Natalia Kohtamäki’s research while affiliated with Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw and other places

The book combines two important trends in the current development of public administration and administrative law. It examines how innovations in the institutional or regulatory area can contribute to crisis management. The volume brings together international legal and social science scholars who analyze innovative governance arrangements at national, European and international level as responses to the financial, migration, and corona crises. The editors of the volume are experts in the fields of administrative law, administrative science, European law and public policy.

In a dynamically changing World, the process of educating students at universities must also change. The changes implemented, however, should be well thought out. The events of the last two years related to the pandemic have caused a global revolution in teaching methods, which have had to be modifi ed to transfer knowledge remotely. Such ad hoc changes are contributing to a change in how higher education is viewed, especially in the context of traditional fields of studies such as the law, which have so far been reluctant to embrace new trends in curriculum design and educational methods. Because of their natural attachment to national legal systems, these faculties have been slower than others to undergo internationalisation, i.e. student exchanges in the educational process (due to difficulties with subjects being recognised abroad). For years, the Nordic countries, and especially Finland, have been among the leading countries in the world with regard to shaping effective and innovative systems of education, including higher education.

Background: The rationality of developing citizen-friendly solutions is demonstrated by the state helping citizens, Finland has own pattern of public governance based inter alia on the ideals of New Public Management. As a peripheral country quite remote from the largest European centres of power such as Germany or France, it represents unique way of innovation in the welfare state model. Research objectives: The paper discusses the specifics of Finnish solutions in the field of public management. The present analysis was carried out based on the dependence of those solutions on cultural conditions. Research design and methods: The choice of Finland is justified by its leading position in various world rankings regarding its commitment to traditional regional values related to open public administration, the transparency of its operations, and public participation in governance processes, the social welfare state. The study uses secondary sources and applies systematic analysis. Results: Finland is seen as a latecomer in developing a welfare state, in part because of its rural and agrarian social structure. This process was strengthened by Finland’s special position between East and West during the Cold War. Conclusions: Finnish administrative culture stems directly from the innovative forms of public management developed among the Nordic countries. Finland is a model example of a country exhibiting rational, knowledge-driven progress and maintaining simplicity in developing citizen-friendly solutions

How we function in social reality is determined by various types of cognitive schemas. These concern people, social events and other phenomena. According to the concept offered by various postpositivist currents, including postmodernism, poststructuralism and critical theory, such schemata cannot be objective. The most important element of postmodern considerations is the discovery of the arbitrary nature of modernity. This means rejecting the Enlightenment belief in progress. Innovation, understood as modernity resulting from human reason, is illusory in the postmodern perspective. Innovation consists precisely in a rejection of the myth of the existence of some absolute, objective truths that constitute the social order. The world is textual, made up of many alternative narratives. Definitions, including legal definitions, are socially constructed. They arise from specific social conditions, at a particular stage of development of a particular group. The assumption made by postmodernists is that language, including professional language – such as the language of law or legal language – is neither neutral nor transparent. The innovative power of this language lies in its use of narratives that influence the functioning of social groups of varying degrees of complexity. It is therefore necessary, adopting a postmodern interpretation, to look at the text of legal language in a similar way as we look at other texts. That is, to see in the narrativity of this language structural similarities with other texts that constitute social reality.

Zmiany związane z dynamicznym rozwojem relacji społecznych warunkują modyfikację dotychczasowych podejść metodologicznych. Dotyczy to nie tylko dyscyplin naukowych, otwartych na przyjmowanie wzorców i instrumentów metodologicznych z innych dyscyplin naukowych – można tu wymienić np. naukę o administracji, zarządzanie czy stosunki międzynarodowe, ale także tych dyscyplin uważanych dotąd za konserwatywne, jak np. nauki prawne. W poszukiwaniu nowych narzędzi poznawczych prawnicy coraz częściejsięgają to tzw. teorii postpozytywistycznych w naukach społecznych, czerpiąc inspirację w procesach interpretacji i reinterpretacji norm w szerszym kontekście społecznym. Celem artykułu jest wskazanie, że w tych poszukiwaniach na szczególną uwagę zasługuje paradygmat konstruktywistyczny, który ma zastosowanie zwłaszcza w prawie publicznym. To on najintensywniej i najszybciej odpowiada na zmiany związane z internacjonalizacją rzeczywistości społecznej. Przedstawione w przeprowadzonej analizie wnioski wskazują, że konstruowanie norm w myśl paradygmatu konstruktywistycznego napotyka jednak na konkretne przeszkody związane z technokratyzacją procesu tworzenia prawa.

The right to information, understood as a citizen’s right of access to data used in the process of making and enforcing laws, is a natural component of democratic systems. In the rich societies of Western Europe, which for years have been supporting civic education, society consciously uses the right to information. It is the interaction of citizens with decision-makers among others in the process of public information flow that changes ordinary public governance into good governance. The authors refer to the contextual understanding of good governance within the framework of multi-level interactions at the level of central and local government. Good governance should be understood as the achievement of ‘public value’ – i.e., the shared needs of many citizens but within the context of innovation and the economic development of societies. Informing means strengthening trust in public authorities, which in democratic states should have nothing to hide (even in a crisis).

In classical theoretical reflections on international reality, one of the leading paradigms is the belief that the Westphalian order based on sovereign states has evolved into a diverse network of interdependent actors. From a legal perspective, a network such as this has the character of multi-level normative linkages. Legislation with varying degrees of impact in terms of its binding force is enacted within a number of parallel consultative bodies. Within the EU this network takes on a concretised, institutional normative dimension, the so-called European Composite Administration which is evident in specific areas such as cyber security, asylum and migration policies, energy, and financial market regulation. In the European Union, decentralised agencies play a leading role in a such compound bureaucracy. They are one of the main instruments in the European system for harmonising regulation and practices in specific areas of EU activity. In a crisis situation there is an increasing tendency to modify their powers. Within the European Composite Administration, bodies such as EASO, the agency responsible for migration and asylum policies, play a key coordinating role between the Member States. The crisis legitimises institutional changes, by expanding the catalogue of regulatory agencies’ competencies. While practitioners, especially in individual offices in the Member States, may find such processes acceptable in relation to the ideal of effi cient and effective administration, these phenomena may be regarded as worrying from the point of view of control over a growing complex integrated administrative apparatus.