The liberal trend which emerged in Poland was not a doctrine deeply rooted in social awareness. Quite the opposite, its essence and meaning were alien to Polish tradition or hardly recognizable. The interpretation of the concept of freedom only in the negative sense was imposed on the public opinion by the elites. Thus, as new ideas were adopted without any reflection, the state’s function was reduced to the role of a “night watchman”, and citizens were to adapt to it. Both sides did not enter into discussion on the possible creation of the role of the state as an institution involved in the social sphere. This seems to have been the main cause of the failure of the liberals and of the values they advocated in the public space. The Polish model of liberalism was not on the path towards modernity, but – by treating values selectively – it represented the anachronistic approach to liberal ideas. Polish liberals forgot that in the second half of the 20th century, the welfare state came into being owing to the recognition of Berlin’s notion of positive freedom and his unquestioning attitude to the plurality of values. Unfortunately, these two elements did not appear (or appeared too rarely) in the liberals’ concepts, so left-wing liberalism could not develop in Poland, and its foundations in the economic sphere were taken over by political options other than liberal ones.

The axiological and ideological foundations of liberal doctrines to economical issues

Classical political liberalism was not related with some economic concepts, although John Locke accept right to property as the fundamental law of nature. Later liberalism began involve to economic and social issues. Utilitarian liberalism of J. Bentham and John Stuart Mill created the foundations to social justice. Evolutionary liberalism of H. Spencer affirm human egoism and rivalry as the fundamental social principles, also he was proponent minimum and limited state in political economic. And social liberalism, introducing new concept of positive freedom, was for interventionism and social policy. In XX a. J. Rawls and egalitarian liberalism also was for such economical and social concepts. For this liberalism the primate values are justice as fairness and equality. Liberal doctrines was differently to economical concepts, because they have specific and various ideas and values.

On the Eve of the Birth of the Modern Doctrine of the Legal State? The Attitude of Polish Liberals to the Idea of the Rule of Law at the Beginning of the 19th Century

The article analyzes the problem of the attitude towards the idea of the rule of law of representatives of the Polish elite at the beginning of the 19th century. The author presents the development of the idea of the rule of law in the introduction. He verifies the thesis that the ideological basis for the concept of the rule of law was the Enlightenment thought on the basis of which the liberal doctrine developed. He used it to seek an answer to the question about the characteristics of the model of government established by the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland of 1815. The author attempted to prove that, since the Kingdom (existing until 1831) with one of the most liberal constitutions in the first half of the 19th century was in force, then this act met all the conditions required for the establishment of the rule of law according to the standards adopted in that century. These considerations conclude with remarks on the further evolution of Polish liberal thought in the 1820s. It began to differ from the liberal assumptions on which the German Rechtstaat doctrine was built. Paradoxically, Rechtstaat concept had much more in common to Polish liberalism in the earlier (proto-liberal) stage of its development in the times of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815) than of the Kingdom of Poland (1815–1831).

The objective of this article is to demonstrate the place of the global governance concept in four international relations theories: realism, liberalism, neoliberal institutionalism and social constructivism. Global governance is defined as the sum of ways that institutions and international organizations, both public and private, use to try to cooperate at the global level in order to manage their common affairs. In addition, the paper defines global governance as being a specific perspective on world politics that offers a tool for understanding global change in an era of shifting boundaries and relocated authorities. The main research questions of the article are: how the most influential IR theories have reacted to the global governance concept and why the term ‘global governance’, so popularly and so frequently used in the 1990’s, has not resulted in a stable concept. Conclusions and suggestions presented in the summary point out that global governance held the promise of a radical transformation (predicted by almost every IR theory) of world order at the end of the Cold War. However, this great institutional transformation has never taken place. Therefore, current global politics still remain resistant to any form of world (or global) governance.

Contemporary nationalisms as a manifestation of the paradox of globalization

Transformations within national and international policies influenced by globalization, cause changes in value systems and related modifications in the conditions of functioning of political entities, contributing to their evolution. This publication is an attempt to show new directions in international relations and to show certain regularities that follow periodically, determining the behavior of political participants. The starting point for the research is the indication of contemporary manifestations of nationalism, analysis of progressing globalization and the relationship that exists between them. On this basis will be indicated regularities, which influence the shaping of the structure of social support for liberal or nationalist postulates. The publication may contribute to changing the perception of the nature of globalization and understanding the reasons for the increase in support for liberalism and nationalism.

One of the aims of this paper was to characterize liberal theories of rational choice which emerged in XX century, especially theory of public choice. It ought to be noticed that such a task was realized many times by many authors. Due to this fact the text is devoted mostly to review the positions presented by the leading representatives of the intellectual circle mentioned above. Especially the shortages of their philosophical anthropology were pointed out. Moreover, the critique of the linguistic dimension of the rational choice theory was proposed. It was also shown that their endeavours of grounding their works in a long lasting tradition is profoundly disputable.