In case my British and American readers have been puzzling over the recent descriptions in their media of the late President Kaczyński as being 'right wing', here's a simple graph above that I prepared ahead of the 2005 elections to show that the Anglo-Saxon concepts of 'left' and 'right' don't make too much sense in the context of Polish politics. You need to operate in two axes. A social one, where 'right' means traditional, conservative, patriotic, religious, espousing traditional family values; while 'left' means modern, secular, tolerant, cosmopolitan, liberal. And an economic one, where 'right' means the free market, privatisation, laissez-faire, small government, low taxes, while 'left' means statism, dirigisme, big government, redistribution of wealth; tax and spend. You can argue about where exactly one should plot the position of the given parties on the graph, but essentially, the point is to put the parties into one of four quarters.
In the above graph, you will see the two biggest parties in Polish politics occupying quarters that neither of the main British or American parties occupy. Hence the problems with understanding Polish politics. Supporters of Poland's Law & Justice (PiS) might see eye-to-eye with American Republicans on Christianity, patriotic duty, abortion and gay rights, but would disagree on the primacy of free enterprise over the state.
The word 'liberal' in the US (and in the UK to a lesser degree) means 'social liberal'. In Poland, it means both economic and social liberal.
If anyone would occupy the same quarter as PiS, it would be - further to the right - Generalissimo Franco (God-fearing, patriotic, anti-communist, syndicalist, suspicious of enterprise) and, more moderately, the French Gaullists.
The forthcoming Polish presidential elections will be fought over an entirely different battleground than the UK parliamentary elections. What the respective media of both countries will make of the elections in the other will no doubt be sprinkled with much misunderstanding.
The post-communist Polish 'left' (the SLD) is more free market than PiS and more socially liberal than PO; but it is increasingly marginalised. Its place in the nation's debate is becoming irrelevant. A comparison with Irish politics (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) is apt; two parties that you'd be hard pressed to tell apart (one is Christian Democrat Centrist, the other Conservative Centrist). The fault line between the two is which side their grandfathers fought on in the Irish Civil War - the Pro-Treaty side, ready to accept the compromise that left the Six Counties British, or the Republican side, that would not give up the struggle to unify Ireland. 87 years ago.
The parallel with Poland is clear. PO is seen as the successor party to the wing of Solidarity that accepted the Round Table compromise which left the communists unpersecuted in return for giving up power, while PiS is the successor to the harder-line anti-communists that insisted on the heirs to the PZPR being brought to book for their crimes against the nation.
The Smolensk tragedy may lead to a mould being broken, a destiny to follow the Irish path for decades to come may not come to pass.
Posts
16 comments:
I would argue Civic Platform is in a wrong quarter. Compared to PiS it's much more modern, future-oriented, but is this a secular party? When Mr Gowin is its voice in social issues? Civic Platform has many flanks but the most rightist one gives voice whenever the party air its social views. PO has too close tie-ups with the Church and is too afraid of its opinions, is moderately tolerant and moderately cosmopolitan, as compared to SLD. For me,
PO should in my opinion overlap UK Conservatives , I'd put it to the right of vertical axis.
Still there's no such a party which would fit the upper-left quarter. Once those idea were represented by Unia Wolności, then by Demokraci.pl, but both were marginalised, the latter made a big mistake by allying with SLD and SdPl.
Right-wing and left-wing is too simplified division - it doesn't fully cover socialist and conservative parties like Law and Justice and economically and socially liberal, such as German FDP.
Civic Platform is (just) to the left of the vertical axis. As I wrote a few months back, the key differentiator between PO and the Tories is Europe. PO is more pro-European, the Conservatives are at heart semi-detatched and Eurosceptical. Do bear in mind too that in general, the Polish population is further right along the horizontal axis than the Brits.
It seems to me that Z-axis would be useful here, marking populism...
thank you for this! I finally found something to show foreign friends who care at least a bit about Polish politics... I would add dots to mark the position of the parties more precisely - in my view student SGH is correct. Civic Platform is as conservative as the majority of the population is - I would place it on the vertical axis.
One of the most frenetic ideological mantra regarding the UK Conservatives and the US Republicans (esp. in terms of Thatcherism and Reaganomics) is such as that, that such people (unciounsly?) adulterate a core philosophy of these two politics relying on a "fine tuning" principle. So here is a citation of one of the most prominent ideologist of the conservative movement, Roger Scrutton, who writes (R. Scrutton, "Co znaczy konserwatyzm", tł. polskie. Michael might retlanslate it on English):
"Od początku Partia Konserwatywna realizowała twardą i energiczną politykę fiskalną; nie tylko stale ograniczała wolny handel [Wow! - my annotation.], ale również wprowadzała stały podatek dochodowy oraz ustawy regulujące sprzedaż i warunki pracy. [Wow! Again. - my annotation] W świetle jej historii powojenne nawrócenie się partii na teorię ekonomiczną Keynesa [Is Scrutton a heretic? - my annotation] można postrzegać jako naturalną ewolucję myślową, odejście o kolejny krok od poglądu (w różnych wariantach wykazywanego lub przyjmowanego jako założenie przez Smitha, Ricarda i Millów), że stosunki ekonomiczne regulują regulują się same (toteż z próby ingerowania w nie może wyniknąć niewiele dobrego, lecz wiele złego), w stronę bardziej wiarygodnego przekonania, że roli państwa nie da się przecenić oraz że bez nadzoru państwa w każdej chwili może rozplenić się bieda i bezrobocie. Być może nie jest przypadkowe, że kiedy Partia Konserwatywna pod przywództwem Margaret Thatcher porzuciła swoją koncepcję roli państwa w gospodarce i wciągnęła na maszt sztandar liberalnej ekonomiki, z czasem opuścił ją elektorat, a stary sojusz interesów, który przez stulecie ją popierał, nagle się rozpadł. Atoli, rzecz osobliwa, polityka, która przyczyniła się do upadku Partii Konserwatywnych - ekonomika wolnorynkowa pod egidą globalnych korporacji - jest teraz z wielkim zapałem realizowana przez Nową Partię Pracy Ton'yego Blaira i bez wątpienia spowoduje porażkę także tej partii." (p. 163-164) Gosh! What a heresy? So, read further: "(...) Lojalność obywateli wymaga ustalonych oczekiwań, wyrobionego wyobrażenia o sytuacji materialnej swojej i innych tudzież poczucia, że nie są ofiarami nie kontrolowanych sił, które mogą w każdej chwili wpędzic ich w nędzę lub wynieść innych na niepojęty poziom bogactwa. Bez tego poczucia nie może być mowy o autorytecie państwa, toteż na państwie spoczywa odpowiedzialność za stabilizowanie i obronę narodowej waluty oraz wszystkich oczekiwań materialnych z tym związanych. Atoli, z czego konserwatyści do niedawna zawsze zdawali sobie sprawę, daje to rację do opowiadania się nie za wolnym rynkiem [Wow! - my annotation.], lecz za czymś mniej więcej przeciwstawnym. W istocie, wychodząc od tej konstatacji, Partia Konserwatywna akceptowałą niekiedy teorie ekonomiczne - na przykład Keynesa [StudentSGH. Did you know that? - Marcin] - w myśl których ingerencja państwa w procesy rynkowe stanowi społeczną i ekonomiczną konieczność." So, on such a ground, the Law and Justice settled its principles and politics. A wise governmentability grounded on the institutionalism and the new institutional economics. Not a rude neoliberalism. By the way. Girls and boys of the Civic Platform, the Washingtonian Consensus collapsed. Haven't you ever heard about that?
Well, going further. The Civic Platform is a mix of pleasantly-to-hear free markent "new-talks" (nowo-mowa) baked with a souce of the primitive populism. That's a kind of the "śpiewka" (What's a proper word for that?) "Something pleasant for everyone" ("Dla każdego coś miłego"), aming to create an emploi of that party that makes it everyone-friendly. For a bum, a janitor, a charwoman, a university professor, a houskeeper, a journalist, an artist, an engineer... The universal mass product. Fast moving consumer good. Wash-and-go, two-in-one.... That party was assebled on "economics of scale" concept with a huge impact of a pop-arts scheme, that is similiar to celebrities image creation.
Jan - you can indeed put populists into any quarter so adding another dimension would be useful. To me, a populist is either a liar or a fool - or (as is so often the case) - both.
Filip - PO has to play conservative to win votes from the PiS electorate. There's no point in going after the soft-left vote when there's so little of it. Look at how Labour under Tony Blair and the Democrats under Bill Clinton moved as close as they could to their rival parties so they could not be outmanouevred from that flank. Privately, PO politicians are further along the axis than their party's public face.
Marcin - I'm a fan of Roger Scruton (one 't')- a great philopsopher of our times. I drink therefore I am and Beauty - also worth reading.
Politics today is like beer advertising - the triumph of style over substance. Still, one has to make one's mind up ultimately and vote.
Look at the difference between Slovenia and Serbia to see how much making the right choice at the ballot box matters.
I remember the post about Europe-orientedness, but if you want to see PO as a counter-balance to PiS, you might also contend that the division into right- and left-wing is out of date and out of place in Poland. It's not a silly concept, given that many Poles have conservative social and socialist economic views and the growing population of liberal voters. Time will tell.
It's true what you and filip say, where we plot PO depends of we use absolute or relative measurements.
Marcin - British economy until Mrs Thatcher took over had been strongly Keynesian. I know the episode and look at the new face of Tories - socially sensitive, both main UK parties are drifting towards the centre of political scene, drifting towards each other.
But doesn't that mean mixing fools with honest people ? (Where'd you place Samoobrona on your diagram ? Near UK Labour ?) And yet another thing is that some parties take populist stance on some matters (PiS on criminal justice, for instance) while being more subdued on other.
I agree with the first opinion - PO isn't socially liberal. It's too afraid of the church. The idea of the party for everybody just doesn't work. As they aren't able to have consensus on social problems the members vote according to their "conscience" which is a clear escape. In fact not so many things differentiate PO from PiS. Lech Kaczyński wasn't so anti-European TVN wanted to see him...
Michael, I appreciate translating Polish politics but please do it one more time:)
Paulina - I disagree with the idea that PO and PiS can be lumped together in the same quarter. I tried this graph on two of my students (both lawyers) this morning, and though there was a debate as to PiS's economic policy, both placed PO to the left of the vertical axis.
Paulina - let's hear your interpretation of the Polish political scene!
All the best,
M.
Yes, let's have a discussion. If PO and PiS wanted to enter a coalition and rule Poland together for at least for years, they must have been similar at the time. Then PiS began going into extremes, allied with populist parties and PO dissociated itself from that government. I sent out a few text messages to my friends interested in politics and two third say is social issues (I orignally called it kwestie światopoglądowe, to make it clear) PO is 'rather conservative'.
Michael, one valuable remark, word "socially" might be misleading for Poles, if someone did not interpreted like I clearly stated it above they might have thought about kwestie społeczne, in which PO is much more liberal than in kwestie światopoglądowe, so make allowances for it or just be careful.
Or maybe your students have rightist social views and Paulina has leftist and it caused such discrepancy. Unia Wolności, Polish centrist party was named communist by far-right-wing politicians and neo-liberal extreme right-wing by post-communist and other exrteme leftist. All depends on where you stand!
@ Marcin - nowo-mowa is newspeak. Orwell in original is worth reading.
@ student SGH - you're right:)
Michael, I don't want to write about Polish politics, I'm too disappointed. That's why I appreciate your post.
Again me.
How might it be embarrasing the Civic Platform people, that the thatcheranian Conservative Party of the UK chose the Law and Justice on a level ofthe European Parliament groups instead of the Tusk's party? Is anyone so stupid to think, that James Cameron has not ever had a touch with the Law and Justice principles and programs? Why hasn't he chose to be in one group with the Civic Platform?
Thanks for the comparison - it's somewhat helpful although I question the position of the US democrats on this graph?
Say what you want about past republican administrations when it came to government spending - they were big spenders!
However, the current democratic administration has spent more money in one year than all 8 years of Bush! Obama makes Carter look like a good economist...
I'm an independent voter but in my view you should put the US dems much closer to the big government range.
Otherwise, thanks for the chart...
I agree with those commentators who said PO is as socially conservative as PiS.
Actually, PO could in fact be even more conservative. PiS is conservative only in words - for instance their Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Status did undertake her role seriously.
PO is less vocal about its conservatism, but their policies are worse then PiS.
Post a Comment