Conditioning the position of the President of the Republic of Poland in the country’s system of governance during its 1989–1997 transformation period

Abstract

This article seeks to identify and detail the most important determinants that shaped the position of Poland’s President in the system of governance during the country’s period of transformation extending from 1989 through to 1997. The conditioning presented determined the position of the office of President by reference to four legal instruments, i.e. the new proposal of April 1989, the 1990 Act on universal suffrage in electing the President of the Republic of Poland (Ustawa o powszechnych wyborach prezydenta RP), the so-called “Small Constitution” of 1992, and the (still-binding) 1997 Constitution of the Republic of Poland. It is claimed here that this conditioning underpinning the establishment of the post of President within Poland’s system of governance, on the basis of these different instruments of law, remained similar (sometimes in fact identical), with the overriding, repeated determinant being the political situation at the given time.