▼ ▼ Click this button to submit your paper ▼ ▼

▲ ▲ Click this button to submit your paper ▲ ▲

Aims and Scope

The Polish Political Science Yearbook (PPSY) is an international, open access, and peer-reviewed journal publishing high-standard research on political science, international relations, and public policy. The PPSY serves as a forum for academic scholars and professionals to support the latest analytical and methodological advancements and promote current work in political science and Polish studies.

For full aims and scope please visit section "About the journal"

This paper is not an attempt to present the process of political changes that occurred in Poland after the end of the Second World War. Its aim is to indicate and explain the characteristics of the process of political change which after 1945 turned Poland into a totalitarian socialist state, and from 1989 led to the construction of the democratic state. The fate of Poland and other Eastern European countries was decided by the strategic interests of the great powers. The memory of the victims of war and democratic axiology gave way to the calculations and domination of force. Many nations were deprived of subjectivity and the possibility of sovereign choice in their future development. In Poland the place of the sovereign nation had been taken by a small group of politicians who became the plenipotentiaries of the Soviet leadership. The creation of the totalitarian system was an essential precondition for the implementation of the Stalinist model of society entirely dominated by the Communist Party, the state described as socialist, and its apparatus of repression. The rule over the nation, although it was called the dictatorship of the proletariat, was a dictatorship over the enslaved society. Only the gradual erosion and finally the collapse of the centre of communist world, created in this part of Europe the possibility to choose freely the model of collective life. The victory of the Polish Solidarity and the fall of Berlin Wall alike symbolize the overcoming the post-Yalta order and the return of these nations to the European, democratic idea of social order. After 1989 the political solutions in which power is protecting the needs, interests and aspirations of each individual as well as the common good, considered the summum bonnum, were chosen. This power is by its very nature decentralised.

From this short, synthetic review of participation of Presidents in cabinet formation in 1989 – 1995 results that W. Jaruzelski was fully loyal towards processes of democratic changes in Poland. The position of the first, in the history of third RP, head of state was weakened by fiasco of C. Kiszczak mission of government formation; the politician indicated by the President appeared ineffective. But W. Jaruzelski accepted C. Kiszczak failure with dignity and he engaged himself in the process of formation of T. Mazowiecki cabinet although he had constitutional instruments to block it. “President Jaruzelski, Siwicki (Ministry of Defence) and I spread a protective umbrella over this Cabinet against »hardliners« in Poland and abroad.”. L. Wałęsa, benefiting from social consent, very actively took part in the process of formation of solidarity cabinets both before and after he became the head of state. He, with the substantive help of his closest and most trusted associate – prof Lech Falandysz – forced through a favourable for himself interpretation of art 61 of Small Constitution. Because of this, ministers from MoD, MIA, MFA in Pawlak and Oleksy’s Cabinets were appointed by the head of state. It should be stressed that L. Wałęsa helped to promote two prominent politicians: J.K Bielecki and W. Pawlak.

Shipyards plants were a significant element of Polish government marine policies between 2005 and 2008. The decision made by the Council of Ministers, aimed at taking countermeasures against the credit balance of the following companies of the ship building sector: Stocznia Gdynia S.A., Stocznia Szczecińska Nowa Sp. z o.o. (SSN) and Stocznia Gdańsk Grupa Stoczni Gdynia S.A. (Stocznia Gdańsk GSG S.A.). The only way to achieve economic stability was first through a complete overhaul of their functioning and then through a privatization process. After Poland joined the EU on 1st May, 2004, the process of restructuring these companies was being conducted using public financial aid, to which the European Commission had to give its permission. While becoming the EU member state, Poland was obliged to inform the European Commission of its intention to ! nancially help the shipyards. The Commission‘s decision in this matter depended on how it assessed the plan of restructuring these companies. 

For most of September and October 2005, the Polish news media were busy covering the parliamentary and the presidential elections in that country. Beginning two weeks apart from one another, with the presidential run-off election following two weeks later, these overlapping campaigns became the most important media and political events of the year. Their conjunction was an occurrence expected to happen once in 20 years because of Poland’s five-year presidential term and a four-year parliamentary term. For the first time since 1989, the result was that the President, the upper house of the parliament (Senat) and the lower house (Sejm) of the parliament are now controlled by the same party, Law and Justice (PiS). For the first time since Solidarity swept both elections, the Polish electorate has also made a definite turn to the right, voting for a political party that supports radical change, the symbolic setting up of a Fourth Republic which will be a morally superior country in contrast to the third Republic, the independent Polish state established after the Solidarity revolution when Poland was the first country in the former Soviet Block to end communism. This essay analyzes the 2005 presidential campaign from the point of view of agenda setting theory of how political communication is framed in campaign messages, media use and media coverage.

Emergence of parties and party systems in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, in comparison with the emergence of parties and party systems in Western Europe, was different in at least two ways. First, they were forming up in the time of crisis of political parties in general. Western political parties, as Martin Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan indicated were a result of sociolopolitical cleavages (Lipset, Rokkan 1967), which enabled them to formulate their programmes and define their electorates. However, since the late 1960’ there have been many changes, due to new socio-political context. Relations between parties and their electorates started to diminish as a result of new sociopolitical differences and the parties themselves started to look for new supporters (tried, with the help of media, to become catch all parties). Parallel to this, ideologies stopped playing the main, defining role in the process of voting for the party. But still, as Lipset claims in an article describing party systems in postcommunist Europe, parties must have steady voter alignments based on sociopolitical divisions in order to successfully take part in consecutive general elections, until then they are unstable.