https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2241-0831
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ABSTRACT
Since 2015, the governing party, Law and Justice (PiS), has gradually eroded democratic institutions in Poland. To find out whether this process has been reflected in the political discourse solely as a collapse of liberal democracy or whether we are observing a narrative redefinition of the meaning of democracy, we conducted a systematic qualitative study of the framing of democracy in PiS parliamentary speeches (2001–2020), set against the comparative background of major Polish political parties. Having adapted the Varieties of Democracy’s classification of dimensions of democracy to discourse analysis, we show that while the liberal model of democracy has dominated Polish political discourse, it has been used by PiS less frequently than by other parties and in an increasingly critical way. Furthermore, electoral and majoritarian democracy has been growing in importance and the will of the electoral majority has been used to legitimize breaking democratic procedures. However, the government’s broad redistributive policies have not been accompanied by a more egalitarian vision of democracy. We argue that the unwillingness to incorporate an egalitarian dimension into narratives on democracy demonstrates that the ruling party frames redistribution as their conditional charity towards selected social and occupational groups and not as a corrective towards economically inclusive democracy.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Amanda Dziubińska for contributing to data coding, and Zsófia Papp, Paula Pustułka, Justyna Kajta, and two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Bogaards, “De-Democratization in Hungary.”
2 Lührmann and Lindberg, “A Third Wave.”
3 Hanley and Vachudova, “Understanding the Illiberal Turn.”
4 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2020.
5 Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die; Lührmann and Lindberg, “A Third Wave.”
6 Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 5.
7 Diamond, “Toward Democratic Consolidation,” 15.
8 CBOS, Stosunek do demokracji.
9 Anderson et al., Losers’ Consent; Blais and Gélineau, “Winning, Losing and Satisfaction.”
10 Kwiatkowska, “Poglądy – sympatie partyjne.”
11 Ferrín and Kriesi, How Europeans View.
12 Wilson and Boese, “Empirical Dimensions of Electoral”; Markowski and Kwiatkowska, “The Political Impact.”
13 Guriev, “Economic Drivers of Populism”; Burgoon et al., “Positional Deprivation”; Gidron and Hall, “The Politics of Social Status”; Engler and Weisstanner, “The Threat of Social Decline.”
14 Stanley, “Populism in Central.”
15 Słomczyński et al., “Changes in Class Structure.”
16 Gilens and Murakawa, “Elite Cues and Political.”
17 Oksanen, “Framing the Democracy Debate”; Kanra, Islam, Democracy and Dialogue; Parra, Bakker, and van Liere, “Framing Democracy.”
18 Coppedge et al., V-Dem Codebook v11.
19 Cunningham, Theories of Democracy; Munck and Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring”; Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring.”
20 Ferrín and Kriesi, How Europeans View.
21 Sack, “Regime Change.”
22 Ceka and Magalhaes, “Do the Rich.”
23 Sack, “Regime Change.”
24 Young, Inclusion and Democracy.
25 Knutsen and Wegmann, “Is Democracy about Redistribution.”
26 Welzel, Norris, and Inglehart, “Gender Equality.”
27 Coppedge et al., V-Dem Codebook v11.
28 Knutsen and Wegmann, “Is Democracy about Redistribution.”
29 Van Aelst et al., “Political Communication,” 19.
30 Diamond, “Toward Democratic Consolidation.”
31 Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring”; Knusten and Wegmann, “Is Democracy about Redistribution.”
32 Engler et al., Democracy Barometer.
33 Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring.”
34 Imbeau, Petry, and Lamari, “Left-Right Ideology”; Knusten and Wegmann, “Is Democracy About Redistribution.”
35 Jou and Dalton, “Left-Right Orientations.”
36 Huber and Stephens, Democracy and the Left.
37 Bakker, Jolly, and Polk, “Complexity in the European Party Space.”
38 Marks et al., “Party Competition,” 159.
39 Jasiewicz, “Pocketbook or Rosary.”
40 Orenstein and Bugarič, “Work, Family, Fatherland.”
41 Słomczyński et al., “Changes in Class Structure.”
42 Orenstein and Bugarič, “Work, Family, Fatherland”; Swindal, “Ideology and Social Position.”
43 Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity.
44 Bakker, Jolly, and Polk, “Complexity in the European Party Space.”
45 Cześnik and Kotnarowski, “Nowy wymiar.”
46 Żerkowska-Balas, Lyubashenko, and Kwiatkowska, “Determinanty preferencji wyborczych.”
47 Markowski and Kwiatkowska, “The Political Impact.”
48 Jaskułowski, The Everyday Politics.
49 Guriev, “Economic Drivers of Populism”; Norris and Inglehart, Cultural Backlash.
50 Gromadzki, Sałach, and Brzezinski, “When Populists Deliver.”
51 Sadurski, “Polish Constitutional Tribunal.”
52 Przybylski, “Explaining Eastern Europe.”
53 Sadura and Sierakowski, Polityczny cynizm; Bill and Stanley, “Whose Poland.”
54 PO (Civic Platform); KO (Civic Coalition), the electoral coalition formed around PO in 2018 in opposition to undemocratic decisions imposed by PiS.
55 SLD (Democratic Left Alliance), social-democratic, post-communist successor party; The Left, a political alliance formed in 2019 consisting of SLD, the Spring and the Left Together.
56 Bernhard et al., “The Varieties of Democracy Core”; Coppedge et al., V-Dem Codebook v11.
57 Consensual, participatory and deliberative dimensions of democracy were left out of the focus of this study as they are generally underrepresented in PiS political discourse and we did not observe any substantial cross-time changes for those models.
58 Przybylski, “Explaining Eastern Europe.”
59 Cześnik and Kotnarowski, “Nowy wymiar.”
60 Sadura and Sierakowski, Polityczny cynizm; Bill and Stanley, “Whose Poland.”
61 Gromadzki, Sałach, and Brzezinski, “When Populists Deliver.”
62 Cunningham, Theories of Democracy; Munck and Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring.”
63 See Coppedge et al., V-Dem Codebook v11.
64 Speeches are coded using the scheme: term_session_day_speech number.
65 Przybylski, “Explaining Eastern Europe.”
66 Sadurski, “Polish Constitutional Tribunal.”
67 See Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist.”
68 Coppedge et al., V-Dem Codebook v11.
69 Sadurski, “Polish Constitutional Tribunal.
70 Jaskułowski, The Everyday Politics.
71 Przybylski, “Explaining Eastern Europe.”
72 Sadura and Sierakowski, Polityczny cynizm; Bill and Stanley, “Whose Poland.”
73 Jaskułowski, The Everyday Politics.
74 Cześnik and Kotnarowski, “Nowy wymiar.”
75 Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die; Lührmann and Lindberg, “A Third Wave.”
76 Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist.”
77 Linz and Stepan, Problem of Democratic Transition.
78 Brzezinski, Myck, and Najsztub, “Sharing the Gains of Transition.”
79 Keskinen, Norocel, and Jørgensen, “The Politics and Policies.”
80 Schumacher and Van Kersbergen, “Do Mainstream Parties Adapt.”
81 Markowski and Kwiatkowska, “The Political Impact.”
82 Jaskułowski, The Everyday Politics.
83 Krzyżanowski, “Discursive Shifts in Ethno-Nationalist Politics.”
84 Staniszkis, Post-Communism; Renwick, “Why Hungary and Poland.”
85 Appel and Orenstein, From Triumph to Crisis.
86 Welzel, “Democratic Horizons”; Lührmann, “Disrupting the Autocratization.”
87 Algan et al., “The European Trust Crisis.”
88 See Rovira Kaltwasser, “The Ambivalence of Populism.”
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Notes on contributors
Agnieszka Kwiatkowska
Agnieszka Kwiatkowska is an Assistant Professor at the SWPS University of Social Science and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland, holds PhD in sociology and MA in political science. Her research focuses on political discourse: how issues are politicized, introduced into the parliamentary competition and become determinants of political behaviours. Currently, she is a Principal Investigator in the project “Institutionalization of political parties in the parliaments of Central Europe – data mining of parliamentary debates” (funded by the National Science Centre) in which she researches mixed methods of analysing parliamentary speeches and voting.
Viktoriia Muliavka
Viktoriia Muliavka, a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences and holds a degree in economy and society from the University of Lancaster and the Graduate School for Social Research. Within her research, she focuses on the regional and class inequalities in protest participation in Central Eastern and Western Europe. She has been working in multiple research projects in Polish Academy of Sciences and SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Her research interests include protest participation, political parties, socio-economic inequality, post-socialist transformations, comparative research, data analysis and quantitative methods.
Hubert Plisiecki
Hubert Plisiecki, a PhD Candidate in Psychology, works at the intersection of political science, psychology, sociology, linguistics and machine learning. Granted Masters of Science in Psychological Research Methods with Data Science, currently working on a PhD at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). Assistant at the lab of Digital Social Sciences at PAN; on a political grant which uses natural language processing to analyse parliamentary speeches at SWPS University. Coordinator of the Society of Open Science, and the Neurocognitive Society at the SWPS University. Member of the Social AI society at Warsaw University. Research interests include: Machine Learning in Social Science, Meta-analytic Bias Detection, Theory of Constructed Emotion and Community Psychology.