Elections In Poland Research Articles

Media Visibility Index as a Tool for Measuring the Presence of Political Parties in the Media: Case of Polish Parliamentary Election Campaign in 2019

The problem of media visibility of politicians and political parties is at the heart of the interest of political communication researchers. Theoretical reflections and empirical studies focus on numerous media presence determinants. At the same time, attempts to identify the media visibility of political actors in specific periods, such as the particularly important for democracy period of the election campaign preceding the parliamentary election, are relatively rare. This study is intended to fill that gap. It proposes a simple research tool in the form of a media visibility index, which makes it possible to calculate and compare the visibility of electoral committees in selected media during the election campaign. The tool was used to determine the visibility of electoral committees taking part in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Poland in two TV news services “Wiadomości” and “Fakty”, and three weekly opinion magazines “Newsweek”, “Polityka” and “Sieci”. The data to calculate the index was gathered through manual content analysis of the studied media conducted six weeks before the day of the parliamentary elections.

Restrictions on the Right to Vote in the Pandemic during the Election of the President of the Republic of Poland in 2020

Abstract In 2020, presidential elections were due to be conducted in Poland. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it was decided not to introduce a state of natural disaster and, as a consequence, postpone the elections but to execute them on the grounds of episodicact. On the basis of the first episodic law, from 6 April 2020, the elections did not take place because they were completely unprepared. This law had many flaws. The elections were to be purely postal, so voters had no possibility of choosing which method to use to vote. The law’s entry into force on the eve of the election meant that voters were disoriented until the last minute and did not know how they could vote, whether they would receive election packages, where they would have to deliver return envelopes with a ballot paper and were not sure whether their vote would be counted. The second episodic law, of 2 June 2020, did not contain so many flaws, and voters in the country could decide for themselves which method to use. However, voting was very difficult abroad, and in 20 countries was not carried out at all. There were also only three days to submit election objections. However, above all, the lack of impartiality in the public media, especially public television, which supported the candidate promoted by the ruling majority, limited voters’ right to access truth-based information on public matters, candidates and their political programmes. These circumstances prompt us to consider whether the presidential elections in Poland in 2020 met the constitutional requirement of universality, equality and secrecy, and whether they were reliable and fair. Do they therefore serve to legitimize the office of the president of the Republic of Poland?

Understanding Europe's Populist Right: The State of the Field

Over the past decade right-wing populism has achieved unprecedented popularity across much of Europe. The first intimations came in 2010 when Viktor Orbán's Fidesz Party won a super-majority in alliance with Christian Democrats, gaining the power to reshape Hungary's legal framework. While the eurozone crisis then sparked the rise of left-wing anti-establishment movements across Mediterranean Europe, elsewhere populism exploded on the right. In the 2014 European parliamentary elections centrists lost seats to parties on the margins, and Fidesz extended its grip over Hungary. Over the next three years Law and Justice won elections in Poland with a campaign steeped in religion and euroscepticism; the United Kingdom shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union; Marine Le Pen of the National Front demolished conventional candidates in the first round of the French presidential elections; the anti-immigrant Lega joined a ruling coalition in Italy; and in Germany, Europe's largest country, the nationalist Alternative for Germany (Alernativ für Deutschland; AfD) entered parliament as the third largest party.

A Polish Invention or a Copy of the Soviet Model? Electoral Practices during Parliamentary Elections in Poland under the Communist Rule (1944–1980)

One of the main characteristics of the Soviet domination sphere in Europe after the Second World War was the unification of political systems of the countries within the Soviet Union. This paper examines the Soviet impact on the electoral system of the People's Republic of Poland, a country often considered to have been the most unique among the Eastern European states. This article argues that although there were some important differences between the electoral codes in the USSR and communist-led Poland, the effects of the elections in both countries were the same: popular voting could not pose any threat to the power of their communist parties. This resulted from practices – similar in both countries – not included in the electoral law. This leads to the conclusion that the differences between the elections in the Soviet Union and post-war Poland were rather illusory.

2019 European Parliament Election in Poland: who benefitted from the record increase in turnout?

Abstract One of the main factors that determines voter turnout is the mobilisation of the constituency of a given party compared with that of its opponents. The turnout in the 2019 European Parliament election in Poland was twice what it had been in previous years, and the result was forecast accordingly. The media initially reported that the victorious PiS had benefitted from new votes. The present article shows that drilling down to the lowest level of administrative unit (viz. the gmina) actually reveals a negative correlation between higher frequency and increased support for PiS in many cases. This implies that PiS did not win solely as a result of new voters being mobilised, but also, and perhaps predominantly, because KE voters switched their allegiance to PiS. Many new voters actually voted for the opposition.

Proposing Anti-LGBTQIAP Resolutions at the Municipal Level in Poland: Meeting the Social Demand or Making Use of the Available Resources?

During the eight months preceding the 2019 parliamentary election in Poland, resolutions aimed against the LGBTQIAP minority were adopted by over 60 out of 2,477 municipalities. They were proposed by a local right-wing organization called Ordo Iuris. Based on the prerequisites from the political opportunity structure approach, I test two sets of explanations as to why certain municipalities were targeted by the organization, while others were not. One set of hypotheses is associated with social demand; municipalities chosen by Ordo Iuris are expected to be more religious and supportive of the political right. The other approach assumes that the activity of the organization was determined by the resources available in the community, such as high percentage of members of the local council representing the right-wing Law and Justice party, electoral turnout, membership in religious organizations, and population density. The empirical analysis confirms the significance of resources and disproves the argument associated with social demand. The study has implications for understanding how the social movements of the radical right gain political influence in Eastern European countries. It shows that they do not serve a particular demand from the society for the worldview they represent, but they rather rely on the aid from political elites and the resources provided by them and the community to promote their agenda where they can.

Antagonistic understandings of sovereignty in the 2015 Polish constitutional crisis

Since the 2015 parliamentary elections in Poland, the government led by the Law and Justice party (PiS) has sought to win two interwoven battles: the restoration of ‘a strong state’ internally and ‘regaining sovereignty’ in the country’s relationship with the EU. By examining the 2015 constitutional crisis in Poland, this article seeks to understand how and why a domestic dispute over the nomination of constitutional judges has transformed into a conflict of sovereignty in the EU polity. The paper shows that the claims to sovereignty of political, social, and legal actors reflect opposing conceptions of this principle as well as of democracy and the rule of law. PiS’ understanding of State sovereignty is rooted in the past, echoes its Hobbesian conception, and is reminiscent of Carl Schmitt’s notion of the political and of democracy. In 2015, this conception was pitted against the supremacy of the Constitution (legal sovereignty) and the ideal of shared sovereignty. Drawing on 20 parliamentary debates, this paper shows that the 2015 Polish constitutional crisis encapsulates a conflict of sovereignty over who holds the most legitimate representation of the people and who should have the last word in key political conflicts and constitutional settlements.

The Incumbency Advantage during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Examining the 2020 Polish Presidential Election

This article analyzes how the 2020 Polish Presidential election was affected by the recent COVID-19 pandemic in the context of global democratic backsliding. Specifically, this article examines how the incumbency advantage of President Andrzej Duda was bolstered during the pandemic by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS). Although PiS was unable to carry out every planned electoral manipulation, the party nonetheless helped Duda secure a second term in office in a historically close election. On the one hand, this article illustrates that while many of the tactics undertaken by PiS were within the limits of the letter of the law, its actions still undermined the spirit of Polish democracy. On the other hand, this article also contributes to the literature on democratic backsliding by underscoring the fact that the election in Poland was free and fair, which makes this regime qualitatively different from other cases in the region.

The anomalous electoral advantage: Evidence from over 17,000 mayoral candidacies in Poland

Relying on a dataset covering mayoral elections in Poland held over the period 2006–2018, we contribute to the ongoing debate on the anomalous sources of advantage enjoyed by certain candidates contesting close electoral races. While our analysis lends support to earlier conjectures that such anomalies tend to be confined to small jurisdictions, we also point to context-specific clientelistic strategies behind the anomalous advantage. The last is driven largely by an experience of holding a mayoral office in the 1990s, an era when Polish mayors were elected by local councils rather than directly by citizens. When interpreting these findings, we emphasize fundamental characteristics of post-transition Polish local democracy, including feudal legacy, pauperization of the electorate and decentralization of public spending. • We study electoral anomalies at mayoral elections in Poland. • Electoral anomalies characterize small local communities. • We identify the subset of mayoral candidacies largely responsible for the anomalies. • We interpret the anomalies as an expression of clientelistic relations.

Were Elections in the Socialist Countries Elections at All? The Case of Elections to the Sejm in Communist-Ruled Poland

The article presents the current state of research into parliamentary elections in Poland during the period of communist rule. The author outlines the development of the electoral system of the Polish People’s Republic in the 1940s and 50s, and also analyses its singular features in the years when elections to the Sejm were fully controlled by the ruling Polish United Workers’ Party. The final part of the paper is devoted to elections in the 1980s, when this electoral model collapsed, thereby contributing to the disintegration of the communist dictatorship in Poland.

Alternatywne procedury głosowania w polskim i litewskim prawie wyborczym

Organizing voting in general elections only in the traditional way (i.e., at the ballot boxes) may make it difficult for more and more voters to participate. This is due to the increasing mobility of society and the fact that citizens are away from home on election day, the aging population and much more difficult access of the old and the sick to polling stations, and – as shown in the years 2020–2021 – unexpected epidemic crises that affect public health, which in turn translates into the election process. This article focuses on alternative voting methods in Poland and Lithuania. The main intention of the authors is to analyze the legal basis and compare the functioning of alternative voting procedures in the electoral systems of both countries, as well as to answer the question about the possibility of introducing new forms of voting that could increase the health safety of voters and ensure the democratic nature of elections in emergency situations. The motivation to take up this topic were: the wprowapresidential elections in Poland in 2020 and the parliamentary elections in Lithuania in 2021, during which not only alternative voting methods were used (e.g., correspondence voting), but also the possibility of implementing completely new solutions – safe in the event of spreading coronavirus pandemic.

Local Government in the Process of Organizing General Elections During the Pandemic - The Experience of the 2020 May Elections in Poland

Local Government in the Process of Organizing General Elections During the Pandemic - The Experience of the 2020 May Elections in Poland

Local voting at local elections revisited: ‘Friends and neighbors voting’ at mayoral elections in rural Poland

Voters' tendency to support local candidates, often referred to as ‘friends and neighbors voting’, is a spatial-political phenomenon studied for over 70 years. The last decade has seen a revival of interest in this issue. Relevant studies typically focus on large-scale national electoral contests, such as national parliamentary elections. The research efforts targeting local elections are, by contrast, scarce, in most cases dating back to the 1970s. In this article, we address this relative gap in the electoral geography literature and study ‘friends and neighbors voting’ at the most recent set of mayoral elections in Poland, held in 2018. Based on a rich dataset, covering elections in over 700 rural municipalities, we demonstrate strong local candidate effects in both voter choice and voter turnout. The results point to the potential relevance of both geographic distance and a place (locality) attachment; voters tend to prefer candidates living close to them and candidates enjoy an additional surplus of votes in their home localities. Our results also tend to echo the sparse previous findings emphasizing the possibility that the presence of a local candidate boosts voter turnout in a given area. While the limitations of our data do not allow unequivocal conclusions about the exact mechanisms driving the aforementioned effects, we put forward a number of plausible, grounded conjectures as to how such effects may operate.

In the shadow of plagues:2020 presidential elections in Poland

Presidential elections in Poland have always drawn more voters to the ballot box than parliamentary ones. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the turnout in the 2020 presidential elections was the second-highest since 1989. The glib answer might be that voters were simply availing themselves of the opportunity to leave the house, however briefly, since COVID-19 measures had largely confined people to their homes for most of the year. More likely, albeit paradoxically, heightened voter interest was triggered by political autocratisation, the other plague that Poles have been struggling with, in this case since 2015. The election was won by the incumbent, Andrzej Duda, whose advantage was credited to his appeal among less-educated and older people living in rural areas. In the end, the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which had backed Duda’s campaign, managed to avoid cohabitation-related inconvenience for the second time.

Between the right-wing and the left-wing: the retelling of the Polish systemic transition as a discursive and ideological practice

ABSTRACT In Polish social sciences, after 1989, the interest in ideology has been gradually replaced with research on discursive forms of power. The reception of Foucauldian governmentality studies has resulted in a shift from the Weberian concept of power to understanding power in terms of a practical technology of governing people through symbolic forces of discourse. However, after the 2015 victory of right-wing parties in presidential and parliamentary elections in Poland and the emergence of the second illiberal democracy in the European Union, we witness a revival of the question of ideology as a material-practical tool for shaping people’s sentiments. In recent years, the assessment of the Polish systemic transition which started thirty years ago has been the subject of heated ideological debates. The Polish transformation has been retold and its leadership and outcomes re-evaluated from different standpoints. The comparative analysis of public statements that give contradictory assessments of the Polish transition presented in this article examines the relationship between discursive and ideological practices, and the possible linkages between post-Foucauldian analysis and the critique of ideology.

The Polish Paradox: From a Fight for Democracy to the Political Radicalization and Social Exclusion

Poland has gone through a series of remarkable political transformations over the last 30 years. It has changed from a communist state in the Soviet sphere of influence to an autonomic prosperous democracy and proud member of the EU. Paradoxically, since 2015, Poland seems to be heading rapidly in the opposite direction. It was the Polish Solidarity movement that started the peaceful revolution that subsequently triggered important democratic changes on a worldwide scale, including the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism and the end of Cold War. Fighting for freedom and independence is an important part of Polish national identity, sealed with the blood of generations dying in numerous uprisings. However, participation in the democratic process is curiously limited in Poland. The right-wing, populist Law and Justice Party (PiS) won elections in Poland in 2015. Since then, Poles have given up more and more freedoms in exchange for promises of protection from different imaginary enemies, including Muslim refugees and the gay and lesbian community. More and more social groups are being marginalized and deprived of their civil rights. The COVID-19 pandemic has given the ruling party a reason to further limit the right of assembly and protest. Polish society is sinking into deeper and deeper divisions.

Collective angst and group continuity as predictors of collective action for progressive city policies

Paweł Adamowicz, the liberal mayor of Gdańsk, Poland, died on January 14, 2019, after being stabbed by a man who rushed onstage during a charity event. Four studies were carried out to analyze the predictors of willingness to engage in collective action in support of the progressive city policies he initiated. In Study 1 ( N = 214), collective angst was related to collective action intention. Identification with Gdańsk mediated this relation. In the next two studies, we tested the role of the perceived continuity of the in-group. The relationship between collective angst and willingness to support collective actions was mediated by perceived essentialist continuity of the group (Study 2, on snap election day, N = 121). Moreover, results confirmed that collective angst predicted strength of identification with Gdańsk. This identification was related to the perceived essentialist continuity of the group, which in turn was linked to willingness to engage in collective actions in support of progressive policies (Study 3, N = 98). In Study 4 ( N = 456), conducted within a few days before the presidential election in Poland, we replicated the model of mediation obtained in Study 3, and showed that contextualized collective angst also predicted collective action intentions.

Rhetoric in Poland

ABSTRACT The purpose of the article is to present a case study of the self-organization process within rhetorical studies in Poland, which has emerged as an independent area of research with the ambition to become a full-fledged discipline. The main research question concerns the impact of a single change-initiating event, namely, the first partially free elections in Poland in 1989, on adaptation processes at two levels of rhetorical agencies: those of citizens and rhetoricians. The ensuing socio-political changes allowed for the unrestricted development of rhetorical practices, which had been impossible in countries under the communist regime: advertising and marketing (also in politics), political debates, civic engagement, and academic freedom. The growing number of rhetorical scholars, writing in a different way and about something different than prior to 1989, contributed to the emergence of a modern and fairly compact area of rhetorical research. The article highlights the cultural specificity of Polish rhetorical studies, which include three main sources of inspiration: (a) Old Polish oratory and its contemporary literary analyses; (b) analysis of communist propaganda, including the media; and (c) contemporary concepts in the field of argumentation, rhetorical criticism, discourse analysis and media studies. The main goal is to demonstrate that after 1989, rhetorical research in Poland should no longer be reduced to the enumeration of relatively few, individual contributions, but instead it should be acknowledged as a self-organizing system – a complexity science – created by dense intertextual relations, professional networks and institutional frameworks. In order to advance the awareness of rhetorical endeavors in Poland among international scholars, we adopt here a descriptive methodology, focusing on five key aspects: (a) the process of internal differentiation of rhetorical studies; (b) rhetorical perspectives in language-and-text studies; (c) media studies; (d) politics; and (e), the internationalization processes within the rhetorical studies in Poland through the reception of the American research tradition of rhetorical criticism.

The Assessment of Effects of Local Government Elections in Poland in 2018

The territorial government election held in 2018 had significant influence not only on the current situation in Poland but also on the functioning of the country on the international scene. This event was very important for building the future political situation in Poland and it was a kind of prediction before the European Parliament election, the Polish Parliament election and before the Presidential election which are coming in the following years. The results of this election showed not only what can happen but also how Poland may function in the international environment – the Polish cooperation with other countries in the region and Poland’s functioning in the European Union. The subject of this research is to analyse the territorial government election in Poland in 2018 and to show what kind of changes were done in the Polish electoral law. Also, there are some indications presented how the role of local government should be shaped in the near future. The paper is also discussing some issues related with the way how Poland will function in the future with the focus on international cooperation, especially the cooperation with neighbouring countries and the European Union. The method which was used in this study is the observation method and the analysis of the situation in Poland as well as the analysis of changes in the electoral law in Poland. The aim of this paper is to show what changes should take place in the near future in the role and shape of territorial governments in Poland on different levels seeking to improve the functioning of these very important bodies of the political system in Poland.

Gender Differences in Reactions to TV Political Advertising: An Empirical Study of the 2015 Presidential Election in Poland

Many studies on TV political advertising suggest the gender differences in the reactions to advertising in the affective aspect, both at the level of liking and evaluation of the candidates. The article follows this trend, presenting an empirical study carried out in Poland during the 2015 presidential electoral campaign. The results show gender differences in the evaluation of candidates. We found out that women are more susceptible to changing the perception of candidates' images as a result of the influence of TV electoral ads. Interestingly, watching advertisements resulted in a statistically significant decrease in the evaluation of most candidates. Women's susceptibility to political advertising is also proved by changes in the emotional attitude to the candidates after watching the spots. In addition, the research showed that TV electoral ads cannot change the perception of candidates whose images are consolidated in public discourse.