Studia Politicae Universitatis Silesiensis T. 33 (2021)

Faced with an increased wave of refugees and migrants from conflict areas, mainly Syria, Europe is unable to propose a common systemic solution to eliminate this problem. The refugee issue has divided Europe, strengthened national cultural or religious identities and made many citizens of Member States reflect on their attitude of solidarity towards migrants. The aid measures of the various Member States of the European Union vary according to the political parties in power. This article describes the main actions aimed at addressing the refugee issue in Europe.

The article considers changes taking place at universities. As a consequence of these changes, universities are not only dedicated to student education or science a, but also proactively respond to stimuli from 
the external environment. As a result, the University of the Best programme for talented students of the region was created at the University of Silesia in Katowice. The assumption is that the programme will be the response of the University of Silesia in Katowice to the depopulation and brain drain related to this process. The purpose of this study is to present the way the University of the Best operates and the results of surveys carried out during Univeristy’s activities. This programme may be a model solution that will be implemented in other academic centres in the future.

The 2018 local government elections were largely dominated by the nationwide competition between the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) and opposition parties. In addition, the amendment to the Electoral Code expanded the volume of cities and municipalities where elections were held in multi-member constituencies using the d'Hondt method, which could favor nationwide parties. The presented article analyzes the extent to which this influenced the level of politicization of the Polish local government, which was commonly perceived as a sphere of influence of local electoral committees. For this purpose, we examine the level of support for political parties and local committees in 167 municipalities and cities of the Silesian Voivodeship. The study confirms a positive relationship between the level of party politicization of local governments and the inhabitants’ number in the municipality. An in-depth analysis shows that local committees and non-party candidates for the mayor’s office definitely dominate in smaller municipalities and cities (up to 100,000 inhabitants). In contrast, the largest cities with poviat rights are characterized by a greater degree of politicization.

The main objective of this article is to present some factors which led Chinese authorities to illiberal democracy. Firstly, I will focus on the problematic issue of typology of the modern Chinese political system. Next, I will talk through factors which had an influence on choosing the so-called Chinese (collective) democracy. Subsequently, I will highlight some factors which are connected to Confucian thought. Those factors had a primary impact on forming the state and society during the era of emperors and today lead to illiberal democracy in China. In the end, I will shortly describe the question of “ethical responsibility”, which is one of the key issues of creating a social capital of a global character.

Promotional campaigns of TV shows often generate a lot of interest and media attention because of their originality and panache. Yet, we know very little about the people who actually plan and execute the promotional activities for television programmes and the institutional context within which they work. This article promotes a reflection on the work culture of practitioners in the marketing departments of Polish TV stations. The aim of the article is to develope knowledge and understanding of TV promotion as a professional discipline and cultural practice in media production. In order to examine the area that has been so far absent from Polish media studies, the article relies on in-depth interviews with TV practitioners,
more specifically PR experts responsible for promoting Polish television programming. Reflections of PR practitioners about their own work and their institutional context provide empirical evidence that allows us to look at the promotion of television programming in ways other than through their effectiveness. The ethnographic research into the marketing departments of Poland’s broadcasters offers a fuller understanding of the creative sector and media production in the television industry.

The impact of the novel Covid-19, otherwise known as the coronavirus on the entire spectrum of Nigeria’s national life, as elsewhere, remains yet indelibly unquantifiable at present. Thanks to the Elite culpability in the management of the corona-virus epidemic that has now rendered the entire Nigeria’s national life halted and, on the brinks of spontaneous discontinuity. Conceptualized in this study to mean negligence of duty, this study unpacks how the Nigerian political Elites and leadership’s inefficiency has contributed inversely to the eventual outbreak, sporadic rise and the negative consequences of Covid-19 on the entire populations’ Nigeria’s economic and sustainable development goals. Drawing from David Hume’s theory of causation, this study discovers that leadership and Nigerian political elites’ failure in the management of the Covid-19 pandemic, before and during its eventual outbreak and manifestation in Nigeria triggered the incident Covid-19 case in Nigeria, and its manifold effects on Nigeria’s prospects for the actualization of her economic and sustainable development pursuits.

Undoubtedly, information and communication technologies (ICT) have brought tangible changes not only in the way people communicate on an interpersonal level but also with government offices. Hence, ICT are an enabling tool for the state government to rebuild its relations with citizens by providing better and easier access to the government-related information and services. The efficiency of ICT is acknowledged by almost all states and actions are taken to establish robust e-government system. Surveys, exploring benefits of the implementation of e-government, basically reach to positive conclusions about the consequences of implementation of e-government. It is argued that e-government influences reduction of administrative burden, decrease of repetition of the same administrative procedure, increase financial benefits for the state and citizens. Moreover, e-government increases satisfaction from the government by providing less timeconsuming, easy and cheap e-services. However, currently there is still scarcity of data to what extent citizens are satisfied with e-government information and services based on the above-mentioned criteria. With the purpose of assessing the quality of e-information and e-services and satisfaction with them among the students an online survey has been run. 100 participants, studying at the University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw Medical University, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business evaluated their access to e-information and e-services used by them on e-government website. The survey shows that most of the
respondents are somewhat satisfied with e-information found on the local government website. When it comes to evaluation of e-services by three criteria; time effectiveness, cost effectiveness and user-friendliness
(easiness), most of the respondents are not sure that e-services are less timeconsuming or cheap compared to offline ones, while most of them find e-services quite easy to get.

Studia Politicae Universitatis Silesiensis T. 33 (2021)

Studia Politicae Universitatis Silesiensis T. 33 (2021)

Studia Politicae Universitatis Silesiensis T. 33 (2021)