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91. Is the Modernization Process Becoming a Challenge or a Threat to the Security Policy and the Armed Forces?

Author:
Jarosław Piątek
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
In spite of defining the role of various measures of security policy implementation the weight of one has been quite unequivocally assessed for the current policy. The main position for contemporary Poland is to be taken by the armed forces. Under these conditions, the Polish Army has become a basic element of the defense system of Poland not only in terms of image. It is not surprising then that currently the armed forces have received a wide range of tasks regarding security – both internal and external. President Duda and the government of Law and Justice proudly show the 2 percent of GDP spent on defense and an even higher target, at the latest in 2030. However, this does not create a perspective that would allow “hurray” optimism. The key to describing the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland seems to be their ability to respond to the revolution in the field of military and the ability to modernize. Despite the plans of the Ministry of National Defense and declarations given in media, this process faces a number of difficulties. Not only do we create “abstract” visions of needs for the current policy, but we also offend our partners and those that are still our allies. The arms policy, so important from the point of view of this “self-sufficiency”, was brought to the accusations of lobbying, corruption, and fraud; not only do we not pay attention to our own needs, but we also create innovative concepts for the current policy that cause us to wander in dilettantism. It seems that the shape of the implementation of the modernization of the Armed Forces is affected not only by the current policy. To a large extent, the condition of the Polish arms industry is also a decisive factor in the absorption of modernization
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

92. About Women in Conflicts and Wars: Theories of Violence and Collective Memory

Author:
Inga B. Kuźma and Edyta Pietrzak
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
The article deals with the subject of relations between theories of violence and the category of collective memory in relation to women’s war stories. The text introduces the issue of war and conflict, understanding the theory of violence, the category of collective memory and female war narratives, as well as the ways of their political interpretation. The interpretation is crucial because of method used in the research, meaning hermeneutics, but also because of the, presented here, perspective of polyphony
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

93. The Issue of Securitization of the Refugee Problem in the Polish Political Debate

Author:
Renata Podgórzańska
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
Analyzing Poland’s current activity regarding the influx of refugees and the formulated attitude towards action in the field of restriction and control of the influx undertaken by European and international institutions, one should notice increasing reluctance to accept immigrants. What is more, there is a growing trend in the public debate in Poland to identify (to correlate) the influx of refugees with the problem of security. Although Poland is neither located on the main transit routes nor a destination for immigrants (including refugees), there is a process of systematically including this issue in the public discourse and analyzing the consequences of the potential increase in the influx of immigrants in the context of state security. Relationships that arise at the interface between migration and security point to the process of securitization of immigration, which involves integrating migration issues into a catalogue of state security threats and considering them through the lens of possible threats to the receiving societies.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

94. American Grand Strategy and the Rise of Offensive Realism

Author:
Ionut Popescu
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
FOR MOST OF THE POST–COLD WAR ERA, and some say even as far back as the dawn of the Cold War, America’s grand strategy has been portrayed as having had its theoretical underpinnings in a liberal internationalist understanding of world politics. Washington’s role in the world, the dominant narrative goes, was that of a security and economic guarantor of a “liberal world order.” 1 More often than not, this world order was grounded in a set of rules and institutions that helped advance America’s goals but also generally promoted international peace, stability, and prosperity. In G. John Ikenberry’s words, America was a “liberal Leviathan.”
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

95. The Government‐Citizen Disconnect. Review

Author:
Christopher Wlezien
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Much research posits a “disconnect” between the public and government. This work focuses primarily on the behavior of politicians and the mismatch between their policy actions and citizens’ preferences. Suzanne Mettler’s book concentrates instead on the public and the degree to which people accurately perceive and appreciate what government does. This book complements her earlier work Submerged State, which delineated how many government policies, such as tax expenditures, are not visible to many citizens, which distorts their views. The Government‐Citizen Disconnect, by contrast, examines how experience with government policies influences what people think.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

96. Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction. Book Review

Author:
David Bateman
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In his treatise on southern politics, V.O. Key Jr. wrote that “in state politics the Democratic party is no party at all but a multiplicity of factions struggling for office. In national politics, on the contrary, the party is the Solid South; it is, or at least has been, the instrument for the conduct of the ‘foreign relations’ of the South with the rest of the nation” (Southern Politics in State and Nation [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949], 315). In an early (and laudatory) review of that book, Richard Hofstadter suggested that Key missed an opportunity to fully consider whether the South had affected national politics in more ways than through the reliable delivery of Democrats to Washington, but he noted that this might require another book (p. 7). David Bateman, Ira Katznelson, and John S. Lapinski have written that book. Southern Nation examines how the South influenced public policy, Congress, and the development of the American state from the close of Reconstruction to the beginning of the New Deal. The authors focus on the region’s role in national politics at a critical juncture when industrialization and a rapidly changing economy required new policy solutions. They show that the white South used this opportunity to rebuild its place in the federal government, secure home rule, and shape the national agenda
Topic:
Post Colonialism, Race, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

97. Welcoming New Americans? Local Governments and Immigrant Incorporation. Book Review

Author:
George Hawley
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Survey data consistently show that large swaths of the American electorate favor restrictionist immigration policies. Politicians at the state and national levels regularly campaign on promises to crack down on undocumented immigration and discuss immigrants as a source of crime and a drain on resources. They are often rewarded at the ballot box for doing so. Yet these facts coexist with another trend: relatively few municipal governments pursue restrictionist policies at the local level. In fact, even in places where the GOP dominates, policies that accommodate immigrants are more common than policies designed to drive them away.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

98. Migrants and Political Change in Latin America. Book Review

Author:
Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
How do international migrants affect their origin countries’ politics? Drawing on evidence from the cases of Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, Migrants and Political Change in Latin America argues that migrants gain new attitudes and economic resources as a result of experiences in their receiving countries that they then transmit to their origin countries through economic and social remittances and through return migration. Jiménez claims that by transmitting resources and ideas through these three channels, migrants create changes in the politics of their origin countries that they never intended or envisioned. These effects are mediated by local conditions in origin countries such as levels of education and wealth. Moreover, the social networks in which both types of remittances and return migrants are embedded augment their political effects.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

99. Campaign Finance Complexity: Before Campaigning Retain an Attorney

Author:
David L. Wiltse
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In the study of candidate emergence, the cost term in the utility calculus has been of central concern. In this book, Mary Jo McGowan Shepherd makes a valuable contribution to the study of candidate emergence and campaign finance by considering how legal complexity increases the cost term in the emergence calculus. Grounded in complexity theory, she employs complexity measures of entire sections of state campaign finance laws to test whether candidates are deterred from running for office by the costs incurred in learning and complying with campaign finance law.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

100. Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable. Book Review

Author:
Kristen Coopie
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In this book, former CNN analyst and current George Mason University professor Bill Schneider offers his take on the causes and implications of the growing partisan divide in the United States. Conflict exists between the “New America,” a product of the 1960s that “celebrates diversity in age, race, sexual orientation, and lifestyles” (p. 11), and the “Old America,” consisting of the “mostly white, mostly male, mostly older, mostly conservative, and mostly religious, and mostly nonurban,” (p. 2) which longs for the days when “the country was whiter, men were in charge, government was smaller, and religion was more influential” (p. 117). This rift is reflected in the parties and politics of the nation (it is easy to see how the “New America” is representative of the Democratic coalition and the “Old America” of the Republican Party), ultimately leading to the populist backlash that elected Donald Trump in 2016
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus