Can the party family approach explain Polish partisan positions? A case study on the policy field of higher education in post-socialist Poland

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research on partisan positions on higher education policies has focused to date mainly on parties in sustained democratic regimes in Western Europe. This study compares these findings with Polish parties’ positioning and investigates the extent to which parties’ preferences in post-socialist Poland can be explained by their party family affiliations. Poland provides an interesting case because of its socialist heritage of strong government control in the higher education sector and the rather fluid party system with a comparatively large share of populist right parties. By means of a qualitative content analysis of 41 party manifestos from 1989–2019, partisan positions of Christian democratic, social democratic, liberal, agrarian, and populist right parties are categorized along the re-distributive and control dimension of higher education policies. While party families can explain Polish parties’ positioning on the control dimension, there is a cross-party consensus to expand the sector and increase public funding due to strong popular demand after the transformation which contrasts with the positions of West European parties. Key results are a rising salience of this policy field in party manifestos and a detailed description of populist right parties’ preferences for government control of higher education institutions and expansion of this sector.