Polish local elections in 2018, many months before their commencement, became one of the main elements of the political discourse. Due to the specificity of the electoral calendar, for the first time since the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2015, voters had to assess the actions taken by the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) in the electoral act. Of course, this could only happen indirectly, precisely through local  elections, which due to their specificity, are not able to fully reflect the balance of powers that operates on the national arena. However, also in this way voters could refer to national events. Expressing support for them by voting on PiS, or by showing negations of their actions by voting for groups remaining in opposition. The aim of the paper is to check whether, in the perception of voters, events on the national political arena determine the behavior of two types of participants in local elections: local politicians  and voters.

The main aim of the paper is the theoretical analysis of the concept of the territorial heteronomy. Conclusions concerning the idea of territorial autonomy, regionalism or federalism easily can be found in the scientific literature. But they are useless to investigate and explain many political processes and political preferences in states of the Central and Eastern Europe. It is because states of this part of the continent did not have a chance to create and develop their own models of classic administration institutions in the nineteenth century, inter alia the local and regional government. Their only experience in this area is limited to the interwar period between 1918 and 1939.  They have gained a new chance for a democratic division of public tasks after the collapse of the communist system in the very end of the twentieth  century. But in that period they have focused more on the horizontal division of powers than on the vertical one. For that reason up till today political phenomena in the political centre have more importance than the regional policy impact attempts. The inspiration for such a research were electoral results obtained by two regional parties at elections to the Śląskie Voivodeship Assembly in 2018.

2018 midterm elections in the United States allowed more ethnically and racially diverse candidates to become members of the Congress. The use of social media tools helped them to reach out to their community and get out the vote, which is especially important in Democratic campaign tactics. The article, by focusing on Colin Allred's and Andy Kim's Congressional bids, focuses on how their issue-oriented campaigns helped to mobilize the liberal voters. Furthermore, by analysing the rapidly changing demographics, it tackles the crucial question: do they mean the doom of the Republican Party?

Cities create a transcultural sphere and a platform for transcultural dialogue.Cities play an important cultural-creative role and they try to become policy player onat the international level. The aim of this study is to evaluate the actions taken in cities from two perspectives. On the one hand how the multicultural (multi-lingual and multi-religious) cityscape is shaped, how the city is governed in order to create a space termed as a ‘meeting place’. On the other hand how these undertakings affect the image of the city on the international stage and how they contribute to the city diplomacy strategy.