Research projects conducted by

The Institute of Political Scienceand Public Administration:

Ongoing:

The Impact of Post-war Population Transfers on the Czech-Polish Cross-Border Cooperation

Financing institution and duration: National Science Centre 2022-2025

General description: In our project, we are going to study the impact of both forced and voluntary population transfers, which happened after the end of World War II, on the Czech-Polish cross-border cooperation. These transfers caused a significant change in the composition of the population of the Czech-Polish borderland and caused actually a “twofold borderland”: the original German-speaking population was forced to leave territories of both Czechoslovakia and Poland in the western part of the mutual border – which is the entire length of the border between Bohumín /Chalupki and Czech-Polish-German trilateral border. The very eastern part of the border is in a different situation, as the population change was not so major there. We are going to identify the impacts of these changes on the mutual cross-border co-operation on the entire length of the border and categorize them. We will verify the hypothesis expecting the more profound integration in the eastern part of the border.
Our research focuses on the territory covered by the activities of 6 Euroregions, which were created in the Polish-Czech borderland since 1991. They have been the subject of repeated scholarly attention, but without an approach covering the entire Polish-Czech borderland where different dimensions of cooperation would be studied. One of the recent contributions assessed the cross-border (spatial) continuity on the entire borders using also the comparative Euroregional perspective (Pászto et al. 2019). The authors identified the highest levels of this continuity in the eastern part of the Czech-Polish borderlands (Euroregions Silesia and Tesin/Cieszyn Silesia), where no massive population changes were recorded. The most discontinuous region is Euroregion Praděd/Pradziad, which was influenced by the population exchange, and its current low population density and rural character could to some extent be attributed to the expulsion of German-speaking inhabitants.

Principal Investigator: prof. Hynek Bohm
Budget: 631 326 PLN

Analysing Cross-border Co-operation in Visegrád Group countries (V4)

Financing institution and duration: National Science Centre 2021-2023

General description: The research has an ambition to focus on the way, how did the cross-border cooperation change the borderlands in Visegrád countries since the 2004 EU enlargement until 2020. We will examine the processes of frontierization ongoing since 2004 until now. We will also look whether there are also boundarization/re-bordering processes going in the vice-versa direction. The main research question is: “Do the borders in V4 countries experience re-bordering?” If the answer is positive we will try to assess whether this re-bordering affects border regions as the places, where the people live.
We will address this main goal with the help of following research questions:

  •  How did cross-border cooperation influence borderlands in V4 countries? Did the space construction through European and national narratives affect border regions as living spaces? How have the above mentioned developments influenced cross-border social practices?
  • Are the structural conditions (governance structures, border regimes, cross-border infrastructure, cross-border policies) appropriate to ensure a positive social and economic development of V4 border regions as living spaces? Who are the decisive CBC actors there? What influence the pandemics had?
  • How did the various financial incentives – mainly the EU funded INTERREG programmes – contribute towards the change of borderlands in the V4?
  • Are the schools located in borderlands affected with the CBC? Do their curricula reflect this special geographical position and do the schools raise the new borderlanders, or the national Leitkultur prevails also there?

Principal Investigator: prof. Hynek Bohm
Budget: 517 200 PLN

Determinants and Dynamics of Differentiated Integration in Post-Brexit Europe

Financing institution and duration: National Science Centre 2021-2024

General description: The overarching research objective of the presented project aims at analyzing the determinants and dynamics of differentiated integration in Europe from the interdisciplinary point of view. The existing theories of international integration are fragmented and trapped into the disciplinary camps without much dialog between and among them. The starting assumption is captured in the hypothetical statement that the level and scope of differentiation will differ from country to country in various policy areas in line with the time factor as well as a will be determined by a group of factors of socio-political, economic and institutional nature. Against this background, this study derives a number of hypotheses addressing the inter-disciplinary nature of the differentiation in Europe (e.g. “Differentiation increases in polities with proportional more Euro-skeptic citizenry than Euro-friendly population”, “More intra- EU trade (of goods and services) as well as capital and migration flows will result in more pro- integrative attitudes and less differentiation, whereas the less intense economic traffic within the block will result in more differentiation” or “Policy areas with higher integration-related costs will represent greater differentiation, whereas less differentiation will occur in sectors where less costs and risks are anticipated”).

Principal Investigator: prof. Rafał Riedel
Budget:  458 700 PLN

Finished:

Realisation of the horizontal partnership principle in the programming and implementation of Regional Operational Programs in Poland

Financing institution and duration: National Science Centre 2020-2021

General description: The aim of the project is to examine the level of application of the partnership rule in the process of implementing regional operational programmes (ROP) in Poland in 2014–2019. It has been assumed that the Monitoring Committees (MC) operate as the institutional manifestation of the partnership principle. The analysis focused on five institutional factors: number of Committee meetings in the financial perspective 2014–2020, number of circular voting events, percentage of socio-economic partners in the total number of Committee members, number of working groups within the MCs, as well as the number of meetings of working groups.

Principal Investigator: dr Michał Niebylski
Budget: 29 271 PLN

Non-competitive elections to municipal councils as a specificity of democracy at the local level in Poland

Financing institution and duration: National Science Centre 2019-2020

General description: The project was aimed to identify the determinants responsible for the emergence of the phenomenon of non-competitive elections in municipal councils. The findings so far show that the emergence of the problem may be favored by the applicable electoral law, in particular Art. 418 § 1 (a division of communes into single-member constituencies), Art. 434 § 1 and 2 (rules for the organization of elections if the number of candidates is equal to the number of mandates to be filled) and Art. 478 § 2 (procedure for nominating candidates for the head of the commune head or mayor) of the Electoral Code. In this sense, regulations create circumstances in which the competitiveness of local elections may decline or disappear. They are not the main source of the problem of uncompetitive elections, the catalog of determinants in this regard may be extended to include social and political conditions, also of an environmental nature. The possibilities contained in the applicable regulations may be used by the authorities of communes. Mayors, taking advantage of a privileged position to other actors of the local political scene. In extreme cases, it may even result in the disappearance of political pluralism.

The implementation of the project will be an important contribution to further scientific exploration of the as yet rather superficially examined problem of the Polish democracy at the local level. The performance of the research will allow the author to bridge a significant gap in the knowledge of current processes determining the shape of the Polish democracy at the local level and will constitute a Polish voice in the international academic debate on the problem of a decreasing interest in local government activities observed in many countries.

Principal investigator: dr Marek Mazurkiewicz
Budget: 11 411 PLN

The missing link: examining organized interests in Post-Communist policy making

Financing institution and duration: National Science Centre 2017-2020

General description: The overall objective of the research project is to explore the structures, democratic-participative incorporation and impact of organized interests in Central and Eastern Europe. The researchers will analyse the interest group landscape in three policy areas – energy, healthcare and higher education – in four post-communist countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. The analyses will provide crucial insights on the emergence and evolution of civil society, which can be seen as a crucial prerequisite for functioning democracies.

Principal Investigator: prof. Rafał Riedel
Budget: 686 216 PLN

Determinants of stability and cohesion of Polish delegation to the European Parliament

Financing institution and duration: National Science Centre 2017-2020

General Description: The objectives of the research project include the following: 1. Determining the stability (changeability) of the Polish delegation to the European Parliament, 2. Determining the ideological, programme, and operational cohesion of the Polish political parties within the political groups of the EP in the years 2004-2019. The project will contribute to the better understanding of the impact of political parties on the process of European integration and the impact of Europeanisation on political parties.

Principal Investigator: prof. Krzysztof Zuba
Budget: 348 000 PLN

Regional multiculturalism and its impact on civil society and quality of governance. A diagnosis of the Opole voivodeship

Financing institution and duration: National Science Center 2016-2018

General description: The main objective of the research project is a diagnosis of the possible interdependencies between cultural (national/ethnic) diversity in the communes of the Opole voivodeship and different levels of quality of governance. The project is based on the assumption that the multiculturalism of the Opole voivodeship, mostly experienced in the eastern part of the voivodeship, can be seen as a type of laboratory which gives an opportunity to test the hypothesis concerning impact of ethnic diversity on the quality of local governance. The research will enrich the body of scientific knowledge concerning connections between national/ethnic diversity and development of both civil society and quality of governance.

Principal Investigator: dr Wojciech Opioła
Budget: 121 000 PLN