New Political Parties in the Party System of Poland
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- New Political Parties: A Comparative Study of Czechia and Poland (Josef Smolík)
- The Palikot Movement:About a Progressive Political Party (Marta Michalczuk-Wlizło)
- Marketing Project: “Modern”, i.e. About the Political Creation of Business and Political Elites (Ewelina Kancik-Kołtun)
- From Musician to Charismatic Political Leader: The Phenomenon of Paweł Kukiz’s Social Movement – Kukiz’15 (Ewelina Kancik-Kołtun)
- Robert Biedroń’s Spring: A Failed Political Project (Michał Wallner)
- Confederation of Freedom and Independence – A Bastion or a Facade? (Marta Michalczuk-Wlizło)
- Conclusion
- List of Abbreviations:
- About the Authors
- Series Index
Josef Smolík
New Political Parties: A Comparative Study of Czechia and Poland
Abstract
This theoretical chapter discusses the shared causes and conditions that have been involved in the emergence of new political parties in Czechia and Poland. In particular, the focus is on determining the fundamental factors that have led to the entry of new political parties and movements to the nationwide political arena. Another major theme is the factors that led to the weakening of the ‘traditional’ political parties that operated in both countries from the beginning of their turn to democracy. Adopting a comparative politics perspective, the chapter discusses the similarities and differences of the Polish and Czech political party systems. The topic is treated at a general level; the various new Polish political parties are presented in detail in other chapters of the book. As this chapter covers a relatively long period, it seeks only to capture selected – yet principal – aspects of the development of Czech and Polish political parties. It also briefly introduces the political issues that might have contributed to the emergence of new political parties in both countries.
Keywords: new political parties, new political movements, comparative study, Europeanisation, populism, political party system dynamics, Czechia, Poland
Introduction
This chapter compares the Czech Republic and the Republic of Poland (hereinafter Czechia and Poland), primarily by identifying factors that have allowed the emergence of new political parties. It follows up on recent papers and discussions at scholarly conferences concerned with the dynamics of political systems since about 2010 (see Kopeček & Svačinová 2015; Kopeček et al. 2018; Kancik-Kołtun 2022, Smolík 2022a,b; Hušek & Smolík 2019; Sabolewska-Myślik 2022).
Characteristic of both countries is their historical experience of the Socialist Bloc when the Polish People’s Republic and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, as they then were, were founding members of the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991) and cooperated within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon). Thus the discussion might well start from 1989, when the communist systems in the Soviet Union’s satellite states collapsed.
Using a comparative perspective, the main aim of this chapter is to identify the fundamental factors that led (or could have led) to the entry of new political ←9 | 10→parties and movements into the Czech Chamber of Deputies and the Polish Sejm – the respective lower houses of parliament in the two countries.
The comparative method
A comparative case study is used to investigate the cases, here Poland and Czechia, in which the object under study is the emergence of new political parties in the two countries, or to establish whether similar causes might have initiated the genesis of new political entities or even ideological currents. This study captures chiefly the processes (the causal relationships) involved in the emergence of new political parties (cf. Karlas 2019).
A comparative method has been in use since the earliest investigations of the political and social reality (Karlas 2019: 216). Comparative studies are characterised by their multi-paradigmatic nature, developing various analytical approaches (Cabada, Charvát & Stulík 2015: 12; Bryman 2016: 65). The present chapter makes a most-similar system comparison (Kubát 2003: 12–13). The emphasis is on finding the analogous factors that have led to the emergence of new political parties in the Polish and Czech political party systems. The choice of these two countries is informed primarily by the logic of similarity, that is, an analogous historical development of the two cases. This is an approach in which the countries compared fall into a similar political, cultural and historical group. During their period of transformation, both these post-communist Central European countries faced the same or similar problems (Kubát 2003: 13). Their similar determinants, including location, history and social aspects, allow a comparison to be made in the period examined (cf. Cabada, Charvát and Stulík 2015: 78).
The present chapter aims to answer the following questions:
1) What were the factors leading to the success of new political parties in Czechia and Poland?
2) What political issues might have mobilised the various electoral groups to support new political parties?
Changes in the Czech and Polish political party systems are also analysed. New types of political party are noted, as are the processes of de-ideologisation, personalisation and medialisation (on this cf. Cabada, Charvát and Stulík 2015).
←10 | 11→Shared roots in the era of ‘real socialism’
No political system in a Central European country can be analysed without outlining the process of transitioning to democracy, as the manner of this transition is bound to have had a significant impact on the process of democratic consolidation and the nature of the political system that later emerged (Kubát 2005: 12). It is therefore fitting to start to analyse the developments in Poland and Czechoslovakia (subsequently Czechia) at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, and to focus on the evolution of the political parties (cf. Schupke 2020).
Poland was the first country of the Eastern Bloc to embark on democratisation, which ultimately led to the entire socialist system falling apart (Dančák 2002: 285). This disintegration was being prepared throughout the 1980s. The legalisation of independent trade unions, the establishment of a government advisory body with the strong participation of non-communists enjoying general authority, the new allocation of some central positions in the national executive and in the party apparatus, and, finally, round-table negotiations1 – all of these events and processes, accompanied by external circumstances (perestroika and the general international détente), prepared the Polish society mentally for the upcoming political changes (cf. Kubát 2008; Schupke 2020).
The 1989 revolution in Poland was not sudden and unexpected as was the case in other socialist countries – or at least that is how it was perceived by ordinary ←11 | 12→Poles, political leaders at home and observers abroad (cf. Kubát 2005). Indeed, the somewhat procedural character of the Polish political revolution also found expression in the fact that it could not be unequivocally linked with any single particular event that would subsequently come to symbolise it (as was the case with ‘17 November 1989’ in Czechoslovakia or the ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’ in Germany; Friedl et al. 2017).
The Polish transition to democracy can be described as a negotiated one, as a consensus was found on regime change between the elites of the old regime and the representatives of the revolutionary, anti-communist forces (Outlý et al. 2011).
Details
- Pages
- 168
- Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631896259
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631896266
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631889596
- DOI
- 10.3726/b20530
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2023 (February)
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2023. 168 pp., 16 fig. b/w, 3 tables.
