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Ideological Security of the Contemporary State in the Polish Scientific and Research Space – Theoretical Aspects
dr Paweł Łubiński, Pedagogical University of Krakow, Institute of Security Sciences
This paper is an attempt to conceptualize the term and identify the determinants of the ideological security of the contemporary (liberal-democratic) state, understood as the aspiration (in a processual sense) to preserve the generally respected system of norms, values and beliefs (ideologies), the protection of which has the consent of the society, and to allow other ideologies to develop within that society as long as they do not violate the universally accepted axiological system or undermine the fundamental national interests of the state. Seeing the state as the main referent of security in not self-evident, but due to the narrowing of the subject, this paper is embedded in a realist paradigm. The analysis concentrates on the definition and structure of the term “ideological security”, its subjective and objective characteristics, meaning and scope of responsibility in the pursuit of the state’s national interests (also in the axiological dimension), the interdependence of the political and ideological security (based on internal and external conditions), the importance of providing ideological security and its dependence on constitutive values of particular ideologies. Selected threats to ideological security are also presented. It should be noted that the author’s aim, as stated in the introduction, has been achieved. It should be clearly stated that irrespective of the theory, classification, typology or conceptualization applied, the term “ideological security”, despite the efforts to define it scientifically, remains extremely broad and rich in content and can be treated as a part, a discipline or subcategory, of the national security, or even political security and, in some sense, cultural security. The importance of this finding is supported by the fact that, to date, the term has received little attention of note in academic papers in the Polish scientific and research space, or academia. It is likely that this situation is a result of the numerous factors listed in this paper, namely: the difficulties with specification and clarification, and the rather open catalogue of classifications in which ideological security is defined sometimes as a constructive element of national security and also as a separate research category. Interestingly, both theoretical approaches are legitimate. Therefore, ideological security is a matter of capture something much broader, which goes beyond the limits of the protection of constitutional values, and can be called the protection of the “axiological order”, as a system of values commonly recognized (accepted) in a particular society. The question of how to achieve “axiological security” in the case of a liberal-democratic state remains open, especially since political, ideological and axiological pluralism is a fundamental principle of this type of state. In the Polish research perspective, this is an issue worthy of attention and it can be identified as a topic for future research. It is to be hoped that ideological security, as a research category within Polish security studies, will soon receive the full and comprehensive scientific study that it undoubtedly deserves.
Keywords: ideas, values, ideology, security, ideological security, contemporary threats.