The Polish left is in a state of turmoil ahead of the country’s 2015 parliamentary elections (original) (raw)
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The Law and Justice Party and Poland's Turn to the Right
Transform Network Report, 2017
It has been over a year since the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) took over complete governmental control in Poland. The presidential election won by Andrzej Duda in May 2015 and the victory of PiS five months later, gave party’s leader Jarosław Kaczyński almost total control of the state. Czesław Kulesza and Gavin Rae analyse the right’s rise to power and describe how the left must take on the difficult task of formulating a coherent alternative to this takeover
From Mainstream to Power: The Law and Justice Party in Poland
Pytlas, B. (2021): "From Mainstream to Power: The Law and Justice Party in Poland" in: Decker, F./Henningsen, B./Lewandowsky, M./Adorf, P. (eds.) "Aufstand der Außenseiter. Die Herausforderung der europäischen Politik durch den neuen Populismus". Baden-Baden: Nomos, 401-414
This chapter focuses on core ideological positions of the Law and Justice party in Poland, its tactical accommodation and adjustment of populist and nativist narratives, as well as current dynamics and impact of the party’s repeated shift from mainstream to power. Observing the tactical toolkit of PiS can help us understand how political entrepreneurs can flexibly react to changing contexts of party competition, as well as craft their own opportunities for political mobilisation.
Poland's Law and Justice Party (PiS) Presiding over the Country's Recent Democratic Deficits
Korea Democracy Foundation , 2021
To the disappointment of its admirers, Poland is currently in the throes of a subtle but definitive backsliding in its post-communist democratic gains. Up until recently Poland, for good reason was viewed as the bastion of liberal democracy in what used to be European communism’s heartland. This regression is in more ways than one, an issue of significant concern, especially for the symbolism it conjures. It beggars the question how did it come to this? This essay attempts to engage with this question through an axiomatic analysis of where Poland’s democratic culture is currently standing and its broader implications. It will approach it through the prism of a number of individual developments, if taken as a whole speaks to the significant paradigm shift in Poland’s flirtation with illiberalism.
Election Briefing No 65: Europe and the October 2011 Polish parliamentary election
2011
Key points: The election saw a clear victory for the centrist Civic Platform (PO), which thus became the first incumbent governing party to secure re-election for a second term of office since 1989, while the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party came a strong but fairly distant second. Although many Civic Platform supporters were disappointed with the party’s slow progress in modernising the country, most voters saw it as the better guarantor of stability at a time of crisis and continued to harbour deeply ingrained concerns about the possible implications of Law and Justice returning to power. The Polish Peasant Party (PSL), Civic Platform’s junior coalition partner, held on to its share of the vote, giving the governing coalition a small but workable majority. The Palikot Movement (RP), a new anti-clerical liberal party, emerged as the third largest grouping in the new Sejm, overtaking the once-powerful communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) which suffered it...
Back to the Future. The Aftermath of Poland's 2023 Parliamentary Election
2023
On 15th October 2023 Polish voters decided to put an end to the 8-year period of the Law and Justice Party in power, widely seen as "authoritarian populism". The paper analyses the electoral programmes of the major contenders (Law and Justice, Civic Coalition, Third Way, New Left and Confederation) as well as a variety of election-related statistics (e.g. by voters' age, education, occupation and residence) revealing a more complex image of the Polish society and its political preferences in 2023. The author argues that due to remarkable ideological and socio-cultural polarization contemporary Poland remains "a house divided" or even "two nations [with] no sympathy [for each other]". Even if Poland has now chosen a path back to the future, the new pro-EU liberal government will face a number of identifiable challenges.
Party Organisation of PiS in Poland: Between Electoral Rhetoric and Absolutist Practice
Pytlas, B. (2021): "Party Organisation of PiS in Poland: Between Electoral Rhetoric and Absolutist Practice". In: Politics and Governance 9(4), 10.17645/pag.v9i4.4479, 2021
The article analyses the organisation of the Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [PiS]) in Poland. The case of PiS does not only allow us to explore the organisational features of a strongly institutionalized, incumbent party which uses populist radical right (PRR) politics. PiS, we argue, is also an ideal case to contrast what such parties might rhetorically declare and substantively do about their organisational features. Using party documents, press reports, quantitative data, and insights from the secondary literature based on interviews with activists, we evaluate the extent to which PiS has developed a mass-party-related organisation, and centralized its intra-party decision-making procedures. We find that while PiS made overtures to some aspects of mass-party-like organisation for electoral mobilization, the party remained reluctant to actively expand its membership numbers and put little effort into fostering the integration and social rootedness of its members through everyday intra-party activities. Furthermore, despite attempts to enact organisational reinvigoration, in practice PiS continued to revolve around strongly centralized structures and, in particular, the absolutist leadership style of the party's long-time Chair Jarosław Kaczyński. The analysis contributes to assessing the variety and functions of organisational features and appeals within the comparative study of PRR parties. Most particularly, it invites further research into the still relatively under-researched interactions between PRR party organisation and active party communication.
2016
The parliamentary elections of 2015 were a watershed for Polish democracy for two reasons. For the first time since Poland’s political transformation, a single party (the right-wing and populist Law and Justice), rather than a coalition of two or more parties, formed the government. It is also the first democratic parliament in Poland not to contain a single political party with a left-wing label. This makes Poland unique not only in the Visegrad region but also across the entire EU.