The filling composition of the constitutional court in Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries in the context of its independence

Constitutional courts, in order to perform their function of the constitutional review, should be independent of the creator of that law. Independence can be operationalized as a mechanism for filling and changing the composition of courts as defined in the legislation, and also as a difficulty in changing these rules. In this perspective one can describe the extent of independence of the Polish constitutional court against the background of courts in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It can be said that there is a field to increase the independence of the Polish court, eg by increasing the diversity of entities entitled to fill the court or by introducing regular rotation in the positions of the judges at specific dates (instead of individual mandates). But the greatest degree of court independence threatens, compliant with constitution or inconstitutional interference in the composition and constitutional court system, done in the interest of the ruling majority that makes this interference.

The Institutional Sources of Cabinet Duration in Central and Eastern Europe

The article is devoted to the analysis of sources of durability of cabinet in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The author focused on those factors that in the transforming states of the region cause the cabinet to remain in office and stable governance. A few interesting aspects were chosen to illustrate the problem of minority government in these countries. The main thesis is that governments in the transforming Central and Eastern Europe with the support of a parliamentary majority last longer than minority cabinets, and this is mainly influenced by the concentration of political power rather than by dispersion.

About Poland in the Czech Republic in the context of Central and Eastern Europe

Polish studies have a long tradition in the Czech Republic. The Congress of the Polish Studies, held in Prague in 2013, attempted to present the current state of research on Polish issues. Two monographs were published as the proceedings of the congress. This paper discusses the second one, i.e., The Czech studies on Poland in the context of Central and Eastern Europe.

The aim of the presented analysis is to identify factors correlated with the proportion of seats obtained by new political parties in party systems of Central and Eastern European countries. The study provides an original approach to success of new parties, offering factors divided into in four groups (political, social, institutional and economic factors). The study results confirmed that a higher proportion of seats obtained by new parties in the investigated area correlated with lower trust in the European Union, lower institutional trust (index based on trust in the parliament, government and political parties), poorer evaluations of the future of the country (illustrated with the prospective voting variable), lower income inequalities in the society (illustrated with the Gini coefficient value), and a higher effective number of parties. No significant relationships were observed in the case of institutional factors (including the electoral system).

Polish and Ukrainian concepts of security and cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe in the 21st century

Central and Eastern Europe is a region located in the context of geopolitical reorganization of the world’s wetlands. The first ideas of creating a security system in this part of the continent arose after the First World War. Among them were the Polish concept of “Międzymorze” (Intermarium, aka “ABC Seas”) and the Ukrainian idea of the Baltic-Black Sea Union. The concept of security and cooperation in the region was reintroduced with the Russian Federation’s accession to the achievement of the influence index from the USSR district. There were also problems in Polish-Ukrainian relations, differences in security strategies, the delineation of the strategic partnership and the formation of the Strategic Culture of the Territories. Countries in the region have announced a number of initiatives to improve regional security (TSI, B9, L3, or Trójkąt Karpacki). The members of the mentioned concepts should be among the geopolitical figures, the position of NATO and the EU and contestations on the part of Russia.

The activities of the opposition and dissident movements in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the journal “Obóz”

The activities of the democratic opposition in the former Soviet republics and in the countries dominated by the USSR under the post-war Yalta agreements had a chance to emerge only in the late 1980s, i.e. when the framework of the geopolitical balance of power in Europe was determined by the democratization processes in the Eastern Bloc. Only then, on the wave of perestroika and glasnostia, the voice of circles contesting the existing order of things had a chance to resonate and be heard by the international community. However, not only the structures of the political opposition, but also dissident movements, equally interested in systemic change, marked their presence in the public space of states ruled by communist parties. Thus, the pages of the magazine “Obóz” discuss the groups and milieus constituting a political opposition in the classical sense, as well as groups which, due to their previous connections, of various nature, with the collapsing communist regime, should be considered dissident movements in the strict sense of these words.