In the first half of 2001 the US Department of State, following a request from the National Security Archive (a US non-governmental organisation), declassified documents relating to the Round Table negotiations, the presidential elections, the crisis over choice of a prime minister and the creation of government (coalition) in Poland in 1989. Those documents, highly confidential until their release, allow us to look at the most important events in the transformation in Poland from a different perspective, which has not yet been extensively analysed. In essence, they indicate the role of external factors which have influenced the political situation of Poland – the transformation and actual decomposition of communism. They include cables detailing the US embassy’s participation in, and its analysis of the events during Poland’s ‘revolution’.

Cross-Party Electoral Agreements in the Form of Coalition Election Committees and Party Election Committees in the Polish General Elections in 2018–2019

Election committees in Poland nominate candidates for elections and organize election campaigns for them. The legislator lists three types of committees that may take part in elections to the Sejm, Senate and the European Parliament: the election committee of a political party, a coalition election committee and an election committee of voters. Of these, the coalition committee is the most complicated formula – to organize it, an agreement between several parties is required. In 2019, Poland saw a consolidation of the political scene – at that time, in the elections to the European Parliament, only six committees put up lists of candidates across the country, while in the elections to the Sejm – only five committees. This was because multi- party electoral agreements formally took part in the elections as party rather than coalition election committees. So is the institution of a coalition election committee still useful?