We are pleased to present the 28th issue of Political Science Quarterly “e-Politikon” published by the Centre for Political Analysis of the University of Warsaw.
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In this volume we want to present research that challenge the problems at theoretical, methodological and empirical levels.
In Presidents vs. Washington – Some Remarks on the Nature of the Policy Making Arena in the Time of Trump, Bohdan Szklarski aims at providing a theoretical insight for the analysis of presidential leadership which utilizes the knowledge about the dynamics of political environment of leaders. Leadership is viewed as an element of the political system which has a potential for maintaining its equilibrium. He focuses on the „competition between centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in the political arena in Washington” which seems to result in „anarchic conditions” of the presidential practice. He shows how the presidency of Donald Trump utilizes these tendencies and how it changes the rules of the political game, from at positive-sum to a zero-sum game.
Studying Leadership in Democratic Parliaments. Clues from Complex Systems Theory and Polish Case, by Krzysztof Kasianiuk, is an attempt at showing how Complex Systems Theory (CST) could be utilized for analyzing behavior in political organizations. He not only sees CST as a conceptual tool that is supposed to explain leadership, but also one that shows what should be analyzed to make a strong case on organizational leadership. Working on the case of the Polish parliament, he provides a list of structural and functional conditions of communication between relatively equal actors oriented at leadership roles.
Inkumbenci w Sejmie, czyli przyczynek do charakterystyki posła z długoletnim stażem parlamentarnym [Incumbents in Polish Parliament: on the character of parliamentarians with long service], by Paulina Czernek, is an empirical study of long-term parliamentary incumbents in Poland. She aims at answering the questions regarding individual and institutional traits of incumbents, seeking for their profiles and career paths. The study was based on the quantitative comparative study, within a dataset of purposively selected incumbents from seven full term, between 1991 and 2015. As at result, the author identifies a model that could be used in more comprehensive and comparative studies.
Another research tool is provided in Leadership in Polish Political Parties by Anna Pacześniak and Maria Wincławska. The authors approach the analysis of party leader positions from the personal leadership perspective, and identify key conditions that influence the positions of leaders. Based on this, authors develop a scale of strength of party leadership in their respective organizations, and validate it in an empirical study. The scale has been validated on the example of six Polish major political parties.