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

AWS should fight against all types of political capitalism. Jan Parys 54 argued that AWS’ problemswere caused by the bad leadership and treachery against its original inspired election-programmesand anti-communist and anti-liberal discourses.Former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki 55 expressed the opinion that the foundation of AWS assuch was a success. Now the main task was to create a sufficiently strong Christian-Democraticidentity, and a more viable party organization culture. That task has not yet been solved. Anotherbig problem was the lack of ability to take a rational position to political power, to use the politicalpower to modernise the economy with due respect to the feelings and long-term interests of thePolish people. Organisational cohesion and de-freezing of old ideological cleavages should befollowed by pragmatization on policy-level. In order to survive AWS should be transformed to a“standard” political party or at least a functional federation consisting of different political groups,but nothing of that kind happened. Most groups inside AWS acted as veto-groups, not as policycreatingentities such as has been the case in the “post-communist” SLD. More policy-creation wasnecessary, should AWS be transformed to a functional federation and in the longer run a unitarypolitical party.It may seem paradoxical that only the Freedom Union (UW), the most secularized among theChristian parties, were represented in the all-European Association of Christian parties. Thatmonopoly was not accidental. The political profile of UW was consistent with the dominant trend inEuropean politics based on moderate pro-European and pro-market secular attitudes to society andpolitics.Former leader of The Works Union (UP), Rychard Bugaj 56 , expressed himself on the same line asMazowiecki. AWS had won the election in 1998, he said, primarily because many Poles expectedmore honesty in politics and looked after new political ideas and projects. Instead AWS became atactical alliance of power. Contrary to AWS’ own propaganda, no “breakthrough” took place on thepolicy level, we have only been observing a passive follow-up on reform plans introduced byprevious the SLD-PSL-government. In fact, AWS behaved as a movement without leadership andvisions. The result was a drastic fall in voter support, in the end an internal dissolution or demise ofthe alliance.Part of the problems has been due to the fact that AWS was a young party formation with theuncertainty that inevitably follows from that as regards policy-formulation, party organisation andcreation of solidarity and loyalty among the different groups inside the alliance. Liberal utopia andmyths clashed with traditionalist national- and Christian 57 . Disagreements inside the allianceincreased when concrete policy initiatives were put on the agenda. Functional strategies for copingwith concrete policies were badly needed. Many inside the new political elite can best be consideredas “moral-politicians” and politicians believing in a ”historical mission”. The political culture of thepast, the view that politics was mostly a question about “life and dead”, was difficult to eliminate, atleast in the short term. After the take-over of governmental responsibilities more partyinstitutionalisation and professionalisation was needed, nonetheless still personal interests were stillplaced in the front. Unfortunately, only so long as AWS was able promote itself on the symbol-levelfacing a common enemy (e.g. the “(post)communists), a façade of unity could be maintained.54 Tygodnik Solidarnosc 45 (581), 1999:12.55 Interview in Polityka no. 37 (2210), 11.9. 1999:21-22 and in Gazeta Wyborcza 29.-30.2. 2000.56 Rychard Bugaj, ”Co przed Akcja”, Gazeta Wyborcza, 2.2. 2000.57 See e.g. Leszek Koczanowski, “Cztery mity “Solidarnosci”, Gazeta Wybrocza 22-22 August 2004:15-16.64