In force until 1904, the right of veto over the outcome of the conclave was vested in the cardinals, who, exclusively on behalf of the rulers of Spain, France and Austria, could lodge a protest known as an exclusivity. The aim of the present study is to analyse the right of exclusivity as an attempt to politically influence the election of the pope as head of the Catholic Church, using the example of its last use during the 1903 conclave. The paper poses three main research problems: 1. What was the right of exclusion and who could use it? 2. Why did the Church allow interference in the election of the Pope? 3. How and why was this possibility used during the 1903 conclave? The answers to these questions made it possible to show that the use of the right of exclusivity in 1903 by the Polish Cardinal Jan Puzyna on behalf of Emperor Franz Joseph I, prevented the election of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro as Pope, and therefore constituted a direct political influence of the ruler on the election of the head of the Church.

From a political science perspective, the issue of youth in Polish cities emerges as a complex and interdisciplinary topic, encompassing civic agency, social partici­pation, and engagement in shaping urban spaces. The aim of this study was to examine how young people perceive urban challenges related to sustainable development and to what extent they are willing to engage in urban transformation processes. The empirical research was conducted using the CAWI method on a non-representative sample of inhabitants of Dąbrowa Górnicza under the age of 21 (N = 83), employing principal component analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation and cluster analysis. This approach enabled the identification of five factors explaining 63.6% of the variance. The results reveal a diverse assessment of urban life aspects – recreational infrastructure was rated the highest, while the availability of consumer services received the lowest scores – and no significant differences were found between male and female respondents. Despite receiving relatively low scores, housing was not classified as the most serious issue, prompting a reassessment of existing theoretical assumptions. The study highlights the growing readiness of youth to engage in urban transformation, while also underscoring the need to enhance their understanding of the systemic dimensions of city functioning.

Relations between Poland and Russia are an important subject of foreign policy research, and the issue has played an important role in the Polish parliamentary debate. One of the factors affecting relations between the two countries is the issue of energy cooperation, which for many years has been an important point of political dispute in Poland projecting the level of state security. The cognitive purpose of the article was to interpret the views of representatives of the Law and Justice Party during the fourth, sixth and seventh terms of the Polish Sejm on how Polish-Russian relations are shaped in the energy dimension. The starting point was the thesis that the Law and Justice party assessed political-energy relations with Russia in a negative way during the period under study, which was due to the wrong directional decisions taken by the SLD-UP and PO-PSL government coalitions.

Iraq has experienced many glorious and arch-difficult periods in its centuries-long history. Iraq was subject to military-politi­cal-economic rivalry between the superpowers at every stage of its development. It was dependent first on Great Britain and successively found itself in the orbit of US influence. In the history of Iraq, a fascinating period was the years 1932–1958 – the period of the establishment, functioning, and eventually collapse of the Iraqi monarchy. In July
1958, on the wave of the Middle East revolutions of the Free Officers, there was a republican coup and political transformation in Iraq, which implied, in the long term, the strengthening of the al-Baas Party in Iraq and the seizure of power by Saddam Hussein, a change in the balance of power in the region or, finally, had an impact on the US-Soviet rivalry in this part of the globe (e.g., the collapse of the Baghdad Pact concept).