The chapter presents the main axes of the dispute over the identity of political science in Poland in the last half-century, with special emphasis put on the period after 1989. Debates concentrating on three identities criteria are discussed, i.e., the research object of political science, the methods and techniques used in political science inquiry and history and organization of the discipline in Poland. The possibility of indicating the boundaries of the discipline based on a distinct object of research or a unique political science method is considered to be incorrect. Therefore, the answer to the identity criteria question lies rather in organizational and historical differences, as well as in special political scientific perspective. In other words, discipline identity is more about theories, language, the way of posing research problems, than methods and object. The outcomes of these disputes for the pluralism of the approaches in political science and interdisciplinarity are also discussed.

The article identifies and analyses methodological dilemmas in Polish political science in the last fifty years. These dilemmas concern: the object of cognition – its existence and preferred research strategies, the development model of the discipline, methods in political science, methodological identity of political science, the essence of politics and what is political, empirical or theoretical character of political science, the possibility of formulating grand theories in political science, new subdisciplines in political science, political anthropology, individual agency and the ontological status of social groups, value judgments, and axiological neutrality of the researcher. The article concludes that Polish political scientists in the last fifty years have been advocating a complementary position that goes beyond concrete alternatives.

The article presents the specificity of understanding and using the category of narration and explanation in Polish political science after 1989. At the beginning, the author briefly recalls the meaning of the concept of narrative, and then presents two dimensions of its presence in domestic political science. On the one hand he elaborates on its conceptualization within the methodology of political science, and on the other hand he discusses the two main political science narratives he has distinguished, which, in his opinion, were born in Poland after 1989. Both narratives (liberal and critical) offer their own interpretations of the political and social transformation of post-communist Poland. The author of the article also argues that the liberal narrative is supplanted by the critical one, which applying among other things, the concept of integral explanation seems to explain the troubled and crisis-ridden present times more suggestively.

This paper is a contribution to the discussion concerning the methodological and theoretical orientation of the Polish political science community. It aims to answer the question posed in the title by analysing representative texts by Polish political theorists. The scholarly output of four well-known political scientists – Filip Pierzchalski, Kamil Minkner, Artur Laska and Łukasz Młyńczyk – was examined. The interpretation of selected texts by these authors made it possible to show the applications of the category of “understanding” in the concepts of interpretationism, narrativism, understanding naturalism and integral approach. The conducted study indicates that understanding is perceived as the main, albeit multi-variant, task of political science, determined by ontological and axiological perspectives. The analysis proper is preceded by a presentation of the main problems of the subject under discussion, including the meaning of the key terms such as understanding, interpretation, communication, and knowledge.

The paper is an attempt to reconstruct the theoretical discourse on the strategy of using the notion of “the political” and related notions in Polish political theory. The author argues that these concepts, appearing in large numbers in recent years, are not an expression of pointless terminological disputes, but an attempt to cope with the complex character of various political phenomena that are the result of dynamic processes of the politicisation of various previously non-political problems of collective life. The text discusses two ways of understanding “the political” that dominate among Polish political scientists: as an aspect of various political phenomena in conventionally understood politics and beyond, and as a category that allows one to name the fundamental principles through which society as a whole and its various parts (e.g. social classes) are formed. The text also discusses three strategies for searching for synonymous terms in relations to politics and “the political”: (1) attempts to find a superordinate category; (2) transformations of the notion of “the political” through various clarifications (e.g. organic politics) and prefixes (e.g. meta-politics); (3) orientation towards borderline phenomena (e.g. quasi-political ones) in the context of processes of politicisation and depoliticisation that allow for a continuous reconfiguration of the boundaries of what is political.

The aim of this article is to look at “the political” as an explanatory category. “The political” is a concept naming a feature of political phenomena, which means that it belongs to the foundations of political sciences. It has a profound impact on the development and structure of knowledge of political phenomena. Moreover, it is also a significant research object among political scientists. Especially in recent years, the phenomenon and concept have been reworked in various dimensions, indicating the distinctiveness of the problem. This makes it possible to ask the question about the status of “the political” in relation to the explanatory function of political sciences. A working axis that would serve to explicate “the political” in Polish political science research, while at the same time systematising its complexity, comprises two levels: a subjective level and an objective level. The former should be understood as being strongly related to the researcher and their decisions. The latter is related to the object of cognition, the matter under examination.

The terms “politics” and “the political” have been conceptualised, used, and understood differently in modern Polish political science and theory over the past 50 years, having been featured in a long list of books and scholarly articles. In addition to an overview of major initiatives, conferences, and discussions around these terms, the article includes a discourse analysis prepared with qualitative research tools. The purpose of the discourse analysis is multifold. First, it aims to map the presence of these terms in the discourse of modern Polish political science and theory. Second, it aims to identify to what extent the Polish discourse has been influenced by authors such as Carl Schmitt or Chantal Mouffe, and to what extent the two terms were conceptualised in an original way, proper to the Polish social science discourse. Third, how often scientists have used the words that were associated with the conflict.

Polish political theorists’ research revolves around the question of the political. There have been many analyses of this issue in Polish political science journals, for which the starting point was antagonistic and subsequently agonistic approaches to the political. Against this background, inquiries going in the direction of consensual approaches constituted a minority; additionally, it is difficult to synthesise them directly from the output of Polish theorists, as these approaches are often not explicitly articulated, but their significant elements appear in nominally non-consensual considerations. The purpose of this article is to bring this picture closer, not only from the personal side, but also as an attempt to reconstruct the essence of the political in terms of consensus, no longer antagonism or agonism. The other objective is to indicate both the theoretical potential of this approach and its interpretative usefulness against the background of other dominant approaches.

This article aims to present non-Schmittian ways of defining “the political” in Polish discourse on the theory of politics. The article consists of three parts. The first one briefly describes Carl Schmitt’s understanding of “the political”. The second one discusses various ways in which non-Schmittian approaches to the concept are identified based on four features (definitions that do not refer to conflict; definitions based on agonistic visions of social rivalry; the ones that focus on individuals instead of large social groups, and those which by referring to postmodernism, define new boundaries of the political as such). The third section provides a summary.

In this article I discuss the views of contemporary Polish political scientists concerning the subject of political agency. I stress the diversity of research perspectives adopted in the Polish literature on the subject and no less diverse conceptions of agency. I also emphasise differences in the understanding of the qualities of agency, especially the capacity for political action and participation in political processes. The analysis demonstrates the pluralism of the accepted concepts of political ontology. I also argue that it is important for Polish political scientists to preserve the autonomy and specificity of the political science research on agency, in particular the independence of this discipline from philosophical perspectives. At the same time, I refer to several philosophical paradigms in the understanding of

The aim of the article is to present the history of research on the categories of “political actor” and “political agency” conducted by Polish political scientists. The article shows how they were defined and how the theories of society and politics prevalent at a given time shaped their understanding. Initially, both categories alluded to the collective vision of activity, to finally appreciate the role of individuals in initiating activity. The way researchers viewed the significance of political actors was changing over time as well; at the beginning, social classes and subsequently large groups were seen as crucial, while individuals were only eventually recognised as the source of agency. The article demonstrates that both categories have changed over the years, adapted to new social order, social structure and, in particular, to the ideologies prevalent in society. The article pays special attention to the concepts developed by Mirosław Karwat and Andrzej Czajowski.

This article aims to survey the principal viewpoints of Polish political theorists regarding the position and role of the individual in politics. The discussion involves a thorough analysis of the categories of individual and collective political actors, their distinctive features, and the concept of agency and its new interpretations within the Polish political science. These new interpretations signal evolution in the traditional categorical framework in response to contemporary challenges. The study applies a method of analysis and synthesis incorporating aspects of the dialectical method. The outcome presents a juxtaposition of viewpoints within political science spanning the past several decades, identifying areas of convergence and significant divergences.