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

2001 parliamentary election, however, without undermining SLD-UP’s then strong electoralposition.At the September 2001 election AWSP lost parliamentary representation, obtaining only 5.5 pct. ofthe votes, less than demanded for party alliances to be represented in the parliament. The Polishright became represented by nationalist The League of Families (LPR) and Kaczynskis “Law andJustice Party” ( PiS). The liberal side of the political spectrum was represented by the CitizenPlatform (OP), in the beginning of 2001 it was joined by the SKL, until then a AWS faction. Boththe Freedom Union (UW) and the AWS (Solidarnosc), two founding parties with a background inthe Solidarity movement and occupying several governmental posts in the years since 1989, did notpass the treshold requirements.The question has been raised, why the party alliance AWS failed while the left wing SLDsucceeded. As argued by Michael D. Kennedy (Kennedy, 1991:180), it may be useful to distinguishbetween different types of party alliances, some have been based on economic interaction, i.e. oncommon socio-economic interests and networks, others based on self-identification, i.e. held up byreference to a common enemy (“We” versus “Them”), i.e. the (post)communists. Focus on thecommon “enemy” inevitably reinforce moral policy positions with a narrow space for politicalnegotiations as negotiations signify moral compromise. Inside the “identity” type of alliancesprogrammatic, policy and institutional questions and the economic goal function are neglected.Most voters seem prefer programme and well institutionalised or- alternatively- extreme populistparties, however, until the 2001 election that type of parties could not be found on the Polish Right.Furthermore, many problems have been policy-related bound to the low quality of publicgovernance. As noted by Lena Kolarska-Bobinska 58 , a precondition for a political success is that thepolicy content is communicated to the people properly. Time had passed when parliamentaryelections can be won only by using vague and broad political appeals based on abstract andsymbolic politics. More important than a cabinet reshuffles and institutional infightings is toimprove the whole philosophy of public governance and the mode of decision-making (”filozofiarzadzenia”) and policy implementation. Unfortunately, from the outset the party alliance AWS (andRS AWS) used too much energy to initiate destructive wars against itself (”walka AWS z AWS”).Summarizing, we can say that AWS’ problems can be found on different levels of analysis, onhistorical level in the shape of a reactivation of old “We-Them” contradictions in society with thebuilt-in tendency towards "over-ideologisation" and symbolic politics, on institutional level in theshape of inefficient party organisation and bad institutionalisation, on actor-behavioural level in theshape of too many “wars in the top” characterised by extremely low party loyalty and cohesion, andfinally on policy-level in the shape of several disagreements as regards the concrete “day to day”policy.2.11. AWS’ other ”legs”In this concluding section AWS’ other ”legs” will be examined in more details. As noted above, thefaction SKL has represented the conservative-liberal line. SKL was founded December 1997, and20 persons from SKL were elected to parliament at the 1997 election. SKL was badly organized atleast compared with the Christian-National factions inside AWS. Prominent politicians from SKL,e.g. Jan Maria Rokita and Aleksander Hall, had been former members of Democratic Union (UD),58 Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, ”Kapitalizm nie taki, jaki mial byc”, Gazeta Wyborcza 6.-7. 11. 1999:2-3.66