Leaders without Leadership: Surrogate Governments in Poland

Abstract

The subject of this analysis is a situation observed in Poland and, in recent years, other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, in which the leadership of the executive is located outside a constitutionally defined government. A representative situation in which a prime minister is controlled by a party leader without a formal government position is defined as a ‘surrogate government’. Five Polish cabinets in the period 1991–2019 met the preliminary criteria of ‘surrogate government’; of these, the cabinets of Beata Szydło and Mateusz Morawiecki come closest to fulfilling the criteria completely.

Notes

1 In order to check whether similar cases have occurred in other democratic European states, the author analysed them all, focusing primarily on whether the executive branch had been headed by the leader or one of the leaders of the governing or co-governing party. All caretaker governments were excluded (McDonnell & Valbruzzi 2014, p. 654). The cases of some countries (the UK, Germany, France, the Scandinavian states, Switzerland) were verified on the basis of the existing literature. With respect to the other countries, the author consulted experts on the policies of particular countries in order to confirm his conclusions. These consultations were conducted by email, by means of the contact list of the European Parties Elections and Referendums Network (see, ‘EPERN Membership List 2018’, Sussex European Institute, available at: http://m.sussex.ac.uk/sei/research/europeanpartieselectionsreferendumnetwork/membershiplist, accessed 5 May 2018). Feedback was provided by 28 experts specialising in particular countries or groups of countries. No expert ascertained the occurrence of ‘a surrogate government’ in any other democratic European state, making this phenomenon unique to Poland.

2 See also Gailmard (2014).

3 The issue of veto players in the context of establishing parliamentary coalitions was analysed by Tsebelis and Ha (2014), in terms of the influence of particular parties on the policy position of a future government. The aspect of veto players referred to in this article has not been studied because of the lack of relevant examples from other parliamentary democracies.

4 ‘Zaufanie do polityków w czerwcu’, CBOS. Komunikat z badań, no. BS/77/2011, June 2011, p. 3, available at: http://www.cbos.pl/PL/publikacje/raport.php, accessed 24 December 2016; ‘Zaufanie do polityków we wrześniu’, CBOS. Komunikat z badań, BS/132/2013, September 2013, p. 3, available at: http://www.cbos.pl/PL/publikacje/raport.php, accessed 24 December 2016.

5 The Little Constitution was a temporary constitutional act in force during the years 1992–1997, that is, before the enactment of the 1997 Constitution currently in force.

6 A questionnaire was sent to 50 experts, holding at least PhD degrees in political sciences or sociology of politics, who specialised in the party system in Poland; 23 of them returned their questionnaires. The participants were asked to carry out a comprehensive (including retrospective) assessment of the degree of intra-party democracy in the particular parties, using a five-point scale in which: (1) the party is fully democratic, which means that all members participate in decision-making processes; (2) the party is dominated by elites, but party activists also take part in decision-making processes; (3) the party’s decisions are made by party leaders, but party members from outside the executive group, such as MPs, are also active in decision-making processes; (4) decisions in the party are made by a narrow inner circle, without the participation of any people outside this circle; and (5) decisions in the party are always made individually by the leader.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Krzysztof Zuba

Krzysztof Zuba, Institute of Political Science, University of Opole, ul. Katowicka 89, Opole 45-061, Poland. Email: [email protected]