Poles Together?: The Emergence and Development of Political Parties in Postcommunist Poland 9789633864630

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: The Distribution of Power within Parties
Chapter Three: The Party Machine
Chapter Four: Parties and Their Electorates
Chapter Five: Parties as Membership Organizations
Chapter Six: Parties and the State
Chapter Seven: Conclusion
Appendix 1 : Parties and Organizations in the Democratic Left Alliance, May 1997
Appendix 2: Parties and Organizations in Solidarity Electoral Action, March 1997
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

POLES TOGETHER?

POLES TOGETHER? The Emergence and Development of Political Parties in Postcommunist Poland

ALEKS SZCZERBIAK

.

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..., CEU PRESS

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Central European University Press

© 2001 by Aleks Szczerbiak Published in 2001 by

Central European University Press An imprint of the Central European University Share Company Nador utca 11, H-1015 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 Fax: +36-1-327-3183 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com

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in Canada by CEU Press c/o University of Toronto Press Inc. 5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario M3H 51'8, Canada Tel: + 1-800-565-9523 Fax: + 1-800-221-9985 E-mail: [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 963 9241 23 7 Cloth Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available upon request Printed in Hungary by Akaprint

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables Preface and Acknowledgments Notes List of Abbreviations

vii ix xii xv

Chapter One: Introduction Contemporary Party Models Party Development in Postcommunist Poland Modeling Party Structure and Organization in Postcommunist Poland Notes

1 4 12

24 27

Chapter Two: The Distribution of Power within Parties Party Decisionmaking Structures Parliamentary-Extraparliamentary Party Relations Leaders and Members Local-National Relations

31 36 38 46 55

~~~00

~

Notes

65

Chapter Three: The Party Machine The Party Central-Office Bureaucracy The Parliamentary Party Bureaucracy The Local Party Machine The Professionalization of Parties Conclusion Notes

71 74 78 84 95 105 106

vi

Chapter Four: Parties and Their Electorates Party Electoral Strategies The 1997 Parliamentary Election Campaign Party Electoral Profiles The Role of Party Leaders Conclusion Notes

111 116 123 129 145 149 152

Chapter Five: Parties as Membership Organizations Party Membership and Local Implantation Party Ancillary Organizations and Interest-Group Relations The Role and Functions of Local Party Branches Demand-Side Factors: Party Organizational Strategies Supply-Side Factors: Popular Attitudes toward Parties Conclusion Notes

157 169 175 184 189 195 203 206

Chapter Six: Parties and the State The State and Party Funding The State and Party Media Access Conclusion Notes

213 218 229 240 242

Chapter Seven: Conclusion Notes

24 7 256

Appendix 1: Parties and Organizations in the Democratic Left Alliance, May 1997

257

Appendix 2: Parties and Organizations in Solidarity Electoral Action, March 1997

Bibliography Index

259 261 275

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1. Table 1.2. Table 1.3. Table 1.4. Table 1.5. Table 2.1. Table 2.2. Table 2.3. Table 2.4. Table 3.1.

Table 3.2.

Table 3.3. Table 3.4. Table 4.1. Table 4.2. Table 4.3.

Presidential Election, November-December 1990 Parliamentary Election to the Sejm, October 1991 Parliamentary Election to the Sejm, September 1993 Presidential Election, November 1995 Sejm Election Results, September 1997 Percent of Parliamentarians in "Narrow" Party Leadership Percent of Parliamentarians in Party Executives Percent of Parliamentary Club Presidium Members on Party Executives, June 1997 Percent of Parliamentarians in Party National Councils Staff Members Employed in Party Central Offices and Parliamentary Club Offices (Full-Time Equivalent), June 1997 Local Party Organizational Infrastructure in Gdansk, Jelenia G6ra, Plock and Rzesz6w, April 1997 Sejm Deputies' Offices, 1995 Senators' Offices, 1996 Parliamentary Election Voting Patterns, September 1997 Presidential Election First-Round Voting Patterns, November 1995 Parliamentary Election Voting Patterns, September 1993

15 17 19 22 23 43 43 44 44 79

85 90 90

130 130 132

viii Table 4.4. Table 4.5. Table 4.6. Table 4.7. Table 4.8. Table 5.1. Table 5.2. Table 5.3.

Table 5.4. Table 5.5. Table 5.6. Table 5.7. Table 5.8. Table 6.1. Table 6.2. Table 6.3. Table 6.4. Table 6.5.

Parties and Groupings Best Representing Socioeconomic Groups, July 1997 Party Supporters' Ideological Self-placement, November 1996 Voting Intentions According to Ideological Selfplacement, August-September 1997 Voting Intentions According to Church Attendance, August-September 1997 Party Leader Positive (and Net Approval) Ratings, February-October 1997 Number of Party Members Claimed Party Membership as a Percentage of the Electorate, 1989-1992 Party Membership, Basic Organizational Units, and Local Implantation in Gdansk, Jelenia Gora, Plock, and Rzeszow, April 1997 Number of Local Councilors, March 1997 Number of Local Councilors in Gdansk, Jelenia Gora, Plock, and Rzeszow, April 1997 Comparative Levels of Party Identification Comparative Confidence in Parties, 1994 Confidence in Polish Institutions, 1994 State Election Reimbursements, 1993 State Funding of Parliamentary Clubs and Circles, 1995 Election Reimbursements and Donations, 1997 Labor Union Income, 1993-1995 Amount of Party Coverage on Main Evening News, May 1997

133 137 138 141 146 169 171

174 188 188 195 197 197 219 221 223 224 233

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book presents a detailed empirically based examination of the institutional dynamics of the new parties and political groupings that emerged in Poland-the largest country of the former Soviet blocsince the collapse of communist rule, in 1989. It draws on and utilizes models developed in West European party literature as an analytical framework with which to examine the main Polish parties from a structural and organizational perspective and considers how they approximate to these taxonomical ideals. Examined here are the six main political parties and groupings around which the Polish party system consolidated in the run-up to the September 1997 parliamentary election. The argument is based on an analysis of five key structural and organizational dimensions: the internal distribution of power and modes of representation within the parties; the role of the party bureaucracy; the relationship between the parties and their electorates; the development of parties as membership organizations; and the relationship between parties and the state. The new Polish parties are developing as centralized bodies in which elite leadership groups play a predominant role, with loose electoral constituencies, low membership bases, relatively weak local organizational structures and social implantation, and high levels of orientation toward and dependence upon the state. In other words, they are more in line with the more recent catchall, electoral-professional, and cartel models of parties than the traditional mass-party model. This book demonstrates, however, that there are significant differences and argues that comparisons between the new Polish parties and contemporary Western developments are best not overdrawn. Moreover, research confirms that the distinction between the parties that emerged as organizational "successors" to the ruling communist party and its allies and the newly established parties, which developed without the benefit of an organiza-

X

tional legacy from the communist period, is not as striking as some commentators have suggested. Broader questions are also raised about the difficulties associated with applying models developed to analyze changing parties in Western democracies to the postcommunist East European context. While Western models of political parties are extremely useful as analytical tools, in terms of highlighting and helping us to understand some of the new parties' structural and organizational features, it is important to avoid transplanting them wholesale into the different conditions of postcommunist Eastern Europe or drawing excessively direct comparisons or analogies based on a few similar structural features. This book concludes, arguing that the new Polish parties are strong at the level of state institutions and appear capable of structuring elections and institu,tions and recruiting elites. They are likely to develop, however, as remote and somewhat distant institutions that are weak at the social level. Given that the links between parties and their electorates is likely to remain fairly loose, the new parties will prove less successful at aggregating social interests and relatively ineffective at mobilizing and integrating the citizenry into the political process. As the first in-depth, empirically grounded, single-country study of party structure and organization in postcommunist Eastern Europe, this book provides an opportunity to draw broader conclusions about the process of East European party development; thus it will hopefully make a significant contribution to the development of a postcommunist political-party model and shed light on an important aspect of the more general process of postcommunist democratization in the region. In addition, it makes an empirical contribution to our broader understanding of parties and party systems and thereby improves the relatively undeveloped body of material on party structure and organization in the larger and more extensive literature on the longerestablished Western party systems. In doing so, it should help us make more-informed judgements about the applicability, robustness, and usefulness of the developed theoretical models on the future of the contemporary party. This book is based on a doctoral thesis completed at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), at the University of London, between September 1995 and June 1999. The information is accurate as of April 1999, when the thesis was submitted. Except in one or two places, I have resisted the temptation to update the findings in the course of preparing this manuscript. Doing so would have involved

xi

substantial additional research and delayed publication. Although the Polish political scene remains relatively dynamic and the party system has undergone significant changes since the beginning of 1999, the historical trends identified here are still broadly correct and provide a comprehensive basis for drawing robust conclusions about the first phase of party-system development in postcommunist Poland and Eastern Europe more generally. Parts of this book were published elsewhere. The local research utilized in chapters two, three, and five were first published in Party Politics1-a longer version was subsequently published in Studia Politycznl. Parts of chapter three were first published in Paul Lewis (ed.), Party Development and Democratic Change in Post-communist Europe3• Parts of chapter four were first published in Europe-Asia Studies4, and parts of chapter five were first published in Contemporary Politics5. A summary of the book's main findings and conclusions was also published in the Journal of Communist· Studies and Transition Politics6. In addition to published sources, much of the data for this study was obtained from documents collected and interviews undertaken by the author during four field trips to Poland, between February-November 1997, together with one preliminary trip in June 1996. Numerous visits were made to the main parties' and groupings' headquarters and parliamentary offices. On those visits more than 20 interviews were conducted with party officials, particularly those responsible for developing organization and communication strategies, the directors of party central offices and parliamentary faction offices, and the key officials responsible for organizing the parties' September 1997 parliamentary-election campaigns. Interviews were also conducted with 34 local party officials in four provinces: Gdansk, Jelenia G6ra, Plock, and Rzesz6w. 7 Each one of these provinces represented one of Poland's four "historic" regions, 8 and between them they formed a politically and demographically representative sample of the whole country. Unless otherwise n~ted, all quotations are drawn from these interviews. I would like to thank all of my interviewees-some of whom provided me with two and even three opportunities to talk with them-for their help and cooperation. My field visits also included a series of interviews with Polish academics and commentators, all of whom I thank. These include Professor Stanislaw Gebethner, Professor Konstanty Wojtaszczyk, and Dr. Radzislawa Gortat, from Warsaw University's Institute of Political Science and Journalism; Professor Miroslawa Grabows-

xii

ka, from Warsaw University's Institute of Sociology; Professor Tomasz Zukowski, from Warsaw University's Institute of Social Studies; Dr. Ewa Nalewajko and Dr. Irena Jackiewicz, from the Polish Academy of Science's Institute of Political Studies; Ewa Czaczkowska, Marcin Dominik Zdort, Eliza Olczyk, and Malgorzata Subotic, from the Rzeczposoplita daily; and Mariusz Janicki and Janina Paradowska, from the weekly magazine Polityka. Naturally, responsibility for the interpretation and analysis of all the interviewees' comments and observations (and any errors) lies solely with the author. I would like to thank the staff at the SSEES Library, the Polish Library in Hammersmith, and lnka Sklodkowska, from the Polish Academy of Science's Institute of Political Studies Political Parties Archive, in Warsaw, for all their help. Thanks are due also to the staff of the Polish Center for the Research of Social Opinion (Centrum Badania Opinii Spolecznej [CBOS]) and the Institute for the Research of Public Opinion (Osrodek Badania Opinii Publicznej [OBOP]) for providing me with much valuable polling data. I am also grateful to the ESRC for the funding that enabled me to undertake this research, particularly for their support of my fieldwork in Poland. I would like to thank all those who have provided me with helpful comments and insights on various drafts of this study: my colleagues at SSEES (and especially my supervisors, Professor George Schopflin and Dr. Kieran Williams) and my two examiners, Dr. Paul Lewis and Professor Gordon Smith, for their encouragement and advice on publishing my thesis. Finally, I thank my wife, Jacqueline, the rest of my family both in Britain and Poland, particularly my parents, Stanislaw and Krystyna, and my friends for all their patience and support. NOTES 1 Reprinted with permission of Sage Publications, from Szczerbiak, A., "Testing Party Models in East-Central Europe: Local Party Organization in Postcommunist Poland," in Party Politics, 5(4) October, 1999, 525-537. 2 Reprinted from Studia Polityczne, 10 (2000), 85-106. 3 From Lewis Paul G. (ed.), Party Development and Democratic Change in Postcommunist Europe (London, 2001) by permission of Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. 4 From "Interests and Values: ... " by Aleks Szczerbiak, Europe-Asia Studies, 51:8 (1999, 1401-1432, by permission of Taylor and Francis Ltd (http://www.tandf.co.uk).

xiii 5 From "The New Polish Political Parties as Membership Organisations" by Aleksander Szczerbiak, Contemporary Politics, 7:1, 2000, 57--69, by permission of Taylor and Francis Ltd (http://www.tandf.co.uk). 6 Reprinted from Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 17(2) June 2001, 94--130. 7 When the fieldwork for this study was undertaken, Poland was divided into 49 provincial administrative units, known as wojew6dztwa, which were generally coterminus with the country's parliamentary electoral districts (except for Katowice province, which comprised three electoral districts, and Warsaw province, two). In January 1999, 16 larger provinces replaced the 49 units, and at the time of writing, a revision of the electoral law was under consideration to bring the electoral constituencies into line with this new administrative structure. 8 Tworzecki, Parties and Politics in Post-1989 Poland, 83-89.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AWS BBWR BdP CBOS ChD-BdP ChDIIIRP DUK FPD

Akcja Wyborcza Solidamosc (Solidarity Electoral Action) Bezpartyjny Blok Wspierania Reform (Nonparty Bloc in Support ofReforms) Blok dla Polski (Bloc for Poland) Centrum Badania Opinii Spolecznej (Center for Social Opinion Research) Christian Democratic-Bloc for Poland Chrzescijanska-Demokracja Trzeciej Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej (Christian Democracy of the Third Polish Republic) Demokratyczna Unia Kobiet (Democratic Union of Women) Forum Prawicy Demokratycznej (Forum of the Democratic Right)

KdR KGW KKW'O' KLD KOZzR

KPEiR KPEiRRP

KPN KPN-OP

Koalicja dla Rzeczpospolitej (Coalition for the Republic) Kolo Gospodyn Wiejskich (Rural Housewives' Circle) Katolicki Komitet Wyborczy 'Ojczyzna' (Catholic Election Committee 'Fatherland') Kongres Liberalno-Demokratyczny (Liberal-Democratic Congress) Komitet Organizacji Zrzeszonych z ROPem (Committee of Organizations Associated with the Movement for Poland's Reconstruction) Krajowa Partia Emeryt6w i Rencist6w (National Party of Retirees and Pensioners) Krajowe Porozumienie Emeryt6w i Rencist6w Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej (National Agreement of Retirees and Pensioners of the Republic of Poland) Konfederacja Polski Niepodleglej (Confederation for an Independent Poland) Konfederacja Polski Niepodleglej-Ob6z Patriotycz:iy (Confederation for an Independent Poland-P~.triotic Camp)

XVI

KRRiTV

KZKiOR NSZZ 'S' OBOP OKP OPZZ

PllL PBS PC PChD PdP PK

PL POC PPG PPPP PPS

PRL PSL'O' PSL PSL-PL PSL-S PZPR RChN'AP' RdR

RKN ROAD ROP

RSAWS

Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji (National Television and Radio Council) Krajowy Zwi~ek K6lsek i Organizacji Rolniczych (National Union of Agricultural Circles and Organizations) Niezalezny Samomtdny Zwi~zek Zawodowy 'Solidarnosc' (Independent Self-Governing Trade Union 'Solidarity') Osrodek Badania Opinii Publicznej (Institute for Public Opinion Research) Obywatelski Klub Parlamentarny (Citizens' Parliamentary Club) Og61nopolskie Porozurnienie Zwi~zk6w Zawodowych (AllPolish Trade Union Alliance) Porozumienie 11 Listopanda (November 11 Agreement) Pracownia Badan Spolecznych (Social Research Workshop) Porozurnienie Centrum (Center Agreement) Partia Chrzescijanskich Demokrat6w (Party of Christian Democrats) Przymierze dla Polski (Alliance for Poland) Partia Konserwatywna (Conservative Party) Peasant Agreement Porozumienie Obywatelskie Centrum (Citizens' Center Agreement) Polskie Przymierze Gospordarcze (Polish Economic Alliance) Polska Partia Przyjacz6l Piwa (Polish Beer Lovers' Party) Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party) Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa (Polish People's Republic) Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe 'Odrodzenie' (Polish Peasant Party 'Renewal') Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish Peasant Party) Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe-Porozurnienie Ludowe (Polish Peasant Party-Peasant Agreement) Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe-Solidarnosc (Polish Peasant PartySolidarity) Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (Polish United Workers' Party) Ruch Chrzescijansko-Narodowy-' Akcja Polska' (Christian National Movement-'Polish Action') Ruch dla Rzeczpospolitej (Movement for the Republic) Ruch Katolicko-Narodowy (Catholic-National Movement) Ruch Obywatelski Akcja Demokratyczna (Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action) Ruch Odbudowy Polski (Movement for Poland's Reconstruction) Ruch Spoleczny Akcji Wyborczej Solidarnosc (Solidarity Electoral Action Social Movement)

xvii SdRP SKL SLCh SLD SN

sue UD UP UPR

uw

WAK ZChN ZMW ZNP ZOSP ZSL ZSMP

Socjaldemokracja Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej (Social Democracy of the Polish Republic) Stronnictwo Konserwatywno-Ludowe (Conservative-People's Party) Stronnictwo Ludowe-Chrzescijanskie (Peasant-Christian Party) Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (Democratic Left Alliance) Stronnictwo Narodowe (National Party) Sekretariat Ugrupowan Centroprawicowych (Secretariat of Center-Right Groupings) Unia Demokratyczna (Democratic Union) Unia Pracy (Labor Union) Unia Polityki Realnej (Union of Real Politics) Unia Wolnosci (Freedom Union) Wyborcza Akcja Katolicka (Catholic Electoral Action) Zjednoczenie Chrzescijansko-Narodowe (Christian National Union) Zwhtzek Mlodziely Wiejskiej (Union of Rural Youth) Zwi!l_zek Nauczycieli Polskich (Union of Polish Teachers) Zwi!\_Zek Ochotniczych Straz Pozarnych (Union of Volunteer Fire Brigades) Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe (United Peasants' Party) Zwi!\_Zek Socjalistycznych Mlodziely Polskich (Union of Polish Socialist Youth)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Autonomous political parties are a central feature in the functioning of almost every contemporary democracy. It is difficult to conceive of a democratic political system in which parties do not play an important if not decisive role in the operation of democratic institutions and practices and act as a guarantor of political pluralism.' Although parties have proved to be highly flexible and adaptable structures-and some types emphasize certain roles more than others-most commentators have few difficulties documenting the core functions they perform in modem democracies and societies. 2 The most rudimentary function of parties is putting forward candidates for public office. They are the main source of recruitment for political elites and provide the personnel to staff the most important government positions. By doing so, they help to structure the vote at election times and thus shape citizens' participation in the electoral process. Parties also aid in sustaining public institutions, in both the parliamentary and governmental arenas, and they provide political leaders with the discipline and logistical support essential in shaping and controlling the machinery of government, enacting legislation, and, when appropriate, providing effective opposition. Parties represent and aggregate the demands of various social interests and convert them into more manageable packages of public-policy choices based on ideology or some other set of values or principles. More broadly, this process involves influencing and structuring public opinion and the content of political discourse itself. As a consequence, parties help to integrate citizens into the political system and mobilize both public support and civic participation in the political process, from the relatively_straightforward act of voting to more active forms of engagement. Parties can thereby transform pri-

2

Poles Together?

vately orientated individuals into publicly orientated citizens, resolve conflicts through orderly and peaceful institutional channels, and generate the political cohesion and stability that can be crucial for democratic regimes during times of crisis. 3 Conversely, so-called antisystem parties can exacerbate political instability and thus undermine and delegitimize the democratic process. All of these functions are underpinned by the fact that, normatively, parties operate on the boundaries of, and mediate between, the formal structures of the state and civil society. Consequently, they are thought. to provide the mechanism that links the formal structures of political power to the various components of civil society, by placing their representatives in positions where they can exercise that power on their behalf. Parties are thus a conduit of communication, informing citizens and allowing their opinions to be expressed through institutional channels. As Lawson puts it, the party is the "one agency that can claim to have as its very raison d'etre the creation of an entire linkage chain, a chain of connections that runs from the voters through the candidates and the electoral process to the officials of government. "4 The development of parties and party systems is rightly seen as one of the most important tests of the strength of an emerging democracy. Examining the role of the new parties and the shape of their systems is central in assessing the progress of postcommunist East European democratization. This is reflected in the increasingly rich literature on East European party politics, which has developed into one of the most active subfields within the study of comparative politics of the region. The emergence of the new party systems in the postcommunist context5-including the legacies of the communist and precommunist periods6-empirical studies of the popular attitudes toward the new parties that undergird these systems,7 and attempts to identify and make predictions about the development of ideological dimensions and cleavage structures 8 have all attracted considerable scholarly attention. There have also been several important studies seeking to account for the reemergence of the former communist successor parties as a permanent fixture of the East European political landscape and the implications of their existence on the democratization process. 9 But there have been considerably fewer major contributions on how parties actually work-their i_nstitutional characteristics and particularly what types of party structures and organizations are emerging. Despite several recent and valuable attempts to redress the balance, the study of internal party dynamics remains one of the least

Introduction

3

explored areas of postcommunist change and one of the most promising territories for further exploration. 10 Neglect of the empirically based study of party organization and lack of interest in party structural development are also a feature of the much larger and more extensive literature on the longer-established Western party systems. With party studies now one of the largest subfields in comparative politics, increasingly sophisticated theories and research techniques have been developed to examine the origins, stability, and subsequent changes in parties' electoral support; 11 parties' shifting agenda orientations and ideological dimensions; 12 the role of parties in government and as public officeholders; 13 the classification of different types of party systems; 14 and the relationship between parties and other social structures. 15 In other words, party studies is a subdiscipline that has been dominated by an increasingly strong emphasis on what Lawson terms the interactive components of party systems-why they take certain forms, endure, and change, and what they signify-rather than by attempts to examine internal party structure and dynamics. 16 This is not so much evident at the theoretical level, where much of the pioneering groundwork in the field of modem party studies, particularly Michels's and Ostrogorski's classic research, 17 was focused precisely on the activities of parties as organizations. Valuable theoretical work on the changing models of party organization has continued to be produced. 18 Rather, notwithstanding a discernible shift of emphasis in recent years, the neglect has been primarily in the relatively sparse availability of empirical data about how party organizations work. Until recently all but the most rudimentary information on comparative party development was unavailable.19 Lawson has correctly identified the main reasons for the bias favoring the study of external rather than internal party behavior as visibility, methodological habits, and the various motives that guide scholarship on parties. 2 First, given that parties have an existential ambiguity and their most important effects are achieved by their elected representatives, there is a tendency among scholars to treat all parties as an "ensemble" and, ideological questions and parties' levels of support notwithstanding, to focus on the collective characteristics of composite party systems, such as elections and the role of parties in government. Second, it is difficult to study party structure and organization in the same way as collective party characteristics by using a research methodology that encourages the maintenance of a certain distance from the

°

4

Poles Together?

"hurly-burly of inner party life." Not only is it extremely difficult to obtain relevant data on internal party life, there is also the serious problem of distinguishing formal accounts of how parties operate from what occurs in practice. Third, given that the principal motives guiding the study of parties generally relate to questions of government efficiency and political stability, the assumption has been that the study of any one single party's internal dynamics does not tell us enough about the political system per se. In other words, the question of whether these objectives can be achieved is best examined in a wider perspective. Moreover, the general instability of the emerging postcommunist East European parties and the concomitant immaturity of their organizational structures, arising from the fact that many of the newly formed parties were often simply cliques of supporters clustered around individual personalities, provide additional region-specific factors likely to deter scholars from paying due attention to parties' structural evolution.

CONTEMPORARY PARTY MODELS Before considering why the evolution of party structure and organization has important implications for the progress of postcommunist democratization, it is necessary to review some of the contemporary party models in the Western literature. These provide us with a useful analytical framework with which to consider what types of party structures and organizations are emerging in postcommunist Eastern Europe. This study concentrates on the main West European party models: Duverger's cadre/elite and mass parties, Kirchheimer and Panebianco's catchall and electoral-professional parties, and Katz and Mair's cartel party. To be sure, at times all of these models also touch on ideological and sociological questions. Moreover, how applicable theoretical models developed to explain party development in the context of more advanced West European democracies are to the newly emerging democracies of postcommunist Eastern Europe must remain open, to which we will return later. Nevertheless, all the models focus primarily, or to a large extent, on changes in parties' organizational and structural characteristics and hence represent a useful typology based on a clear, logical, and linear historical progression. 21 While this typology of party development does not necessarily imply a universal process in which one type of party is challenged and axiomatically replaced by another, and although party organizational

Introduction

5

forms are constantly in flux, some party types are indeed characteristic of particular historical moments. In the early 1950s, Duverger made the first major attempt to develop a theory of party organization based on a comprehensive account of the nature and development of parties. 22 He concluded that elitist cadre parties dominated the first stages of party development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an era characterized by restricted franchise and other limitations on the political activities of the propertyless. There was little need for formal or highly structured organizations. Cadre parties, consisting of little more than groupings of local notables, served purely instrumental, electoral purposes, making little or no formal provision for mass membership. As Duverger put it, "if we define a member as one who signs an undertaking to the party and thereafter regularly pays his subscription, then cadre parties have no members." 23 As industrialization and urbanization proceeded and the predominance of old elites came under challenge, the concomitant relaxation of restrictions on working-class organizations and the franchise opened the political system to previously excluded groups of citizens. The mass party, which arose out of the struggles by these elements of society to gain a voice in the ruling structures of the state, had a relatively complex structure but also sought to balance the aims of organizational efficiency with securing the democratic participation of party members. The distinction between mass and cadre parties was not therefore based simply on their size and structure, as their respective names implied. Mass parties were both more centralized and firmly knit than cadre parties, but they also accorded with an organizational response to a particular view of democracy and an electoral strategy based on the mobilization and social integration of distinct socioeconomic segments of the electorate. According to Duverger, mass parties corresponded to left-wing workers' parties in terms of the political and social substructure, promoted broad ideological programs to mobilize the working class, and provided it with an elite that could take over the government and administration of the state. As the instruments of the newly enfranchised segments of society, mass parties were naturally dominated by their extraparliamentary elements, and their mass memberships were the "very substance of the party."24 Another important way in which this difference found organizational expression was in the field of party finances, which Duverger regarded as fundamental to the process of political change, as mass par-

6

Poles Together?

ties replaced the "capitalist financing of electioneering by democratic financing. "25 Mass-membership parties proved to be an effective means of canv~sing, mobilizing, and organizing supporters in newly enfranchised mass electorates and the most successful type of party organization, in electoral terms. In his conclusion Duverger confidently predicted that the mass-party model would be widely imitated: ''vast, centralized, and disciplined" mass-membership organizations would increasingly dominate contemporary democratic societies and, in a process of "contagion from the left," replace the cadre parties' informal networks as all major parties transformed themselves along these lines. 26 Although Duverger's analysis provides us with an important starting point, subsequent developments have challenged his conclusion about the preeminence of the mass-party model. Scholars soon began to argue that the mass party was losing its comparative advantage and simply represented a transitory and historically bounded phase in a continuing process of party adaptation and change. Writing in the 1960s, Kirchheimer advanced the hypothesis that Duverger's mass-party model was being undermined and transformed by a number of social changes that had occurred since the Second World War. Parties were moving into a third stage of development, which he termed the catchall model. 27 In many respects, according to Kirchheimer' s analysis, the mass party became a victim of its own success. The struggles for basic social and political rights, which had united the newly enfranchised constituencies underpinning the mass parties, had been won. The state began to provide many of the universal-welfare and educational services that were previously the prerogative of the mass party. In addition, increased living standards and social mobility and expansion of the mass media all served to erode traditional social boundaries and confronted mass parties with shrinking core electorates. The mass party's former strength-its direct organizational and political links with a distinct socioeconomic subgroup-not only no longer guaranteed success but also actually became a weakness as the relevance of these subgroups declined. The catchall party was thus characterized by a drastic reduction in the party's ideological baggage, the strengthening of the party's leadership elites at the expense of the party membership, a reduced emphasis on the party's traditional social class or denominational clientele in favor of seeking to appeal to and recruit the widest possible range of supporters (while simultaneously attempting to maintain its core working-class or denominational base), and an attempt to

Introduction

7

secure access to a wider range of interest groups. 28 Abandoning attempts at "intellectual and moral encadrement of the masses," the catchall party turned "more fully to the electoral scene, trying to exchange effectiveness in depth for a wider audience and more immediate electoral success."29 Shrinking, or at least increasingly open, core electorates meant that all mass parties came under growing pressure to adapt their organizational forms and electoral strategies. Kirchheimer's focus was primarily on questions of electoral strategy, but the implications for internal party structure and organization were less explicit. More recently, Panebianco developed Kirchheimer's catchall model by directing greater attention to organizational and structural concerns and concentrating on the emergence of what he termed the electoral-professional party. 30 Like Kirchheimer, Panebianco pointed to the electorate's increasing social and cultural heterogeneity as one of the main causes of party transformation. His model was also characterized by weak vertical organizational ties; appeals to the "opinion electorate" rather than the "electorate of the belonging"; the preeminence of public representatives over the party's internal leaders; financing through interest groups and public funds rather than members; and a stress on issues and leadership rather than ideology, with a more important organizational role for "careerists" rather than "believers."31 But while Kirchheimer treated this issue only implicitly, the key distinction between Panebianco's electoral-professional party and what he termed the mass-bureaucratic party was the increasing professionalization of the party organization and the central role played by professionalized party elites compared with that of the party bureaucracy, as the party's main focus of activity shifted from enrolling members to winning over the less-segmented electorates. Panebianco also directed attention to the restructuring of political-communication systems under the impact of the withering away of the traditional party-owned media, and professional party elites' concomitant preference for obtaining coverage in private or state-owned mass outlets (particularly television), which he saw as one of the key factors driving this increasingly professionalized concept of party organization, as well as leading to more personalized and issue-oriented campaigns. 32 More recently, Katz and Mair observed the emergence of a cartelparty model, by drawing attention to parties' increasing dependence on the state as a major source of support and object of political reference, together with a pattern of interparty collusion to share in these resources.33 Following a decline in party involvement and participation,

8

Poles Together?

membership levels have failed to keep pace with the escalating costs of party activity in the modem state. As a result, parties have sought to maintain themselves by securing the provision, and overseeing the regulation, of state subventions. The importance of the electronic media, together with the fact that access to these media is controlled and regulated by the state (and hence by parties in the state), also offers the party another vital resource. The cartel party not only adapts in order to benefit from the privileges and remain a member of the cartel but also (in collusion with the other similarly privileged parties) actually influences the rules in order to favor insiders and inhibit new entrants. Consequently, the links between parties and their electorates become even looser and more remote as the cartel party both colonizes and actually becomes an integral part of the state: "No longer simple brokers between civil society and the state, the parties now become absorbed by the state. From having first assumed the role of trustees, and then later of delegates, and then later again, in the hey-day of the catchall party, of entrepreneurs, parties have now become semistate agencies. " 34 With the emergence of the cartel party, politics becomes a profession in itself. Interparty coltlpetition occurs on the basis of competing claims to efficient and effective management of the state machine, and patterns of electoral competition are contained and managed. Organizationally, cartel parties are capital intensive, professional, and centralized, relying increasingly on the subventions and other privileges afforded by the state for their resources and on the state-controlled or regulated mass media as their principal means of direct communication with their electorates. Cartel parties are also based on a loose and atomistic conception of party members exercising rights as individuals rather than through delegates, together with a powerful and relatively autonomous party elite and a "stratarchic" internal distribution of power between the central party leadership and local officeholders, with each exercising a relatively free hand in their own bailiwick. The organizational structuring of parties, therefore, is not merely an object of interest in itself, and there is clearly an important relationship among developments within the parties themselves, the kinds of parties that emerge, and their changing position within the overall party and political system. Variations in the type of party organization will obviously have a considerable impact on the role that a party can play in terms of shaping the broader political process and fostering a democratic political culture. While none of the party functions pres~nted here is necessarily rendered obsolete by the changing position of parties within

Introduction

9

the political system, clearly their respective weight and how effectively they can perform particular functions will vary, with some party types emphasizing certain functions more than others. In particular, both the capacity of parties to link individual citizens to the process of government and the institutions of the state and the nature of that linkage are likely to be affected by the character of their organization. In other words, certain types of party organization may prove better at sustaining and increasing the legitimacy and stability of democratic political systems. As a result of its development as the party best suited to meet the emergence of a mass electorate, the mass party both originated from and was deeply rooted within civil society and was thus more than merely an electoral organization. The mass party sought to formally enroll its supporters, who were drawn from a similar and well-defined segment of the population, and organize them within a broad network of interconnected organizations. By offering its supporters a stable political identity, the mass party was particularly focused on and successful at mobilizing and sometimes encapsulating major segments of the electorate and thereby integrating citizens into stable political systems. Besides having strong links with certain clearly defined sections of civil society, the mass party also played a critical role in the stabilization and structural consolidation of Western party systems by narrowing down or completely closing off the electoral market for potential new entrants. In other words, by helping to structure and stabilize Western party systems, mass parties were considered to have played a decisive role in the functioning of Western democracies. The increasingly top-down style of party organizational life and greater attention directed toward electoral competition, depicted in both Kirchheimer's catchall party and Panebianco's electoral-professional party, implied an erosion of the strong party-civil-society linkage, which characterized the mass-party model. By reducing its ideological baggage and the role of party membership, strengthening the top leadership, and broadening out from its core electoral constituency in order to secure access to a wider range of voters and interests, the catchall party clearly became more electoral and less socially rooted than the mass party. Similatly, by increasingly underpinning its organization with professionals rather than enrolled volunteers, the electoral-professional party was based on much weaker ties with its supporters. Kirchheimer expressed concern that the catchall party was "too blunt an instrument to serve as a link with the functional powerholders in society,"35 while

10

Poles Together?

Panebianco warned that the emergence of the electoral-professional party created a "vacuum at the level of collective identities," leaving voters more independent and autonomous but also more isolated and puzzled. 36 Consequently, the representation, mobilization and integration roles are of much less significance in the catchall and electoralprofessional party types, which place much greater emphasis on the electoral and recruitment functions . . With the emergence of Katz and Mair's cartel model, the party's relationship with civil society weakened even further. There was a corresponding intensification of the party-state linkage, to the extent that parties no longer acted as a bridge between the two but rather became part of the state apparatus itself. Mair has depicted this greater emphasis on the state and concomitant downgrading of the party-civil-society linkage thus: [P]arties moved from an earlier, postsuffrage stage [the classic mass-party phase] in which they had represented the interests of civil society vis-a-vis the state, to a stage in which they acted almost as independent brokers between state and civil society [the classic catchall-party phase], and in which, in Downsian and Schumpterian terms, they behaved more as competing teams of leaders, to a new and more recent stage, in which they actually move closer to becoming part of the state. The balance of linkage has therefore changed, as have the parties themselves. 37

As we have seen, this process is particularly evident in terms of the resources used by parties in order to secure their own legitimacy and survival. Moreover, as party structures become increasingly "stratarchical" in character, with each element of the party organization becoming more autonomous and stressing its own freedom of maneuver, we can observe an erosion of a sense of linkage even inside the parties themselves. As parties adapt and professionalize themselves in this way, the essence of democratic governance (and, according to this model, even politics itself) is increasingly characterized by elite groups presenting themselves to the electorate as competing teams of leaders and making little or no attempt to develop organic links with their supporters or involve the public in the policy process. Elite recruitment becomes by far the most important function in the cartel-party model, while the relevance of representative functions and those that stress civic participation, such as articulation, aggregation, and particularly mobilization and integration, tend to be even less applicable than in other

Introduction

11

models. The evolution of party structure and organization can thus significantly erode the role that parties formerly played as intermediate structures capable of both mobilizing and integrating citizens as well as mediating support for, and blunting or even reversing challenges to, democracy. A number of commentators have argued that the particular combination of developments associated with the transformation of Western parties-parties becoming simultaneously stronger, more privileged, and self-sufficient but also more remote and inward looking-has led to a progressive widening of the gap between electorates and the political class and an erosion of party attachment and legitimacy of established party elites. This development, it is argued, explains the rise of antiparty rhetoric and sentiment and attacks targeted at established parties, which have developed into a powerful tool for populist politicians, particularly on the far right, who claim to be uncorrupted by the existing party system and appear to have emerged as a new and potentially significant phenomenon in a number of Western democracies. 38 In other words, the process of party adaptation and change in traditional party roles and strategies has also left the democratic system vulnerable to a potential erosion of support and unable to bank a currency of goodwill and diffuse support, which may be required during times of crisis. It is clearly important to bear in mind the difficulties of trying to fit East European cases, to models designed for more-advanced Western democracies. Given the close relationship among the various party models and the character of democracy, the different strategies pursued by the new parties and the types of parties that are emerging will obviously have considerable implications for the nature of the links between parties and society and the functions that they are able to perform in the broader context of postcornrimnist democratization in Eastern Europe. A mass party with deep, broad, and well-organized links with civil society, for example, will be much better placed to perform representative func.tions than other types based on much weaker party-citizen linkages, which are confined to electoral and elite recruitment functions. In particular, if the new parties of postcommunist Eastern Europe replicate Western models and evolve as remote, inward-looking bodies primarily oriented toward the state rather than society, then it is likely to reinforce the underlying distrust of all party-like structures, which may already have extensive roots in the region, having been fostered by a period of prolonged one-party rule. This, in turn, has important implications for whether the new parties and governing elites can perform an

12

Poles Together?

effective role in helping to secure legitimation for the new democracies. In this sense, if after the initial period of postcommunist fragmentation the new East European party systems are stabilizing and consolidating at the level of state institutions,39 it may not guarantee that popular antiparty sentiment will subside. Consequently, it is crucially important to pay much greater attention to the structure and organization of parties and the institutional dynamics of how they organize and not merely to the external and more visible aspects of party development in postcommunist Eastern Europe.

PARTY DEVELOPMENT IN POSTCOMMUNIST POLAND Although it was the first East European state to slough off communist rule in 1989, the process of party development in postcommunist Poland has been tortuous and has suffered from both extreme fragmentation and instability in the early stages. 40 One of the most important methodological questions when approaching a survey such as this is determining a manageable number of relevant parties for case studies. In explaining why the sample of six parties and groupings was selected for this survey, it is necessary to briefly examine the historical context of party formation in post-1989 Poland. This process can be divided into six broad, historical phases. Following the spring 1989 Roundtable Talks between the Solidarity opposition and the communist authorities, which prefigured the partially free elections to the so-called Contract Sejm held in May-June, freedom of association was dramatical~y extended to permit the organization of political parties, and a de facto competitive party system began to emerge. 41 These elections saw Solidarity-backed candidates win all 161 openly contested seats in the Sejm, the more powerful lower house of parliament, and 99 of the 100 seats in the less powerful but completely freely elected upper house, the Senate, and thereby the effective end of communist rule in Poland.42 A new government emerged, in August 1989, led by Solidarity advisor Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Poland's first noncommunist premier since the Second World War and the first in the region in more than 40 years. The process of party formation was initially fairly slow, although it gathered pace somewhat when a new legal framework finally emerged with the passage of the 1990 Law on Political Parties, allowing any party that collected 15 signatures the right to formally register. 43

Introduction

13

The first phase of Polish party development saw the legaliz.ation of several parties that had operated in a clandestine fashion during the communist period. The most notable of these was Leszek Moczulski's Confederation for an Independent Poland (Konfederacja Polski Niepodleglej [KPN]), which had a long opposition pedigree dating back to September 1979, before the emergence of the original Solidarity trade union. Also included were several smaller organizations, such as the radical libertarian Union of Real Politics (Unia Polityki Realnej [UPR]), established in November 1987 by a group of self-styled "conservative liberals" led by the eccentric Janusz Korwin-Mikke. The period also witnessed the emergence of a cluster of completely new parties, some of which-like the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna [PPS]) and the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe [SN])-represented attempts to reconstruct parties from the prewar period. This period was also notable for the dissolution of the ruling communist Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza [PZPR]), in January 1990, and its rebirth as the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (Socjaldemokracja Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej [SdRP]), under the leadership of the young and charismatic Aleksander Kwasniewski. Similarly, in May 1990 the successor to the former communist satellite United Peasant Party (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe [ZSL]) amalgamated with a much smaller grouping led by formerly exiled peasantists to form the Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe [PSL]). PSL attempted to draw on the traditions of the precommunist peasant movement, which was the foremost political opposition to the communists in the immediate postwar years, and was initially led by a former Solidarity peasant leader, Roman Bartoszcze. During this period politics in general, and the process of party formation in particular, were dominated by developments within the Solidarity movement and its subsequent decomposition. Several small parties soon emerged from within the movement, some of which had parliamentary representation in the Solid~ty Citizens' Parliamentary Club (Obywatelski Klub Parlamentarny [OKP]), including the Gdansk-based Liberal-Democratic Congress (Kongres Liberalno-Demokratyczny [KLD]), the Christian National Union (Zjednoczenie ChrzescijanskoNarodowe [ZChN]), which linked a number of groupings committed to rebuilding the Polish state on Catholic principles,. the more liberal Poznan-based Party of Christian ·Democrats (Partia Chrzescijanskich Demokrat6w [PChD]), and the Polish Peasant Party-Solidarity (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe-Solidarnosc [PSL-S]), an offshoot u·om the Soli-

14

Poles Together?

darity Individual Farmers' Union. None of these new parties was of any real political significance, and initially, at least, most Solidarity leaders were hostile to the divisiveness that party formation implied and chose to present themselves as a stabilizing force and part of a broad movement representing the whole of civil society. Indeed Solidarity, like the other East European political conglomerates that oversaw democratic transitions and dominated the first phase of postcommunist politics, displayed little interest in transforming itself into a political party. Some of its leaders questioned whether the formation of Western-style parties in the traditional form was even appropriate in the postcommunist context.44 The results of the first free local elections, held in May 1990, appeared to confirm that it was the social-movement formula rather than any of the formally constituted political parties or established patterns of party politics that most appealed to Polish citizens.45 . Signs of growing dissatisfaction with the Solidarity-sponsored government's economic program, centered on finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz' s proposals for rapid liberalization and marketization, hastened the process of political division and put ideas of party formation more firmly on the political agenda during the spring and early summer of 1990. As Solidarity leaders began to recognize, reluctantly in many cases, the necessity of developing parties to structure and sustain their new democratic institutions, simmering tensions among the Solidarity elite worsened. These burst into the open in April 1990, when Lech Wal~sa, who remained the leader of the now politically marginal trade union, launched a campaign for the presidency around the slogan of "accelerating" political and economic change. Thus began the ''war at the top," which led to the decomposition of the Solidarity movement, initially into two broad camps, and the pluralization of the Polish political landscape, with new parties coming into being as the side effect. The first major political grouping to emerge from the Solidarity movement was the Center Agreement (Porozumienie Centrum [PC]), formed in May 1990 by Jaroslaw Kaczynski as a broad coalition, including a number of small right-wing and center-right parties, to spearhead support for Wal~sa's presidential candidacy. As a direct response, two rival organizations formed to create a more coherent organizational infrastructure capable of channeling support for the Mazowiecki government (and subsequently for his own presidential bid): the Forum of the Democratic Right (Forum Prawicy Demokratycznej [FPO]) and the larger Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action (Ruch Obywatelski Akcja Demokratyczna [ROAD]) were inaugurated in June and July 1990, respectively.

15

Introduction

That postcommunist Poland's first fully contested national elections, held in November-December 1990, were presidential rather than parliamentary did not really provide the most appropriate backdrop for an orderly process of party development. Indeed the extremely bitter and personal conflict between Wal~sa's and Mazowiecki's supporters completely overshadowed the presidential campaign. Although Wal~sa finished (as expected) clearly ahead on the first ballot, he fell well short of an absolute majority (39.96 percent), and the previously unknown and somewhat eccentric Polish-Canadian emigre businessman Stanislaw Tyminski made a surprisingly strong showing (23.10 percent) and pushed Mazowiecki (18.08 percent) into third place (see Table 1.1). But a decisive majority comfortably elected Wal~sa to the presidency, winning 74.75 percent in the second round, and the Tyminski phenomenon rapidly faded into political oblivion. While former communist Wlodzmierz Cimoszewicz, who stood as an independent left-wing candidate supported by SdRP and the former communist-sponsored trade union federation-the All-Polish Trade Union Alliance (Og6lnopolskie Porozumienie Zwi¢6w Zawodowych [OPZZ])-did surprisingly well (9.21 percent), the two overt "party" candidates, Roman Bartoszcze of PSL (7.15 percent) and Leszek Moczulski of KPN (2.5 percent) achieved disappointing results.46 Table 1.1. Presidential Election, November-December 1990 Votes

%

First round: Lech Wali_sa Stanislaw Tyminski Tadeusz Mazowiecki Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz Roman Bartoszcze (PSL) Leszek Moczulski (KPN)

6,569,889 3,797,605 2,973,264 1,514,025 1,176,175 411,516

39.96 23.10 18.08 9.21 7.15 2.50

Second round: Lech Wali_sa Stanislaw Tyminski

10,622,698 3,683,098

14.15 25.25

Source: Raciborski. Po/skie Wybory, 68.

The process of party formation quickened and the number of parties proliferated during the second phase of party development, in the run-up to the first fully competitive parliamentary elections, held in October 1991. In December 1990, the Democratic Union (Unia Demokratyczna

16

Poles Together?

[UD]) was established under Mazowiecki's leadership by his supporters in ROAD, FPO, and his local election committees. Wal1tsa's appointment of KLD leader Jan Krzysztof Bielecki as the new premier, following Mazowiecki's resignation, suddenly brought the previously littleknown party into considerably greater prominence. PC also transformed itself from a political conglomerate into a more traditional and structurally coherent individual-member-based party at its first congress, in May 1991. But it failed to gain Wal~sa's hoped-for endorsement, and its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, subsequently lost his job in the presidential chancellery and became one of his former mentor's bitterest critics. Following their failure to conclude an electoral alliance with PSL, the two post-Solidarity peasant groupings-PSL-S and the Solidarity Individual Farmer's Union-agreed (together with another smaller peasant party) to contest the elections on a common platform as the Polish Peasant Party-Peasant Agreement (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe-Porozumienie Ludowe [PSL-PL]). PSL's decision to stand independently was one of the reasons for Roman Bartoszcze's replacement as leader by the 31-year-old Waldemar Pawlak, a former ZSL activist. No less than 111 election committees formed by parties and political groupings contested the October 1991 parliamentary elections, which were the first genuine test of strength for the new parties. The increasingly divided society and differentiated political culture, along with the advanced state of party fragmentation and a highly proportional election law, combined to produce an even more fragmented and polarized parliament than had been feared. 47 Twenty-nine different election committees secured parliamentary representation; but it was the very even distribution of the vote that confounded all predictions, with ten parties and groupings obtaining 16 or more seats in the 460-member Sejm and the share of the vote for the seven largest winners ranging between 7.48 and 12.31 percent (see Table 1.2). The largest of these, UD, garnered a bare plurality of the vote (12.31 percent) and won only 62 Sejm seats. The Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej [SLD]), a specially assembled coalition of SdRP and OPZZ, together with other unions, youth, women's, and social organizations that had enjoyed patronage during the communist era, finished a close second (11.98 percent and 60 seats). The other eight parties and groupings capturing significant parliamentary representation included the Catholic Electoral Action (Wyborcza Akcja Katolicka [WAK]) committee, based on ZChN, which did surprisingly well and finished third in spite of a modest institutional base (8.73 percent:

17

Introduction

49 seats); the PC-based Citizens' Center Agreement (Porozumienie Obywatelskie Centrum [POC]) (8.71 percent: 44 seats); PSL (8.67 percent: 48 seats); KPN (7.5 percent: 46 seats); KLD (7.48 percent: 37 seats); PSL-PL (5.46 percent: 28 seats); the Solidarity trade union, which decided to stand as an independent grouping led by Wah;sa's successor, Marian Krzaklewski, rather than joining any party-led electoral coalition (5.05 percent: 27 seats); and the Polish Beer Lovers' Party (Polska Partia Przyjacz6l Piwa [PPPP]), an environmentalist and probusiness grouping somewhat less frivolous than its name suggests (3.27 percent: 16.seats). Table 1.2. Parliamentary Election to the Sejm, October 1991 Party

Votes

%

Seats

Democratic Union (UD) Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) Catholic Electoral Action (WAK) Center Agreement (PC) Polish Peasant Party (PSL) Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN) Liberal-Democratic Congress (KLD) Peasant Agreement (PL) Solidarity (NSZZ'S') Polish Beer Lovers' Party (PPPP)

1,382,051 1,344,820 980,304 977,344 972,952 841,738 839,978 613,626 566,553 367,106

12.31 11.98 8.73 8.71 8.67 7.50 7.48 5.46 5.05 3.27

62 60 49 44 48 46 37 28 27 16

Source: Raciborski. Polskie Wybory, 42.

The third phase of party development ran from October 1991 until the September 1993 parliamentary elections and was characterized by the continued disintegration and realignment of the parties that had emerged from the initial divisions within the Solidarity camp. The excessive number of parties in the 1991-1993 parliament and their extensive fragmentation produced unstable coalition governments. This, coupled with the deep antagonisms among the post-Solidarity party leaders and further splintering of the existing parties in parliament, encouraged little institutional consolidation. During the first six months of the new parliament the main focus of political attention and controversy was on Jan Olszewski's radically anticommunist but unstable and short-lived minority government (a coalition comprising PC, ZChN, and PSL-PL). PSL-PL broke almost immediately after the election: with one faction composed largely of Solidarity Individual Farmers' Union activists, led by Gabriel Janowski, reconstituted as a formally registered party but retaining the same name,

18

Poles Together?

while PSL-S eventually renamed itself the Peasant-Christian Party (Stronnictwo Ludowe-Chrzescijanskie [SLCh]), in May 1992. But the most significant hemorrhage of support occurred in PC following the collapse of Olszewski's government, in June 1992. Although Olszewski was formally a PC member-and the party's leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, both engineered his government's installation and supported the premier in his increasingly acrimonious battle with President Wal~sain practice the party exerted little influence over him and frequently criticized and distanced itself from him and his government. Divisions within the party came to a head over the so-called lustration affair, in May-June 1992, when Olszewski's ZChN-nominated minister of the interior, Antoni Macierewicz, produced a list of alleged communist security-service collaborators that included President Wal~sa and several parliamentarians in parties that had emerged from the democratic opposition. After the ensuing no-confidence vote in his government and amid mutual recriminations and charges of political disloyalty, Olszewski left PC with a substantial group of deputies and formed the Movement for the Republic (Ruch dla Rzeczpospolitej [RdR]). PC went on to suffer splits throughout the remainder of the 1991-1993 parliament as more deputies and members defected to join other parties and groupings or simply declared their political independence. Following an unsuccessful attempt to create a new government around PSL leader and stop-gap premier Waldemar Pawlak, a broad and seemingly incompatible seven-party coalition government led by UDnominee Hanna Suchocka was formed. Its members included UD, ZChN, KLD, PSL-PL, SLCh, PChD, and PPPP and was brokered and supported by the Solidarity trade union. Although they managed to avoid a PC-style implosion, both of the main coalition partners suffered damaging splits. ZChN entered a period of crisis following the downfall of the Olszewski government and the expulsion of Macierewicz (whose list of alleged collaborators included his own party leader, Wieslaw Chrzanowski) for his handling of the lustration affair, which led to the formation of the breakaway Christian National Movement-'Polish Action' (Ruch Chrzescijansko Narodowy-'Akcja Polska' [RChN-'AP']). Six UD deputies led by Aleksander Hall also defected, in September 1992, to form a separate Conservative Party (Partia Konserwatywna [PK]), depriving the party of its status as the largest parliamentary club. The contrast between the instability of, and caprice among, the postSolidarity parties and the relative cohesion of SdRP/SLD and PSL was particularly striking. The two successor formations took advantage of

19

Introduction

this period to consolidate their position on the political scene. SdRP/SLD worked patiently to refashion itself as a modem European, social-democratic formation of constructive reformers with a social conscience and benefited from the impressive performance of its new generation of leaders, particularly Aleksander Kwasniewski. PSL also won credibility and political rehabilitation from Pawlak's short interlude as premier, in June 1992. Both parties also benefited from increasing disillusion with the successive Solidarity-based governments' perceived failures to address the social consequences of liberal economic reforms and the excessive clerical influence on public policy, while the shrill anticommunist fervor of elements on the right seemed increasingly remote from most Poles' everyday concerns. The September 1993 parliamentary election (see Table 1.3) that followed the Suchocka government's defeat in a parliamentary no-confidence vote, in May (ironically proposed by the Solidarity trade union), saw impressive performances by SLD (20.4 percent: 171 seats) and PSL (15.4 percent: 132 seats).48 UD failed to capitalize on Suchocka's personal popularity and was reduced to third place (10.59 percent: 74 seats), while the Labor Union (Unia Pracy [UP]), a new party formed in 1992 by several small socialdemocratic groupings from the Solidarity movement and by reformist ex-communists who chose not to join SdRP, also performed well and finished fourth (7 .28 percent: 41 seats). Table 1.3. Parliamentary Election to the Sejm, September 1993 Party

Votes

Percent

Seats

2,815,169 2,124,367 1,460,957 1,005,004 795,487 746,653

20.41 15.40 10.59 7.28 5.77 5.41

171 132 74 41 22 16

878,445 676,334 609,973 550,578 438,559 383,967 377,480 371,923 327,085

6.37 4.90 4.42 3.99 3.18 2.78 2.74 2.70 2.37

Above the threshold

Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) Polish Peasant Party (PSL) Democratic Union (UD) Labor Union (UP) Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN) Nonparty Bloc in Support of Reforms (BBWR) Below the threshold

Catholic Election Committee 'Fatherland' (KKW'O') Solidarity Center Agreement (PC) Liberal-Democratic Congress (KLD) Union of Real Politics (UPR) Self-Defense Party X Coalition for the Republic (KdR) Polish Peasant Party-Peasant Agreement (PSL-PL) Source: Gebethner, Wybory parlamentame, 20.

20

Poles Together?

A new electoral law explicitly designed to favor larger parties and avoid the extreme fragmentation of the 1991-1993 parliament49 magnified SLD's and PSL's success, as did divisions within the postSolidarity camp, particularly the Right's inability to unite around a common electoral platform. This meant that only six electoral committees secured parliamentary representation (together with a few representatives from the German minority, who were exempt from the threshold requirements). The two successor parties won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Sejm, with only 36 percent of the vote, and 35 percent of the votes were cast for parties-mainly on the right-that failed to cross the new electoral threshold. Of the unambiguously right-wing parties, only KPN (5.77 percent: 22 seats) and a new WalCcsa-inspired formation, the Nonparty Bloc in Support of Reforms (Bezpartyjny Blok na Wspierania Reform [BBWR]) (5.41 percent: 16 seats), were able to secure minimal parliamentary representation. Apart from these, the remainder of the Polish right and center-right-the Catholic Election Committee 'Fatherland' (Katolicki Komitet Wyborczy 'Ojczyzna' [KKW'O']), comprising ZChN, KP, SLCh, and PChD (6.37 percent), the Solidarity trade union (4.90 percent), PC (4.42 percent), KLD (3.99 percent), UPR (3.18 percent), and the Coalition for the Republic (Koalicja dla Rzeczpospolitej [KdR]) comprising, among others, Olszewski's RdR and Macierewicz's RChN-'AP' (2.70 percent), and PSL-PL (2.37 percent}--failed to cross the new threshold requirements and found themselves shut out of parliament. The fourth phase of party development ran from the September 1993 parliamentary election through the November 1995 presidential election. The new SLD-PSL coalition government, which emerged under PSL leader Waldemar Pawlak, was the first since 1989 to enjoy a stable majority in the legislature, although Pawlak was actually replaced as premier by SdRP/SLD-nominee Jozef Oleksy, in March 1995 (following a budget· crisis precipitated by President WalCcsa). But the only postSolidarity parties that drew the logical conclusion from their 1993 election defeat were UD and KLD, which teamed up in April 1994 to form a new party, and the Freedom Union (Unia Wolnosci [UW]), initially under Mazowiecki's leadership, until he was replaced by his former finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, in April 1995. There was also a flurry of initiatives to join forces on the right in the aftermath of their election defeat, the most significant of which were the Secretariat of Center-Right Groupings (Sekretariat Ugrupowan Centroprawicowych [SUC]), which comprised several small parties associated

Introduction

21

with Jan Olszewski (who had been ousted as leader of, and who subsequently resigned from, RdR, in December 1993); the November 11 Agreement (Porozumienie 11 Listopada [Pl lL]), formed mainly by liberal-conservative parties, such as KP, SLCh, PChD, and UPR; and the Alliance for Poland (Przymierze dla Polski [PdP]), involving a number of parties and groupings centered on ZChN and PC but also including other right-wing parties of a more Catholic-nationalist hue, such as PSL-PL and RdR. In spite of these and countless other unity initiatives and attempts to put aside personal and ideological animosities, this period did not actually witness any consolidation on the right. None of these blocs succeeded in making much of an impact beyond the narrow circles of committed activists, and all of them gradually disintegrated, leaving the Right hopelessly divided. Even its qualified successes in the June 1994 local elections, when the Right managed to win seats in a large number of towns and villages, were achieved as a result of coalitions that were brokered locally and often in spite of national leaders' efforts. 50 The Right reached its nadir in November 1995, when its inability to present a united front and agree on a common candidate in the presidential election paved the way for SdRP/SLD leader Aleksander Kwasniewski' s victory. 51 The most significant attempt to select a common right-wing candidate occurred at the St. Catherine's Convention, a primary involving 14 parties and the Solidarity trade union as an observer. It ended in fiasco; the four right-wing candidates who eventually contested the first round expended as much energy attacking one another as they did attacking Kwasniewski. Having ignored the convention and snubbed by all the main right-wing parties, it was actually Lech Wal~sa who unexpectedly emerged as the Right's standard-bearer, winning 33.11 percent in the first round to Kwasniewski's 35.11 percent (see Table 1.4). But with the post-Solidarity formations unable or simply unwilling to rally their supporters behind him, Wal~sa lost narrowly in the second round by 48.28 percent to 51.72 percent. More generally, the election results highlighted the organizational weakness of even the apparently stronger parties, and with the exception of Kwasniewski, all the party-sponsored candidates-Jacek Kuron (UW: 9.22 percent), Waldemar Pawlak (PSL: 4.31 percent), Tadeusz Zielinski (UP: 3.53 percent), Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (ZChN: 2.76 percent), and Janusz Korwin-Mikke (UPR: 2.4 percent}-achieved disappointing results. 52 Kwasniewski's triumph proved to be SdRP/SLD's high-water mark, however. The fifth phase of party development, from the November

22

Poles Together?

1995 presidential election until the September 1997 parliamentary election, opened with the SLD-PSL coalition government immediately embroiled in crisis. Premier Jozef Oleksy was forced to resign, in January 1996, following (unproven) allegations by Wal