres of Rosanvallon and Skinner).
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    Contemporary Comparative Politics and Revival of Regime Analysis Contra Reviving Aristotle’s Regime Science
    (Wydział Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa UAM, 2015) Bates, Clifford A. Jr.
    This paper suggests that upon comparing the various behavioural models and post-behavioural approaches (mostly understood as “the return of the state” and the concept of the political regime that emerges from that return) to compare political systems, we discover that Aristotle’s science of regimes is a superior framework to various models advanced by the majority of regime frameworks of contemporary comparative political science. In examining that whole attempt to recover the regime as a means to analyze human political behaviour one finally comes to see that Aristotle’s approach allows a more accurate and precise presentation of human political behaviour found within the structure of given political communities that are shaped by the given form of a particular regime.
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    Gminna pomoc społeczna – ćwierć wieku transformacji
    (Wydział Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa UAM, 2015) Kamiński, Tadeusz
    Artykuł poświęcony jest refleksji nad dwudziestopięcioleciem funkcjonowania pomocy społecznej w strukturach odrodzonego samorządu gminnego. Najpierw ogólnie zostało ukazane znaczenie procesów decentralizacji we współczesnej pomocy społecznej. Następnie przedstawiono pokrótce polskie doświadczenia gminnej pomocy społecznej, sięgające uchwalonej w 1923 roku ustawy o opiece społecznej. W dalszej kolejności zaprezentowana zosta³a kluczowa rola ustawy o pomocy społecznej z 29 listopada 1990 roku, skutki reformy administracyjnej wdrożonej 1 stycznia 1999 roku oraz aktualne wyzwania stojące przed gminną pomocą społeczną.