Regulating Polish politics: “cartel” parties in a non-collusive party system

Abstract

In the first stage of democratic transition, like in most post-communist countries, Poland adopted a more laissez-faire stance towards the regulation of political parties. These regulations, like the one adopted in 1990, were a natural response to the former Communist system and represented a rejection of its restrictions and a fear of a one-party system that could harass the opposition. By the mid-1990s, however, Polish political elite started to recognise the importance of political parties in a modern democracy and the problems related to their functioning and funding. A new development in regulating political parties gradually came about in 1997 as a result of the approval of a new Constitution and Law on Political Parties. This is the story of such legislative change as well as how it has affected the development of both political parties and the party system since 1989.

Keywords:

• political parties
• East-Central Europe
• post-communism
• Poland

Notes on contributors

Fernando Casal Bértoa is a Nottingham Research Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations. He is also co-director of the Centre for Comparative and Political Research (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ccpr/index.aspx) at the University of Nottingham. His work has been published in Party Politics, Government and Opposition, International Political Science Review, South European Society and Politics, and East European Politics.

Marcin Walecki holds a doctorate of philosophy in politics from St. Antony's College at Oxford University and a master's in Law (Hons, Class I) from the Department of Law and Administration at the University of Warsaw. He is a former Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and a board member of the International Political Science Association Research Committee on Political Finance and Political Corruption. Some of his contributions include: International IDEA Handbook on Funding of Political Parties (2003), K. H. Nassmacher's comparative volume Foundations for Democracy (2001), and Transparency International Global Corruption Report 2004, Money and Politics (Warsaw: ISP, 2005).

Notes

1. Neither the May Constitution (1791) – the oldest in the European continent – nor the March Constitution of the Second Polish Republic (1921) contains a reference to “political parties”. It is important to note here though that the Communist Constitution, in force between 1952 and 1992, introduced in 1976 a reference to “the leadership role of the Communist Party [ … ]”, which was later substituted with a general reference to parties in the second half of 1989 (Casal Bértoa, forthcoming).

2. Similar to most post-communist democracies, and following the pattern already established by art. 4.2 of the 1992 Constitution, art. 188.4 assigns to the Constitutional Court the competence to judge “the conformity to the Constitution of the purposes or activities of political parties” (Sadurski 2005, 13).

3. See also Statute on the Election of the President of the Republic of Poland, 1990; Statute on Elections to Local Self-Governments, 1998; Statute on Elections to the Sejm and to the Senate, 2001; Statute on Direct Election of the Village, Town and City Administrator, 2002; and Statute on Elections to the European Parliament, 2004 and recently adopted Electoral Code, 2011

4. Hungary (1989), the extinct Czechoslovakia (January 1990), and Bulgaria (April 1990) clearly preceded it (see Casal Bértoa, Piccio, and Rashkova (forthcoming)).

5. These were considered to be distinct from those parties, neither registered nor enjoying legal status, but permitted to operate legally and openly.

6. Although formally post-constitutional – it was passed almost three months after the Constitutional Act, it entered into force more than two months and a half ahead of the latter.

7. Art. 20.2 states that “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.”

8. At the moment of writing this article, there were 81 parties registered in Poland (PKW 2012).

9. According to the Article 26.2 of the 1997 Constitution “The Armed Forces shall observe neutrality regarding political matters and shall be subject to civil and democratic control.”

10. See the Constitutional Tribunal ruling of 10 April 2002, K 26/00.

11. As referred in art. 43 of the LPP, the procedure for examining these cases is defined in arts. 55–58 of the 1997 Constitutional Tribunal Act.

12. According to art. 45, a political party can also voluntarily dissolve. In such event, the resolution on the party's self-dissolution has to be immediately submitted to the court by “the party's competent governing body” (art. 46).

13. In fact the ruling Civic Platform twice attempted to completely abolish state funding for political parties. In both cases, their actions mobilised the majority of political spectrum against this radical change.

14. Small anonymous donations collected from a large number of donors.

15. This amount obviously excludes membership fees, provided they do not yearly exceed one's minimum monthly wage.

16. As for the financing of election campaigns, political parties have to create a permanent Election Fund to finance their participation in any elections.

17. Membership fees, which remain in territorial units in order to pay for their current activities, are the only exception to this rule.

18. Political parties, coalitions, and groups of voters who wish to compete in elections must form electoral committees following the announcement of elections.

19. In the latter two cases, the amount of the subsidy is divided proportionately among the parties that form the coalition, according to the terms agreed in their electoral agreement.

20. Namely, parties that have formed their own election committees in the elections to the Sejm and have gained at least 3% of valid votes in those elections or are members of an election committee in the elections to the Sejm and have gained in those elections at least 6% of valid votes.

21. See section 29 of the LPP.

22. This reduction of approximately 43% resulted from the December 2010 amendments to the LPP.

23. Political parties are also subjected to tax control. Moreover, in case of criminal proceedings the Public Prosecution Service (during investigations) and the courts (in cases pending before them) have full access to accounting records of these entities.

24. Reports also require an auditor's statement.

25. GRECO stands for “Group of States against Corruption”, established in 1999 by the Council of Europe.

26. Statistics from the period 2001–2005 show that while most parties fulfilled their “reporting” obligations, some parties did it late (7 in 2005), incompletely (12), or not at all (12) (see GRECO 2008, 21).

27. The removal is decided upon by the District Court in Warsaw, on the motion of the Commission.

28. Same applies if the statement is rejected by the National Electoral Commission or if the appeal to the Supreme Court is unsuccessful.

29. For the opposite argument, see Casas-Zamora (2006, 44–45; 218–219), Koole (1996, 517), Roper (2002, 181) or Tavits (2007, 127). Other scholars have found “no effect” at all (Scarrow 2006, 635; Tavits 2006, 109; Grzymała-Busse 2007, 200; Roper 2008, 2–3; Rashkova 2010, 36).

30. While “magnitude” refers to the aggregated frequency of regulatory provisions for all regulatory categories, range tries to simply capture the number of regulated categories. For more details, see Casal Bértoa, Piccio, and Rashkova (forthcoming).

31. In particular, ROP obtained 5.6% of the vote, PO 12.7, PiS 9.5, and RP 10.

32. According to some scholars (e.g. Gwiazda 2009), due to the increasing level of systemic institutionalisation.

33. In fact, only two judgements have been made so far in respect of constitutionality of political parties and both concerned with the details of the statute of two different parties, namely the already mentioned Christian Democratic Party of the Third Polish Republic (OTK 8.III.2000, Pp 1/99) and the Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland (OTK 16.VII.2003, Pp 1/02) (see also Garlicki 2002, 272).

34. This is not to say that parties have not been stripped off from the Register due to financial reporting infractions (see GRECO 2008). Still, they refer to minor political parties deprived of any influence in the party system.

35. Even in this case, the great amount of such volatility at the electoral level can be explained by the great level of party switching of Polish political elites (Markowski and Cześnik 2002), rather than by the introduction of stricter funding regulations.

36. Interesting enough, and perhaps with the exception of Spirova (2007), no works following this “causal” path could be found in the literature.

37. Even if deprived of state support between 1990 and 1993, as “post-communist successors”, both SLD and PSL had important economic “private” assets inherited from the previous political regime (Szczerbiak 2001).

38. Both UP and SdPL even managed to return to parliament and form their own parliamentary group in 2001 and 2007, respectively.

39. For a previous account on the non-cartelisation of Polish party organisations between 1990 and 2002, see Szczerbiak (2001).

40. The same was the case for PSL until very recently (i.e. November 2012).

41. That is, by parliamentary elites.

42. The PSL lost its right to the annual subvention for a period of three years due to illegal financing during the 2001 electoral campaign. Not happy with the sanction, which also included the devolution of donations perceived as well as the money “illegally” spent, the party decided to judicially appeal the resolution. As the appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court, the PSL is still paying the sanction as well as the enormous sum of interests generated (Casal Bértoa, forthcoming).

43. As defined by Katz and Mair (1995).

44. As observed by Sartori (1976, 14), “Political pluralism points to ‘the diversification of power’ and ( … ) to the existence of a ‘plurality of groups that are both independent and noninclusive’”.