Krzysztof Zagorski – författare

Classical Political Philosophy in Popular Discourse: The Case of Poland was written by an interdisciplinary team composed of academic experts in the fields of political philosophy and jurisprudence as well as in sociology. It combines two scientific paradigms—classical political philosophy and contemporary, empirical sociology. The chief aim of this unique scientific project is to explore, operationalize, and reconstruct the political doctrine that is present in contemporary Polish society’s popular discourse. It is unique due to the unusual cooperation between political philosophers, philosophers of law, and empirical sociologists because their normal research concerns radically different subjects, objects, and forms, using different methods and terminology. However, this book produced a synthesis of their respective approaches through a particular kind of synergy and compromise. The result is a pioneering, original reconstruction of the political doctrine of a contemporary European national community.

This book presents the Balanced Development Index (BDI), measuring socioeconomic development in twenty-two European OECD member countries in a period 1999-2017. Compared to other composite measures of development, BDI looks beyond traditional development indicators, such as GDP, to create an index which gives equal weight to social, economic, objective, and subjective aspects of development. The BDI aggregates forty-two detailed indicators into four composite middle-level indexes: external economic (characterizing functioning of national economies in their international surroundings), internal economic (characterizing various aspects of domestic economic conditions), social expectations (public hopes and fears concerning economic, political and social conditions), and current social condition (including both objective and subjective social indicators)—which are, in turn, aggregated into the general BDI index.