Development of Parties and Party Systems in ... - lah@sam.sdu.dk

and creation of new parties and party alliances were impressive. In the first years many aimed tomarginalise and even exclude the “post-communist” SdRP and the left party alliance SLD from theparty political scene. At the same time SLD tried its best to be accepted as a relevant standardpolitical party and as soon as possible become a member of the social democratic SocialistInternational (SI).The cleavages inherited from the period before 1989 were reactivated at the presidential election in1995 and during discussions about the new constitution in 1995 and 1996. The early freezing of theold “We” versus “Them” discourse became an insurmountable obstacle for the establishment of ahistorical compromise between the “postcommunist” SLD and the social liberal Democratic Union(UD), the later Freedom Union (UW)). The national-accommodative system in Poland had beenless suppressive than in most other CEECs, nonetheless, on the discoursive level the “We-Them”distinction remained striking. As a result, at the mid 1990s Poland moved closer to polarizedpluralism, in which case many relevant parties are present, i.e. parties with a big coalition potentialor an effective veto power, at the same time the ideological distances between the parties wereconsiderable.From the outset the formation of political parties and party systems followed the same line as in theother Central European countries; first the creation of broad movement parties, e.g. Solidarity, andthe reconstruction and later the creation of “post-communist parties”, e.g. SLD and PSL. The 1989election was followed by party-fragmentation and destructive ”wars in the top” in the Solidaritymovement between pragmatists and fundamentalists, in part caused by the new electoral law, whichhad no threshold requirement for representation in parliament. No consistent strategies for copingwith such conflicts (the conflict “between us”) were developed. Also the alliance betweenintellectuals and workers soon disappeared. To sum up, the first stage of post-communism wasmarked by electoral volatility, party fragmentation and protest voting. Only the agrarian party PSLwas signified by mass party characteristics and several core voters. Furthermore, the boundariesbetween parties and interest groups remained porous, among others due to weak partyinstitutionalisation.Poland has been rich on polarisation of the reactive type, e.g. in the shape of a “for or against theBalcerowicz plans”. The reactive polarisation was repeated in the case of privatisations, the wageregulation, the administrative reform and the health reform etc. The explanation shall be found inthe legacy of “output-articulation” going back to the “communist time”. The “wars in the top” wereharmful for the law making process because the “wars in the top” were followed by “wars of laws”.As noted by Wlodzimierz Weselowski, the re-activization of cleavages expressed a plannedpolarisation of the political life from the Solidarity side 40 . As the economic growth and socialmobility declined, group consciousness increased and even tended to challenge the new postcommunistsystem. The refusal of cooperation with “post-communists” was mainly tactical asreferences to the common enemy and the common Christian values might suppress internaldisagreements and reduce popular dissatisfaction with the chosen economic and social policy. Likein most other CEEC’s a change was observed towards majoritarian democracy based on theprinciple that “the winner takes it all”.The 1993 election brought the ”post-communists” (SLD, PSL) in power mainly due to the lowparticipation at the elections and the decline of confidence in parliaments and polical parties.40 Wlodzimierz Weselowski, ”Aktorzy politycznej i demokracja”, in Grabowski and Mocek, 1997:67.45