The text deals with the topic of civic political competence (civic competence) as an additional criterion of the quality of the democracy. It shows both theoretical aspects of this issue, identifying some specific elements of competence and the methodological problems of the research on civic competence. The article also includes reflections on the implementation of civic competence in the processes of deliberation.

Russian President is both a political institution of key importance and a distinctive individual of a specic manner of behaviour in his authoritarian rules. In this article I would like to present the role of the President in society with reference to historical heritage and the modern political culture of Russian society. Taking into consideration the fact that public opinion and the media, in conditions of democracy or democratization, constitute basic social mechanism that forms bases and formulas of legitimacy, I have decided that it is merge to join the issues into one. It is the President that I aim my examination at, not the Russian media themselves, the history of their development a€er 1991, or their ownership structure that governs them. e media will be of interest as long as they are necessary to understand how the President legitimizes his powers, to what extent he is successful, and what scope of success or failure depends on in the legitimacy e‚orts.

In my article I suggest two models of social participation which can positively influence on the process of building the civil society in Ukraine, especially in the area of local government. I want to consider two types of the participatory budgeting, first comes from Porto Allegre in Brazil and the second one from Lodz in Poland. The first model, 27 years old, is the example of representative democracy and is characterized by hierarchical structure. On the other hand, we have different model which is the representative of participatory democracy without any gradation. In this area of research I’m going to choice the best proposition which fit in the process of political transition on Ukraine.

The article points out that:

1) The Polish-Mongolian and Mongolian-Polish contacts devloped rapidly after the World War II as a consequence of the international cooperation of the socialist states.

2) Science and education were particularly important factors.

3) Poles significantly contributed to the cultural and civilization transformation of Mongolia, including the spheres of construction, industry, and agriculture.

4) Memories of the Polish-Tatar contacts still remain in the collective consciousness of Poles; the negative image of a community which destroys the cultural achievements of conquered peoples has formed.

5) The contemporary knowledge about Mongolia and Polish-Mongolian relations is largely shrouded with a mist of myths and stereotypes.

Political aspirations of the Kazakhstani youth

In the article data presented from the sociological research conducted in 2015 indicate that the participation of youth in politics and the interest is very low. Monitoring of political orientations in the projection on regional identity showed some significant differences: the youth of the “Northern”, “Western” and “Eastern” regions is with a tendency to the “troubled” perception of the political situation, while respondents of “Southern” and “Central” regions with the “neutral” assessment of and with a high degree of political tolerance and displaying the ability to political discourse. The political profile of young Kazakhs is characterized by a greater degree of uncertainty. Also, the boundaries of political preferences are blurred: the main factors of the formation of the ideological and political positions are to the greater extent cultural (preferences and stereotypes) rather than social factors.

Edukacja jako szczególna wartość w dzisiejszym świecie stanowi siłę generującą aktywność zarówno polityczną, społeczną, jak i gospodarczą. Jest ona czynnikiem kształtującym samoświadomość. Z tego powodu Polska przywiązuje dużą wagę do problemów edukacyjnych nie tylko w kraju, ale również w polskich środowiskach emigracyjnych. Przykładem państwa, które miało i ma ogromne znaczenie dla ruchu emigracyjnego jest Francja.
Celem artykułu jest próba usystematyzowania wiedzy o kształtowaniu się życia oświatowego polskich emigrantów we Francji, wskazanie realizowanych zadań i wyzwań z jakimi przyszło się jej zmagać na przestrzeni wieków.
Wykazano, że niezależnie od epoki w której przyszło żyć polskim emigrantom, hołdowali oni wartościom, które nie przemijają: poczucie odrębności, patriotyzm i miłość do ojczyzny oraz posiadali nieustanny pęd do zdobywania wiedzy.

Uznaje się, że polityka jest częścią życia społecznego, dlatego jest również częścią kultury. W drugiej połowie XX w. kultura polityczna stała się obiektem analiz politologów w świecie oraz w Polsce. W związku z tym zaczęto postrzegać kulturę polityczną, jako komponent kultury w dosłownym znaczeniu przez pryzmat ogółu materialnych i niematerialnych wytworów życia społecznego. Stało się to asumptem do rozszerzenia się definicji kultury politycznej o takie składniki, jak instytucje polityczne oraz system socjalizacji oraz edukacji politycznej. Celem tego było wzmocnienie demokratycznego systemu politycznego poprzez przesunięcie z elementów indywidualnych na ogólnospołeczne.

Gerard Labuda and Aleksander Gieysztor were among the most distinguished Polish historians. Their impact on the development of Polish Medieval studies has been tremendous as testified by a large group of their disciples who continue the research commenced by the Poznań and Warsaw historians.

This paper provides insights into the relationship between language and politically relevant aspects of culture in India and China which are as follows: attitude toward revolution and tradition, the domination of politics over religion or vice versa, and a concern for the liberty of the individual. The paper introduces a novel approach to the comparative study of civilizations by advancing the political-linguistic explanation. In so doing, it combines Hajime Nakamura’s hypothesis of the strict connection between language and culture (understood as a way of thinking) with Samuel P. Huntington’s emphasis on the impact of cultural differences on the political dimension of society – so that our explanatory model can be expressed as follows: language→culture→politics. As far as language is concerned, the focus is on the basic structure of Sanskrit and Chinese; besides, special attention is given to Indian and Chinese philosophies of language. Culturally, the most relevant schools of Hindu philosophy may be called “ultraconservative” since they tend to ground unchanging meaning firmly in metaphysics and rely on the supreme authority of ancient religious texts. In contrast, the Chinese typically considered language a social mechanism for shaping our behavior (so the relation of language and society is the most crucial); they also expressed clearly divergent views on naming. In short, at least four distinctive perspectives are essential: (1) conservative Confucianism, (2) anti-traditional and highly authoritarian Legalism, (3) egalitarian and linguistically skeptical Laozian Daoism, (4) nonconformist and proto-libertarian Zhuangzian Daoism.

The beginning of the 1990s was a time of geopolitical transformations. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to formation of new states that entered the path of democratization, and Ukraine was not an exception. Despite almost 30 years of independence, Ukraine remains a weak democracy. The reason of that, along with other problems, are peculiarities of political culture of citizens. Notwithstanding, weakness of political culture could be changed into the greatest advantage in the process of maturing of democracy in Ukraine.

Today, the problem of political governance is one of the most important. There is an urgent need to create standards and institutions that would be effective and adequate to peculiarities of the contemporary society. One of the forms of socio-political governance is political manipulation of public consciousness. Modernization of the political system of society causes corresponding changes in the processes of management and manipulation. The influence on political consciousness and behavior is different at the traditional, modern and so-called postmodern stages of social development. The genesis of political manipulation of worldview values is the subject of this study. In the structure of political consciousness, which is a component of political culture, the value-worldview component is one of the most important. Values forms a motivational basis of political behavior. It is argued that values change in the predicted direction, and political manipulation could affect the value orientations of public consciousness. Analysis of the state of scientific development of the problem of political manipulation shows that the value-worldview component as an important component of political consciousness is poorly studied. The study of the peculiarities of political manipulation of the value component of political consciousness in the framework of this article is important, because the corresponding cultural dynamics affects the functioning of the political system.

The subject of this article is political culture and its relationship with democracy. The article is focused mainly on Turkish political culture and democratic practices. It is clear that the political system is directly connected with the political culture of society. But how could we distinguish political culture from other things or do we even have to? The purpose of this article is to present and evaluate the main role of political culture, which affects levels of tolerance, interpersonal trust, etc., as well as the adaption of democratic institutions to the current system. The main problems of Turkish political life are discussed in the article with the perspective of the relationship between political culture and democracy. The aim of this article is to present concepts of cultural orientations, the reflection of economic and political factors, social structures, as well as complex and unclear relations between them, which are simultaneously linked to a stable democracy. Therefore, it can be observed that stable democracy is not a coincidence but a result of all mentioned factors.

Socio-psychological harmonization of youth in political time-space

The article considers the description of the developed training program, which is aimed at optimizing the political behavior of young people and neutralizing the potential of their political conflict. It is determined that neutralizing the potential of political conflict among young people requires a number of measures, in particular, at the stage of providing educational services, which should include both educational and counseling activities aimed at optimizing the political behavior of young people. It is proved that an effective mechanism to counteract this and neutralize the destructive influences of extremist organizations is to increase the political culture and maturity of the political identity of the younger generation, namely the development of its political activity in line with democratic initiatives and political identity of the younger generation. stimulating youth participation. And the main forms of implementation of this are the involvement of young people in public administration, namely the internship of students in order to develop the necessary professional qualities and prepare for further work in local governments. It is also important to involve the most active youth representatives in community councils or advisory bodies, which will also help them to develop the professional skills needed to work in this field. It is determined that, given the multinational and multi-religious composition of modern Ukrainian society, it is especially important to hold mass events aimed at forming a tolerant attitude of young people to different cultures and traditions and non-acceptance of any manifestations of intolerance and discrimination. It was found that the most effective socio-psychological tool for harmonizing the political behavior of young people is to conduct appropriate training aimed at forming a mature political culture that will provide a tolerant attitude and constructive ways to overcome political contradictions and conflicts. The developed program of socio-psychological training, aimed at harmonizing the political behavior of young people and neutralizing conflicts in the political space, includes the following 5 sessions. The study concludes that the implementation of this training program will increase the maturity of political identity of young people and, as a result of optimizing their political behavior and developing skills of constructive interaction in society in situations of political contradictions and conflicts, significantly reduce their potential for political conflict.

Historians talks about difficult neighbourhood

Topic of the article, which consists of two parts, is the picture of Polish-Russian relations in the latest historiography. In the first part, the author discusses the works of Polish scholars concerning the war expeditions of the Republic of Poland to Moscow (the so-called “Dymitriady”) at the beginning of the 17th century, which left in Russian historical memory permanent negative traces, as well as the invasions of the Eastern neighbor on the Polish lands in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in times of partitions. The second part, a much more extensive, contains an analysis of the fundamental work by Adam Rotfeld and Anatolij Torkunow under the title Białe plamy – czarne plamy. Sprawy trudne w relacjach polsko-rosyjskich (1918–2008) [White patches – black spots. The difficult cases in Polish-Russian relations (1918–2008)], Warsaw 2010, p. 907. It is composed of 16 chapters, each of which contains two articles on the same subject, one by Polish researcher, the second is Russian. They cover the interwar period, World War II and the time after 1945, among others, the Katyn massacre, the Polish October of 1956 and martial law. The author particularly carefully treats issues causing controversy and comes to the conclusion that this valuable work is a huge contribution to the description of topics overlooked, ignored or deformed by propaganda. Draws attention to the objectivity of Russian authors to Polish affaires and a deep understanding of those matters. It can be showed mainly on the example of their relation to the events in Poland in the years 1980–1981. The work was published simultaneously in two languages-Russian and Polish.

The problem of the opportunity to place advertisement in mass media has been analysed both by Polish courts and the European Court of Human Rights only with regard to the content of said advertisement and its reference to current legal advertising bans. However, there occurred a significant problem not only from the point of view of the freedom of press, but also civil liberties, namely that of presenting advertisement undesired by newspaper editors. Cases tried by Polish courts, one being subject to analysis of the European Court of Human Rights, prove that within the scope of placing advertisement the voice of publishers and editors is decisive. Any citizen referring to the freedom of speech stands no chance that the content of advertisement presented by them will be published. Free press is to be free to choose advertisement, and what’s crucial here is the economic freedom of contract. tantamount to conceding that this norm ceases to exist, but only affirms that it cannot be applied.

Kaliningrad District of Russian Federation: Polish-Russian Borderland

The following paper indicates that relations between Poland and Kaliningrad District are one of the crucial elements of Polish foreign policy and international relations. The Kaliningrad Area is a Polish-Russian borderland burdened with a kind of political taboo after the World War II. From the beginning of 90s of the 20th century it reveals international openness. The establishment of Polish-Kaliningrad cultural and civilization contacts remains fully controlled by Russia. Poland tries to respect this dependence. The agreement of local border traffic plays a large role in rapprochement between both states. The institutionalization of life of Polish community is important for tightening of Polish-Kaliningrad-Russian relations.

This article tries to examine the underpinning determinants of voting behavior in Sudan. It adopts a descriptive method and an inter-disciplinary approach with empirical explanation to verify the hypothesis that “voting behavior in Sudan is a function of religious sectarianism and ethnicity more than other determinants, such as ideology, class or socio-economic status.” It discusses the interrelationship between voting behavior and other relevant concepts, such as political behavior, electoral behavior, and political culture. It explains how several determinants/factors converge on influencing the voting behavior. The article notes that the vigorous influence of ethnicity and religious sectarianism over the political behavior in Sudan resulted in apparently irrational voting behavior. These two determinants have marked the political behavior in Sudan since it regained independence in 1956. However, the Uprising of 2018 ushered in an emergence of a new conscious generation that might lead to a paradigm shift for political and voting behavior. The article proposes the adoption of Consociational democracy with proportional representation and parliamentary system to guarantee the representation of minorities and sustain a fair share of power and wealth to put an end to instability and wars. In the case of Sudan, it is advisable that more attention should be paid to the development of political culture and efficacious civic engagement in politics should be boosted to increase conscious political participation to pave the way for sustainable democracy.