Parental participation in co-management of state school becomes a key issue for democratization of public life in poland and for the quality and effectiveness of civic education of the young. The system of education needs social control, first of all of those whose children are subjected to school duty. “Such will the Republics of poland be as their youth is educated” is the thesis forming the foundations of the school system in the 3rd Republic of Poland. In compliance with the postulates and ethics of Solidarity, the system was supposed to be self-governing. What is analyzed in this study is the relation between politics and school education in the normative-empirical dimension. The (so far unpublished) research results of the author's own studies on democratization of state education are popularized here. This is done, after the dispute on some studies diagnosing the nationwide lack of socialization, in order to indicate subsequent aspects of fiction and appearances of the central authority, the rule of safe position employment, common paralysis of parental care, as well as natural expectations and aspirations which should be fulfilled by the subjects running state schools.

The author considers the mechanisms limiting women’s access to power and the validity of their advance to positions of authority. She uses research into two extremely different social institutions–the Italian Mafia and the Polish Sejm (parliament)–in an attempt to illustrate that the contemporary process of redefining traditional cultural concepts of gender is not only an indicator of the spread of pro-equality attitudes but could equally well be considered an element of activity intended to preserve the patriarchal order. From this viewpoint, the ad hoc reconstructing of cultural concepts of gender is chiefly aimed at maintaining the constituting principle of the patriarchy–maintaining men’s domination at the price of breaking men’s monopoly on power. This process could therefore be perceived also as a symptom of the durability of the patriarchal model of social ties.

This article is a contribution to the history of underground Polish press in 1939–1945. It is concerned with the main problems discussed in the periodical Jutro Polski. Biuletyn Informacyjny [ Poland’s Tomorrow: Information Bulletin] issued by the Democratic Party — The Rectangle. Published two-three times a week over the period 1940–1942, it informed its readers about the situation at the battle fronts, the latest in international politics and current events in Poland; it also featured articles debating the problem of Poland’s post-war political system.

Recent years have witnessed the publication of a number of research papers and books seeking to assess threats of electoral victories of anti-establishment politicians and political parties, described as authoritarian populists. This essay focuses on three books directly addressing the origins and threats of authoritarian populism to democracy. It consists of six sections and the conclusion. The first section presents findings (Norris and Inglehart) based on surveys of values of voters of various age cohorts concluding that authoritarian populism is a temporary backlash provoked by the post-materialist perspective. The second section examines the contention, spelled out in Levitsky and Ziblatt, that increase in openness of American political system produced, unintentionally, a degradation of the American political system. The third section continues brief presentations focusing on to the causes and implications of “illiberal democracy,” and “undemocratic liberalism” (Mounk). The fourth section examines developments in the quality of democracy in the world showing that despite the decline in Democracy Indices, overall there was no slide towards non-democratic forms of government in 2006–2019. The next two sections deal with dimensions missing in reviewed books; the notion of nation-state, international environment, civic culture and, in particular, dangers of radical egalitarianism to democracy. The last section concludes with regrets that the authors ignored rich literature on fragility of democracy and failed to incorporate in their analyses deeper structural factors eroding democracy: by the same token, return to the pre-populist shock trajectory is unlikely to assure survival of liberal democracy.