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What will the Euro elections tell us about Eastern Europe?

By Sean L Hanley, on 11 May 2014

Plakat do Parlamentu Europejskiego 2014 Platforma Obywatelska

Photo: Lukasz2 via Wikicommons

Seán Hanley looks ahead to the upcoming European elections and assesses what they may tell us about the enduring differences between voters and parties in Western and Eastern Europe.

The elections to the European Parliament which take place across the EU’s 28 member states between 22 and 25 May are widely seen a series of national contests, which voters use to vent their frustration and give incumbent and established parties a good kicking. Newspaper leader writers and think-tankers got this story and have been working overtime to tell us about a rising tide of populism driven by a range of non-standard protest parties.

The conventional wisdom is that the ‘populist threat’ is all eurosceptic (and usually of a right-wing persuasion) although in some cases the ‘eurosceptic surge’ is clearly a matter of whipping together  familiar narrative than careful analysis.

But, as a simultaneous EU-wide poll using similar (PR-based) electoral systems, the EP elections also provide a rough and ready yardstick of Europe-wide political trends, ably tracked by the LSE-based Pollwatch 2014 and others.

And, for those interested in comparison and convergence of the two halves of a once divided continent, they a window into the political differences and similarities between the ‘old’ pre-2004 of Western and Southern Europe and the newer members from Central and Eastern Europe (now including Croatia which joined in 2013). (more…)

Unstable Platform? Poland’s ruling party struggles on

By Sean L Hanley, on 30 January 2014

A series of on-going political crises in 2013 saw support for Poland’s centrist ruling party, Civic Platform, slump. Despite a number of initiatives to revive its fortunes, public hostility may have passed a tipping point argues Aleks Szczerbiak.

 2013 was a year of on-going political crisis for Civic Platform (PO) party, he main governing party in Poland,. The approval ratings of both the Civic Platform-led government and prime minister and PO leader Donald Tus, slumped to their lowest levels since they came to office in 2007. A December 2013 poll by CBOS found that the number who declared themselves to be government supporters and were satisfied with Tusk as prime minister fell to 21% and 26% respectively – compared to 33% and 35% a year earlier.

 Another December 2013 CBOS poll found that only 31% trusted Mr Tusk, a slump of 10% over the past year and just 1% higher than the number trusting Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS), the main opposition grouping. Civic Platform also suffered a series of local by-election defeats and has, since May, trailed Law and Justice by around 5-10% in the polls.

 With the economy sluggish and unemployment remaining high, Poles have become increasingly gloomy about their future prospects. There has also been a growing sense of government drift with ministers appearing to spend too much of time on crisis management and failing to undertake long-term structural reforms. The Tusk government appeared to revert to the cautious policy of ‘small step’ reform that characterised its first term in office. This approach worked fairly well while the economy was strong but began to come unstuck when the tempo of growth slowed and unemployment increased.

 Divisions and tensions within the ruling party both contributed to and were exacerbated by the sense of crisis. This reached its peak during the summer when Mr Tusk was challenged for his party leadership by Jarosław Gowin. (more…)

Poland: Law and Justice struggles to find a winning formula

By Sean L Hanley, on 28 January 2013

Opposition parties across East Central Europe have made gains against economically beleagured governments,  but Poland’s Law and Justice party is struggling. Guest contributor Aleks Szczerbiak explains why.

Jarosław Kaczyński – Photo: M. A. Cholewicz (Gdansk/Poland) Via Wikimedia Commons

 For much of 2012, many Polish voters were clearly disappointed and frustrated with the ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), fearing that the Polish economy was entering a period of crisis.  Many incumbent parties in Central and East European facing similar problems have taken a political beating, losing out heavily to opposition groupings in recent elections. However, Civic Platform has benefited from the continued weakness of the main opposition grouping, the right-wing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Polls suggested that voters were reluctant to support Law and Justice because they did not see the party as a credible alternative to Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform-led administration. They particularly disliked the apparently more aggressive and divisive style of politics they associated with its leader Jarosław Kaczyński, Tusk’s controversial predecessor who has figured in polls among Poland’s least trusted politicians.

 Part of the reason why Law and Justice was unable to take advantage of the government’s problems was that during the first part of 2012 it was embroiled in a bitter political struggle to retain the loyalty of its core right-wing electorate against the new Solidaristic Poland (SP) party. This is a breakaway grouping comprising expelled Law and Justice members led by former party deputy chairman Zbigniew Ziobro who fell out with Jarosław Kaczyński after the autumn 2011 parliamentary election. The danger of Solidaristic Poland chipping away at Law and Justice’s core support stemm from the fact that Ziobro was, after Kaczyński himself, probably the best-known and most popular politician among right-wing voters. (more…)