The Islamic Republic of Iran has for years been the leader of an alliance known as the Axis of Resistance, which includes numerous Shiite militias and groups, Palestinian radicals, and until recently, Syria. Despite the long-developed internal connections, the Axis of Resistance remains an informal network of ties and is not sanctioned by any agreement or treaty. The level of dependence between Iran and other members of the Axis, as well as the aid provided by Tehran, remains controversial, as it is not precisely known. The period from 7th October 2023 until now has brought a multitude of defeats for the Axis of Resistance, thus highlighting the growing problems of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a state with great power ambitions, while Tehran’s position has not been this weak since 1979. Hamas’s attack on Israel, the devastating attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and the Israeli-Iranian and American-Iranian wars have caused a profound reconfiguration of the situation in the Middle East.

The subject of this article is an analysis of the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude towards democracy in the light of Catholic social teaching. The main hypothesis is based on the assertion that despite the Church’s long period of “struggle” with the concept of democracy, it is still a phenomenon towards which the hierarchical and popular Church displays a certain helplessness, resulting in a lack of adequate responses to crises of democracy. The article discusses the historical picture of the relationship between papal teaching and democracy as a form of government, the ways in which the contemporary Church defines democracy within the framework of Catholic social teaching, the conditions that “true” democracy should meet from the Church’s point of view, and, finally, the problems of the Church’s attitude towards this system in the context of Polish socio-political realities.

The development of artificial intelligence tools is revolutionizing the design of election campaigns, giving politicians and their teams unlimited possibilities to generate micro-
targeted narratives that build a positive polit­ical image. The aim of this article is to determine whether messages created using large language models (LLMs) are as effective in building a political image as narratives prepared by a political communication expert. To this end, we designed a study comparing the emotional reception of narratives written by a human and by GPT-4. The results con­firm that the content created by the language model is rated more positively than that created by the expert, and this effect is stronger among male respondents.

The article analyses the attitudes and expectations of young Europeans towards the democratic system in the context of declining trust in political institutions. The aim of the discussion is to identify the reasons for the observed criticism and to examine the extent to which the solutions proposed by young people (recommendations for policy­makers and the education sector) focus on deepening participation and increasing the transparency of decision-making processes. The article presents the results of the Youth Democracy Labs workshops organised as part of the ActEU project (“Towards a new era of representative democracy: Activating European citizens’ trust in times of crises and polarisation”), which served to examine the attitudes of young Europeans towards the democratic system and to develop the aforementioned recommendations. Based on 17 workshops conducted in 10 European Union countries, including Poland, the main areas in which changes should be made were identified. The results indicate that young Europeans, although critical of institutions, remain committed to democratic values and willing to participate actively in public life, provided that mechanisms conducive to this are created. An analysis of the recommendations also reveals the specific local context, e.g. the strongly emphasised need in Poland for civic education and the development of digital tools to facilitate civic participation.

What is the effect of affective polarization on vote satisfaction? Previous studies have investigated various consequences of affective polarization, such as support of democratic norms, democratic backsliding, voting turnout, or ideological radicalization. However, the impact of affective polarization on attitudes toward democracy is limited to the acceptance of democratic norms rather than overall satisfaction with the system. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between affective polarization and satisfaction with democracy. I propose that moderately polarized people are more likely to be satisfied with democracy than those who have low and high levels of affective polarization. However, I expect that this relationship is contingent on voting for the governing party. To test this, this paper relies on the CSES survey data from 24 European countries. This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of affective polarization on democratic attitudes.

The research goal is to identify the issue of “boundary” in Machiavelli’s political thought. Machiavelli criticized the state of contemporary culture, particularly the world of politics, which was subordinated to moral principles. The subject of this article is not a description of Machiavelli’s political thought per se, but rather an examination of the issue of boundary in the context of the above interpretations. The research method is based on textual analysis. The first part points to the boundary in the context of the European Socratic-Christian order, which serves as a prelude to a more detailed definition of boundary in human life. The second part describes the boundary of human well-being. The third part addresses the issue of the boundary of human action in politics, constituting the conclusion and culmination of the problem. Machiavelli opposes the Socratic-Christian order and its principles to draw a line between the religious and the political. He inverts the moral order. The existing boundaries between good and evil lose their validity in politics, where utility becomes the decisive criterion. Power, however, has its defined limits within which it can pursue its plan to seize power – on the one hand, it is the unpredictable Fortune, on the other, virtú must be within the bounds of humanity. In conclusion, the author points out that the boundaries of political activity are determined by the unpredictability and changeability of circumstances, or the absolute impossibility of transcending the idea of humanity. The novelty of Machiavelli’s thought lies in the fact that humanity should be the center of attention and the subject of all reflection.