The purpose of this article is to present the scope of authority of party leaders in selected Polish political parties. The study included the following parties: Civic Platform (PO), Law and Justice (PiS) party, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), Polish Peasants’ Party (PSL), Your Movement (TR), Right Wing of the Republic Polish (PR), the New Right (NP) and the Greens. The article addresses the problem of electing a leader of party. The importance of exclusive competence (the powers that belong only to a leader) of the leaders of the Polish party is analyzed. The leader of party may on their grounds decide in certain areas of action of the party. This applies in particular to internal structure, staffing party, the nomination of candidates for election as well as disciplining party members. In most of the subjected parties the leaders have a broad range of rights including the exclusive character. According to the author, some of these powers undermine democratic nature of the party structure.

Key words:
Polish party system, political party, leader of party, democracy

The article deals with an interesting - from the marketing perspective - form of electoral rivalry, realised with the participation of politicians described as the "substitute candidates". It was taken into consideration that while discussing the issue of "substitute candidate" it is necessary to settle two key questions: which politicians and based on what criteria could be classified as such candidates and what strategic grounds convince rivalry subjects to choose such campaign option. Assuming that the notion "substitute candidate" could be analysed from at least two different points of view: actual substitution or apparent substitution, some issues of creating the electoral campaign and realising the campaign with the parti- cipation of "substitute candidate" can be pointed out: from the candidate selection stage, through the stage of creating and developing the candidate's image, to the stage of implementing project. Moreover, some conclusions from the electoral campaign preceding the presidential elections in Katowice were presented.

Key words:
electoral strategy, electoral campaign, process of selecting candidates, political image

A territorial division of a country constitutes the basis of a current organization of the communal life; hence its stability is a fundamental condition of an effective administration in a local, regional as well as statewide scale. Therefore, political parties that are involved in drafting the law as well as are entitled to accept or reject acts shall perform for the benefit of general public, but for particular reasons.

Key words:
territorial  division,  territorial  structure,  conception  of  division,  political programs

Taking part in an election, political parties implement their planned strategic activities, which involve making choices regarding competitive goals and maximizing the usefulness of the resources they have. A significant context of party strategies is political uncertainty. The paper discusses the importance of political uncertainty in three areas. First, political uncertainty is an instrument affecting the character of political competition. In the second area, the article presents its role as a factor of competition in the process of campaigning for votes. It also points out that political uncertainty may be a mechanism of institutionalizing new political parties. Some of the implemented party strategies, influencing the level of political uncertainty, assume possible electoral manipulations.

Key words:
electoral strategies, political uncertainty, political manipulations

The article is an attempt to analyze the relations between political trust and one of the greatest problems of the public domain: political corruption. It seems obvious that corrupt behaviors revealed in the public space are supposed to undermine citizens' political trust. This thesis has been empirically verified many times. The author of the paper presents the cause and effect model with institutional trust as the independent variable. The article is an attempt to analyze the possible directions of its influence on political corrupt behaviors, assuming political trust to be the starting point, not the consequence, of the "social disease" occurring in the public domain.

Key words:
political corruption, political trust, political behaviors

Presented article is aimed at examining the emotional attitudes to candidates for the president of Poland among pro-systemic and anti-systemic voters in 2015 presidential election and showing the influence of campaign TV ads on these groups of Polish electorate. The research conducted by author reveals that anti-systemic electorate is less interested in politics and more likely to be influenced by electoral TV spots. The study also confirms the relation between emotional attitudes to political actors and political preferences. According to the results of experiment anti-systemic voters expressed more positive feelings towards candidates from out of the political mainstream, and the other way round, the pro-systemic electorate rather liked the candidates presented by parliamentary parties.

Key words:
political  advertising,  electoral  TV  ads,  emotional  attitude,  feelings  thermometer, 2015 presidential election in Poland, anti-systemic voters

The article presents changes that take place in mass media during and after the party switching. The main reason why politicians are changing „their colors" - is that they want to become the celebrities. This work is an attempt of research about possible motivation of those figures. It is also important to consider if exist characteristic features that are assigned to identified political types?

Key words:
party switching, mediatization, types of politicians, political transfer, Poland

In many modern democracies, the leaders who make important influential political decisions are highly likely to be party politicians or indeed party leaders. Very often they cannot prepare an adequate strategy for their political parties because it is usually impossible to find out all necessary elements for projecting the goals. It is not surprising that political parties are the most important organizations in modern politics and in the contemporary world, only a few states do without them. The reason that political parties are well-nigh ubiquitous is that they perform functions that are valuable to many political actors. Political parties play a major role in the recruitment of top politicians, on whom the momentous and painful political decisions often fall. With very few exceptions, political chief executives are elected on the slate of some established political party, and very often the head of government continues to serve as the head of the political party that propelled him or her into office. Democracy may be conceived as a process by which voters delegate policy-making authority to a set of representatives, and political parties are the main organizational vehicle by which such delegation takes place. The main aim of this article is focus on the minority government, which are especially common in the Scandinavian countries. They can be more easily formed and maintained where the party system makes it difficult to secure support for an alternative majority coalition to be formed, a vote of investiture is not required, and a government can stay in office unless there is an absolute majority against it. In the article will be emphasized some case studies of Denmark minority government formation and durability. General findings will be confronted with empirical data, which will allow to formulate conclusions about the specific of minority cabinet in Denmark.

Key words:
party leaders, minority government, coalition, Nordic States, Denmark, party behavior, elections, majority, parliamentary members

In reality of representative democracy, the economic situation of the state is one of the most important factors determining the stability and durability of a political system. In 2008 an intense economic crisis affected whole Europe. One of consequences of this situation were serious changes in composition and functioning of political systems and its subsystems in almost all countries belonging to the region. This phenomenon has also occurred in contemporary Spain. The main aim of this paper will be to show how the Spanish party system has changed after the outbreak of the economic crisis of 2008.

Key words:
political parties, party system, economical crisis

The article addresses the dependency between the level of institutionalization present in the Spanish party system, electoral accountability and assigning responsibility. The primary research objective of this article is to determine the extent to which electoral volatility is present in Spain, both at the aggregate and individual level, which is a measure of the degree of institutionalization reached by a party system. Next, the dependency between electoral volatility and fluidity of elites at the electoral and parliamentary level is analysed. This allows for an answer to the question of whether there is a problem in Spain with assigning responsibility, having regard to the fact that the presence of extensive electoral volatility among both voters and political elites makes it difficult to speak of effective accountability.

Key words:
party  system,  Spanish  party  system,  assigning  responsibility,  electoral accountability

The aim of the article was to present electoral activities diversification as well as political preferences of the citizens of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship in years 1989-2014. The measure of the conducted analyses were the results of parliamentary and European Parliament elections, by means of which it was possible to indicate recurring cyclicality of right-wing political sympathies of the citizens of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, as well as noticable, with regards to the whole country, election turnout. The primary part of the conducted analysis was an attempt to answer the question of what determined the change of political preferences and if contemporary electoral activity and political sympathies reflect historical and cultural determinants.

Key words:
Subcarpathian Voivodeship, elections, electoral, political parties

The article is an analysis of the local elections, from the perspective of the actors taking part in it. The study involved the election committees taking part in elections in 2006, 2010, and 2014. Exploration statistical data and results of the election was preceded by theoretical observations concerning the discussed issues. It outlines the legal basis for election to local government and made a typology of electoral committees, in accordance with the electoral laws in force during the specified election. It shows the level of participation of each type of election committees. In the analysis, the number of registered electoral committees, the number of candidates each gained votes and seats obtained. The model analyzes afflicting a number of key statistical data allowed to create a picture that revealed the definite advantage of election committees of political parties in electoral competition at the local government level. In addition, the cross-section analysis gave the word Stagnation scenery election, in respect of the entities competing election. The survey covered a national and provincial level. Data were analyzed in the whole country, as well as the division into 16 voivodeships. Information and data on issues taken taken from literature, existing normative acts and the data of the State Electoral Commission. We conducted a descriptive considerations of a comparative analysis using descriptive statistics methods.

Key words:
Local government, elections, electoral committees, electoral law