The role o f expertise centres in shaping the security policy o f Poland

Abstract

The role of expertise centres is to provide an objective presentation of the situation in various aspects of the functioning o f the state, including the international arena, and to design different scenarios for specific cases, as well as developing general outlooks. Political parties, and thus also the policy-makers, are increasingly turning to the knowledge of experts. At this point a question arises o f what this expert support for the parties consists of, and what is the impact o f theoretically objective experts on state policy. The starting point for the considerations in this paper is a report published in January 2015 ‘Global Go To Think Tank Index Ranking’ (7th edition), which does not mention any Polish centres in the category of ‘National Security and Defence.’ Does that mean that such centres do not exist in Poland, or maybe that their achievements do not qualify them for this prestigious ranking? The purpose of this paper is to present the main Polish expert centres which research security issues and to attempt to answer the question of whether policy-makers are aware of the existence of such think tanks and whether they use their services.