Browsing by Subject "Poland"
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Item Common and differing impacts of the European framework for the protection of national minorities with special consideration of Sweden and Poland(2012-12) Polanska, Katarzyna M.This study focuses on the similarities and differences in the ways in which the 27 European Union member states have approached these European level expectations and obligations. It finds that the continuing influence of particular national identities and nationalist aspirations in policy-making creates reluctance to adopt some minority protection measures and peculiarities in how states interpret the obligations. Evidence from the case studies of Poland and Sweden suggests that despite international obligations to grant additional protections to national minority groups, states simultaneously take measures to protect and preserve the dominant culture as well as promote the dominant ethnic identity, language, and culture. This rise in nationalist thinking might be especially true about countries that have experienced a sudden influx of immigrants in recent decades, such as Sweden, Spain, Germany or the Netherlands. This dissertation extends neoinstitutional theory by considering the effectiveness of the implementation of treaties and legislation as well as their formal adoption. It finds that along with a degree of institutional homogenization, there is a significant variation in both the interpretation of these international obligations and in national policy.Item Distributional Consequences and Executive Regime Types: The Politics of Foreign Direct Investment Incentives(2015-07) Beitman, AaronThis dissertation examines variation in the provision of foreign direct investment (FDI) incentives. If FDI is crucial for economic growth, why do some countries offer high levels of incentives to attract FDI, while other countries do not? This study identifies the political dimensions behind FDI incentives provision in democratic countries. I argue that provision of FDI incentives depends on the distributional consequences of FDI and a country's executive regime type. FDI inflows compete up wages and drive down rents, which implies that labor prefers high levels of FDI and FDI incentives, while native capital opposes FDI and FDI incentives. These preferences towards FDI incentives are moderated, however, by a country's executive regime type. Parliamentary democracies, which are more supportive of labor's interests, are expected to provide higher levels of FDI incentives as compared to presidential democracies, which are less supportive of labor. After deriving testable hypotheses using the tools of game theory, I examine the politics of FDI incentives provision by analyzing an original cross-national dataset of FDI incentives generated with machine learning techniques. I then explore the politics of FDI incentives provision by comparing case studies of Poland, a parliamentary democracy, and Romania, a presidential democracy. A final empirical chapter uses unique survey data from Poland to study individual-level attitudes towards FDI incentives.Item From improvements in accessibility to the impact on territorial cohesion: The spatial approach(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2016) Stępniak, Marcin; Rosik, PiotrDuring the last decade, Poland has experienced a big push in road network development. As a result, the fundamentals of the modern road network have been established. This paper aims to recognize the consequences of changes in accessibility for territorial cohesion, analyzed simultaneously in national and international dimensions. The results provided show that similar spatial patterns and the overall scale of improvement in accessibility lead to entirely different impacts on the level of territorial cohesion. From the international perspective, the investments implemented have a strong positive cohesion impact, while from the national perspective a slight increase in regional polarization has been produced. Moreover, there was an adverse effect on territorial cohesion for almost 40 percent of Polish municipalities, depending on whether or not we include international destinations. The fact that analyses conducted in the national and international dimension yielded opposite results supports the presented approach of a multidimensional evaluation of transport network development.Item Poland - Sustainable horticulture crop production(2010-11-28) Geris, LauraItem Representing communism: discourses of heritage tourism and economic regeneration in Nowa Huta, Poland.(2008-11) Otto, Judith EmilyThis geographical case study of the `new town' of Nowa Huta - a Soviet-financed district of Kraków built for Poland's largest steelworks and its workers in the 1950s -- explores the representations of place produced for tourist consumption and their relationship to neoliberalizing discourses of economic regeneration. Since 1989, Nowa Huta has suffered from a tarnished image due to its associations with the repudiated communist regime. In the last several years, however, local entrepreneurs have begun to organize tours for Western visitors eager to see beyond the mass-market tourism of Krakow's Old Town, while local residents, dismayed by the image of their district in the popular imagination, have begun to find new ways of rebuilding its reputation. My project identifies alternative discourses about Nowa Huta that challenge its dominant representation as a dreary urban wasteland and a failed social experiment. Moreover, this struggle to control space echoes a much larger issue that resonates through all post-socialist countries: how the communist past is reframed to support specific representations of national identity. This case study makes clear the desires of the state (at multiple scales) to marginalize emphasis on the communist period in order to forge new national identities and to attract global capital. Understanding the congruence (or lack thereof) between tourist-driven entrepreneurship, grassroots identity formation, and economic development activity is essential in assessing the long-term viability of communist heritage tourism, and indeed, the potential for these states to rise out of positions of marginality within the European Union and the global economy.Item Switchmen of Reform: Competing Conceptions of Public Higher Education Governance in Poland(2014-05) Shaw, MartaThis study examined the extent to which academic leaders and government officials in Poland differ in their notions of good university governance, and sought to uncover how these notions intersect with global trends in higher education governance. The research objective was to identify the criteria that determine what reforms of university governance in Poland are likely be perceived as acceptable by the two groups of most powerful higher education stakeholders. The dissertation is set against the background of a crisis of public confidence in Polish higher education. After two decades of rapid and uneven system growth, there is broad agreement that the governance framework adopted by public universities in the post-communist transition is hampering higher education institutions' effectiveness and relevance. Path dependence theory suggests that institutional trajectories reinforce social and institutional arrangements selected in the past, constraining the range of future options. In Poland, key stakeholders' conceptions of governance are hypothesized to involve elements of three distinct models of higher education that played a significant role in shaping the nation's universities: the "Humboldtian" model of academic self-rule, the state-centered Soviet model, and the market-based or Anglo-Saxon model. It is also hypothesized that the path of higher education institutions in Poland is influenced by the legacy of hostile foreign rule reinforced in the period of real socialism in Polish social architecture. This legacy affects higher education by virtue of a strong public-private dichotomy, displayed in a distrust of public processes, dual norms of achievement, hostility between the governing and the governed, and populist notions of equality. The implications of these models for institutional governance are operationalized for the purposed of the analytic framework. The author adopted a qualitative approach with elements of ethnography, and the technique of elite interviewing. Study participants included representatives of the Polish government and leaders of four academic institutions in a large academic center. Study findings show that policy actors and academic leaders included in the sample hold distinct views related to the institutional structure of higher education institution, their mission, and the logic of their relationship to the state. Policy actors see higher education institutions as instruments of national development that are at their best when managed by professionals and held accountable by external stakeholders. In contrast, academics see them as autonomous social institutions engaged in the preservation of culture and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, best governed by academic insiders on the basis of social trust. Both visions emerging within the study are recognized by respondents as problematic in Poland's social environment. The notion of external accountability is complicated by the weakness of civil society and a perceived lack of readiness to assume responsibility for the public good in higher education. Meanwhile, the current model of academic self-rule renders academic leaders hostage to their constituencies while setting them at odds with the dominant academic ethos. Likewise, treating higher education institutions as instruments of the state does not achieve desired ends due to regulative mandates and output measures stalling innovation. The alternative, an institutional logic of trust-based accountability preferred by academic leaders, is proving as difficult due to strong norms of in-group loyalty that hamper merit-based evaluation. Divergent views identified in the findings are interpreted as a conflict of two "rationalized myths" - accepted narratives of formal structures rationally fostering desirable ends. They are blueprints whose main attraction is not predicted viability or effectiveness, but symbolic association with a set of deeply held values. The two myths clash within the Polish system in such a way that both sets of goals are compromised. Suggested avenues to escape the impasse are values shared by both myths and therefore potential as sites of path-dependent transformation. These values include merit-based funding for research innovation, elite education, the development of "soft skills," and the empowerment of middle management. Whether path-dependent transformation occurs will be affected by three considerations emerging from the data: the insufficiency of system-wide solutions introduced from the top down by means of regulation alone, the need of new structures for new aims, and the dangers of unreflexive borrowing of foreign organizational forms.Item Tree species effects on decomposition and forest floor dynamics in a common garden(Ecological Society of America, 2006) Hobbie, Sarah E; Reich, Peter B; Oleksyn, Jacek; Ogdahl, Megan; Zytkowiak, Roma; Hale, Cynthia; Karolewski, PiotrWe studied the effects of tree species on leaf litter decomposition and forest floor dynamics in a common garden experiment of 14 tree species (Abies alba, Acer platanoides, Acer pseudoplatanus, Betula pendula, Carpinus betulus, Fagus sylvatica, Larix decidua, Picea abies, Pinus nigra, Pinus sylvestris, Pseudotsuga menziesii, Quercus robur, Quercus rubra, and Tilia cordata) in southwestern Poland. We used three simultaneous litter bag experiments to tease apart species effects on decomposition via leaf litter chemistry vs. effects on the decomposition environment. Decomposition rates of litter in its plot of origin were negatively correlated with litter lignin and positively correlated with mean annual soil temperature (MATsoil) across species. Likewise, decomposition of a common litter type across all plots was positively associated with MATsoil, and decomposition of litter from all plots in a common plot was negatively related to litter lignin but positively related to litter Ca. Taken together, these results indicate that tree species influenced microbial decomposition primarily via differences in litter lignin (and secondarily, via differences in litter Ca), with high-lignin (and low-Ca) species decomposing most slowly, and by affecting MATsoil, with warmer plots exhibiting more rapid decomposition. In addition to litter bag experiments, we examined forest floor dynamics in each plot by mass balance, since earthworms were a known component of these forest stands and their access to litter in litter bags was limited. Forest floor removal rates estimated from mass balance were positively related to leaf litter Ca (and unrelated to decay rates obtained using litter bags). Litter Ca, in turn, was positively related to the abundance of earthworms, particularly Lumbricus terrestris. Thus, while species influence microbially mediated decomposition primarily through differences in litter lignin, differences among species in litter Ca are most important in determining species effects on forest floor leaf litter dynamics among these 14 tree species, apparently because of the influence of litter Ca on earthworm activity. The overall influence of these tree species on leaf litter decomposition via effects on both microbial and faunal processing will only become clear when we can quantify the decay dynamics of litter that is translocated belowground by earthworms.Item With Fire and Sword: Military Factors in the Disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth(2021) Dueholm, Mikolaj, J