The article presents a particular mechanism of political decision making in contemporary democratic systems. It is called here ‘ad hoc democracy’. This notion refers to the phenomenon of making political decisions (that are general and abstract) on the basis of premises that are individual and situational. After defining ad hoc democracy, the author reconstructs a typical scenario of the phenomenon, demonstrates selected examples of ad hoc democracy and discusses its main consequences. The analysis of ad hoc democracy construction process follows. The main cause of ad hoc democracy is defined as the interference of internally inconsistent logic of actions taken by three types of actors in political sphere: media, society (treated as an audience) and political decision-makers. In the last part of the article it is hypothesized that the systems experiencing rapid social changes and democratization processes are particularly prone to the emergence of ad hoc democracy. The hypothesis is justifi ed and substantiated by referring to an example of Poland during the systemic transformation process.
The aim of the study was to examine how the manipulation of information about hypothetical presidential candidates infl uenced youth’ attitudes towards them. The experiment was conducted on 929 subjects (454 women and 475 men), who were either pupils in their fi nal year of secondary school or university students, aged 18–25. The amount of information about politicians was manipulated (politicians’ gender, political affi liation, moral and competence traits (positive or negative), political programme characteristics). The results showed that (1) the own-group favoritism effect was observed only among female participants, (2) female presidential candidate was evaluated better than male presidential candidate in conditions of positive information, yet, when negative information about candidates was provided, female presidential candidate was evaluated worse than male presidential candidate.
The article aims at demonstrating that authority is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. An overview of numerous definitions and theories of authority serves as a point of departure that leads to the reconstruction of the typologies of authority existing in social sciences and to qualifying the functions of authority. The place of the phenomenon in social life is revealed by the analysis of its key operation mechanisms and impact areas. Theoretical definitions and typologies form the background for concentrating on authority in local communities, since its social role (e.g. inspirational, regulatory and integrative) at this level is exceptionally important from the perspective of social order maintenance and local communities’ development.
Studia Socjologiczne ISSN 0039-3371, e-ISSN 2545-2770 is a Polish sociological quarterly journal, published uninterruptedly since 1961. Its publishers are the Polish Academy of Sciences (represented by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology and the Committee on Sociology), as well as the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Warsaw (from 2013).
Studia Socjologiczne welcomes articles from all sociological sub-disciplines, and neighbouring disciplines, as long as the authors apply a broadly defined sociological approach. Preference is given to texts that contribute to the advancement of social theory and are empirically grounded and innovative in their conceptual and methodological outlook. Our journal is open to scholarly debates and polemics. We also encourage authors to send us reviews of recently published books. Since 2012, contributions in English are also considered for publication in the journal.
A double-blind peer review procedure is applied to each submitted manuscript considered for publication. In order to acknowledge the reviewers’ contribution, the full list of our reviewers is included on the back of the cover page in each issue of the journal. The details of the submission and review procedure are described in the “For Authors” tab.
A full text version of Studia Socjologiczne is available online for EBSCO subscribers (SocINDEX with Full Text), as well as through the Polish Academy of Sciences online journal reading room: http://journals.pan.pl/dlibra and (since 2016) at www.studiasocjologiczne.pl ("Archives").
en
pl
