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- 2026-06-30
Emergency Price Regulation as a Constitutional Problem: From Diocletian to the Polish People's Republic
Abstract. This article offers a constitutional and institutional analysis of emergency price regulation through a structural comparison of two historically distinct interventions: the Edict on Maximum Prices issued by Emperor Diocletian in 301 CE and the system of official price controls and rationing introduced during martial law in the Polish People’s Republic (1981-1983). Rather than treating these episodes as isolated historical curiosities, the study conceptualizes them as manifestations of a recurring pattern of crisis governance. The central thesis is that emergency price regulation represents a form of normative substitution in which political authority attempts to replace decentralized coordination mechanisms with administrative command. Drawing on institutional economics, constitutional theory of emergency powers, and legal theory of systemic complexity, the article introduces the concept of “Regulatory Utopia” as an analytical framework for understanding structural misalignment between legal normativity and economic coordination. The findings demonstrate that while emergency intervention may temporarily stabilise political order, suppression of the informational function of prices generates informal adaptation, institutional misalignment, and longterm erosion of legitimacy. The comparative perspective reveals structural recurrence across divergent constitutional orders and highlights the limits of normative power in governing complex economic systems during crisis. - 2026-05-25
Klauzula religijna w przysiędze urzędniczej: od rzymskich duumwirów do współczesnych wójtów. Studium prawno-historyczno-porównawcze
The subject of this study is the phenomenon of the presence of a religious clause in the oaths taken by municipal officials in Roman law and its modern equivalents (in Poland, Italy, and the USA). The aim of the paper is to analyze the content of oath formulas used in ancient Rome and in contemporary local government systems, with particular emphasis on the religious element. The hypothesis put forward is that in ancient Rome, the religious component served to legitimize authority and reinforced the official’s personal responsibility toward the community and the gods. In modern times, however, the religious clause though still present in some legal systems has lost its original character and has become an optional part of the oath, expressing the individual choice of the person assuming office. The study applies the historical-legal method and comparative method, focusing on the analysis of municipal statutes particularly the lex Irnitana. The findings indicate a strong connection between the religious and state spheres in ancient Rome and reveal a diverse approach to the religious clause in contemporary legal systems. - 2026-08-07
Polish adaptation of the career decision self-efficacy scale in a university student sample
This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Polish Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale–Short Form (CDSES-SF) in two university student samples (N = 116 and N = 465). Principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis supported a hierarchical structure, where five specific factors load onto a strong general factor. The scale and its subscales demonstrated good internal consistency. Convergent validity was supported through expected correlations with self-efficacy, self-esteem, and career indecision. Results provide evidence for the Polish CDSES-SF as a reliable and valid instrument for career counseling and research in Poland, supporting both a general score and a nuanced five-domain assessment. Dataset 2 of the project "Meaning-reconstruction process in cancer: the role of psychological flexibility. Intensive longitudinal and experimental studies"
The dataset is a part of a larger data collection, study 2 (substudy SCED) of the project: Meaning-reconstruction process in cancer: the role of psychological flexibility. Intensive longitudinal and experimental studies (National Science Centre, Poland, grant No. 2020/39/B/HS6/01927 awarded to Aleksandra Kroemeke). This study was preregistered on ClinicalTrials.gov (No. NCT06266182). This folder contains the following files: - [File_1.csv]: This file contains the codebook that contains information on variables used in the study. - [File_2.xlsx]: This file contains the dataset that includes the following main variables: daily subjective health, positive and negative affect, meaning-making coping, meaning made, and psychological flexibility. Due to the small sample size inherent to the single-case experimental design (SCED) and the high risk of patient re-identification, raw sociodemographic variables and specific clinical data have been withheld from the public dataset to ensure participant privacy and compliance with data protection regulations. Aggregate demographic characteristics and non-daily measures are provided within the published manuscript(s). Further information on the study can be found here: Kroemeke, A., Dudek, J., Kijowska, M., Owen, R., & Sobczyk-Kruszelnicka, M. (2024). The effect of an online acceptance and commitment intervention on the meaning-making process in cancer patients following hematopoietic cell transplantation: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial enhanced with single-case experimental design. Trials, 25(1), 392.- 2020-05
O potrzebie internacjonalizacji odpowiedzialności zawodowej lekarza
The European Union has implemented International Market Information System (IMI), related to the practice of a profession, available to professional organisations in all Member States. In Poland, information on punishing physicians is available to Medical Chambers and is monitored by them on an ongoing basis. The question arises whether the principle of re-examination by the Polish medical court, of the case of a Polish doctor who committed an act abroad and was punished there, should be adopted. And also whether to ensure the possibility of taking over the penalty imposed abroad by the competent body dealing with professional liability of physicians, for execution in Poland.
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- 2024-05-24
Psychologia społeczna. Wydanie drugie zaktualizowane
Nowa wersja podręcznika Psychologia społeczna ukazuje się w 14 lat po jego pierwszej edycji. Później było wiele wydań, bo podręcznik zyskał powszechne uznanie wykładowców i studentów. To wydanie jednak zasadniczo różni się od poprzednich. Współautorem został Tomasz Grzyb. W tomie przybyło wiele nowych fragmentów, niektóre kwestie zaktualizowano bądź opatrzono dodatkowymi komentarzami, odwołując się do świeżej literatury. Przede wszystkim zmienił się świat dookoła nas, pojawiły się nowe zjawiska, jak na przykład światowa pandemia COVID-19 i wraz z tym potrzeba odniesienia się do jej psychologicznych konsekwencji, a o wielu zjawiskach, którymi zajmuje się psychologia społeczna wiemy dziś więcej niż kilkanaście lat temu. Nie pozostało to bez wpływu na sam podręcznik – jego nowa, zmodyfikowana i przeredagowana treść lepiej oddaje charakter zmieniającej się, choć ciągle tak samo fascynującej dziedziny, jaką jest psychologia społeczna. Profesorowie Bogdan Wojciszke i Tomasz Grzyb, psychologowie o światowej renomie, napisali podręcznik do psychologii społecznej, jakiego jeszcze w Polsce nie było. Książka obejmuje wszystkie klasyczne zagadnienia składające się na tę dyscyplinę oraz zagadnienia relatywnie nowe, takie jak kwestie różnic płci, nowych mediów, społeczeństwa sieci, miłości i władzy. Napisana jasnym i barwnym językiem skupia się na prawidłowościach rządzących ludzką psychiką i postępowaniem. Pokazuje, w jak fascynujący sposób psychologia społeczna odpowiada na pytanie, kim jest człowiek i na czym polega jego społeczna natura. Wcześniejsze wydania tej książki stały się fundamentem dydaktyki akademickiej na kierunku psychologia. - 2025-08-11
What Puppygirls Know? The (in)Human Pedagogy of a Trans Feminine Style
‘Puppygirls’ is a name for a particular kinky trans feminine lesbian style, rooted in the long history of trans erotic productions, and currently thriving on social media platforms, such as Twitter (now X), Bluesky, or Discord. In this article, I provide an analysis of the style that is rooted in personal immersion in ‘puppygirl culture’. Using several examples of puppygirl media productions, I argue for the possibility of reading the puppygirl style as a critical practice: one that hints at ways of being trans that do rely on the ciscentric understanding of ‘the human’ as their point of reference. In doing so, I show how puppygirl style resonates with theoretical interventions in the field of trans studies offered by scholars such as Susan Stryker and Talia Mae Bettcher. - 2024-01-22
Cross-Cultural Preferences for Women’s Waist to Hip Ratio and Men’s Shoulder to Hip Ratio: Data From Iran, Norway, Poland, and Russia
Objectives: Body size and shape are sexually dimorphic in humans, with men being characterized with larger upper bodies, while women typically having broader pelvises. Such sexually dimorphic traits, quantified as shoulder to hip ratio (SHR) in men and waist to hip ratio (WHR) in women, serve as cues of an individual’s genetic fitness, reproductive potential, health, and resource holding power, and, thereby, functioning as attractiveness cues to the opposite sex. Methods: In the current study, we investigated men’s and women’s preference for the opposite sex body shape (WHR in women and SHR in men) in samples from Iran, Norway, Poland, and Russia. Women rated their preference for men’s SHR (1.20 to 1.50) and men rated their preference for women’s WHR (0.55 − 0.85). Results and Conclusion: Our results showed that Iranian and Norwegian men preferred less feminine WHRs in women compared to Polish and Russian men. Moreover, Iranian women preferred less masculine SHRs in men than women from other countries. Altogether, the current research showed that there are variations in men’s preferences for women’s WHR and women’s preferences for men’s SHR among these countries. - 2025-04-17
"Sarmatyzm". Historia pojęcia
The aim of my dissertation was to create a synthetic narrative about the history of “Sarmatism” (understood both as a word and as an idea) and to demonstrate the most important continuities and fractures within set history. I sought answers for the following questions: what was the role of “Sarmatism” in historical discourses? How was “Sarmatism” understood and what ideas did this word describe? What are the similarities and differences between individual discourses that use “Sarmatism”? Which elements of its semantic field have been the most persistent? Who and why has talked about “Sarmatism”? To what extent is “Sarmatism” a fundamental idea of the modern notion of the Polish identity? I was chiefly inspired by two methodological approaches – the history of ideas (particularly Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte and Cambridge school’s methods) and the critical discourse analysis (CDA). T he first chapter can be viewed as a follow-up to the introduction – it is the most comprehensive part of all. I demonstrated selected discursive modes of shaping the identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s ruling class. I argue that these modes were rooted mainly in the Renaissance humanist distinction between the barbaric North and civilized South. By showcasing particular texts representing different time periods, I aimed to underline the longevity of some early modern narratives about the Poles’ and Lithuanians’ shared barbaricum, construed to delineate the civilizational borders according to then current political needs. This brief overview was crucial for the dissertation, as it illustrates how the local identity discourse functioned before the political crisis of the Commonwealth, which occurred at the time when the cultural center of Europe was being narratively relocated from the South to the West. I considered the emergence of “Sarmatism” to be a result of this relocation, because of which a part of Polish elite internalized the Western narrative about Polish culture being incongruent and backward in relation to the West. T he second chapter concerns the initial phase of functioning of the “Sarmatism” in the Polish language, which occurred roughly during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. I analyzed, among others, the king’s diaries, various articles from “Monitor” and comedies of Franciszek Bohomolec, Józef Bielawski and Franciszek Zabłocki. The political conditions that mandated the emergence of “Sarmatism” in the discourse of the king’s party were outlined, along with the relationship between the word itself and the plan of national reforms postulated by the enlightened court. I demonstrated different modes of the historical uses of “Sarmatism” – especially the ironical and the non-ironical ones – by which I proved that the word was probably not used commonly because of its considerable emotional and axiological charge. Moreover, I indicated that the initial meaning of “Sarmatism” was substantially different from the contemporary ones, as it was mainly used to describe the political and cultural reality of the 18th century, not the whole culture of the early modern Commonwealth’s nobility. T he third chapter tackles the history of “Sarmatism” in the 19th century, and the source material for the analysis consists of literary works (e.g. by Cyprian Godebski, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, and Henryk Rzewuski), excerpts from press and academic texts, and definitions from dictionaries and encyclopedias. Until recently, the 19th century was viewed (and, to an extent, rightly so) as a period when “Sarmatism” was not among the most important ideas organizing the Polish national thought. However – perhaps due to the relatively low frequency of its use – this was also precisely the moment when the word gained a myriad of new meanings, among them the first positive ones. I showed how the term, intentionally rejected by the generation of the Kościuszko Uprising, gradually reappeared in language in a variety of discourses, especially in Polish historiography. The chapter ends with a subsection devoted to the analysis of “Sarmatism” as a lexeme, which illustrates the changes of its meaning as they occurred between the formulation of Samuel Bogumił Linde’s definition at the beginning of the century and the brief encyclopedic description produced by Zygmunt Gloger about a hundred years later. T he fourth chapter is an analysis of texts from the interwar period. I researched predominantly the political and academic discourses, in which “Sarmatism” was starting to play an increasingly more important role. It was then that the term was established as a label commonly applied in the humanities to describe major historical processes; that said, it was used chiefly by scholars of the history of literature (in this context I concentrated on the works of Ignacy Chrzanowski and Aleksander Brückner). At the time, “Sarmatism” was still not well-defined, while it maintained a strong and predominantly pejorative axiological charge. As I concluded, this valuation resulted from the widespread need to accentuate the interwar Poland’s modernity, expressed in the press of the era. “Sarmatism” began to epitomize “Polishness” as a feature that distinguished Poland negatively from other European nations (in the view of both liberals, like Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, and conservatives, like Roman Rybarski). Sometimes, however, it referred to genuine local culture, perceived as a quality that had to be defended from foreign elements (labeled, for example, as “Semitism” or “Germanism”). T he fifth chapter focuses on the period between the end of the WW2 and the end of the 20th century. I decided to limit the analyzed material to academic texts debating the definition of “Sarmatism”, because this is the context in which the most crucial semantic changes influencing the contemporary understanding of this term took place. My aim was to demonstrate how this process was affected on one hand by the political conditions (Stalinism, the “nationalization” of history during Gomułka’s regime, and the fall of communism) and on the other by various philosophical notions (Marxism, structuralism, and poststructuralism). The chronological organization of the 20th century’s thought on “Sarmatism” also allowed me to underline the most important interconnections between consecutive academic definitions. It also allowed me to indicate which of those approaches should be considered the most influential. T he conclusion is a short overview of contemporary political and academic takes on “Sarmatism”. I do not, however, offer any prognoses or meticulous analyses, while only indicating how today’s discourses about “Sarmatism” continue the traditional ways of understanding it.
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