Three Essays on Party Competition in. Parliamentary Democracies

Transcription

1 Three Essays on Party Competition in Parliamentary Democracies by Paulina A. Marek Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Professor G. Bingham Powell Department of Political Science Arts, Sciences and Engineering School of Arts and Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, New York 2014

2 ii In Memory of my Mother, and My Dearest Friend, My Father.

3 iii Biographical Sketch The author was born in Warsaw, Poland, on April 9, She attended the University of Warsaw where she she completed a five-year Master of Arts Program in Sociology in January 2007, and a three-year Bachelor of Arts Program in Economics in July In Spring 2007, she came to the University of Rochester and began graduate studies in political science. She received a Master of Arts degree in Political Science in She pursued her research in comparative politics under the direction of professor G. Bingham Powell.

4 iv Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Bing Powell for taking on the task of advising me on this project, a task which I, admittedly, did not make easy. Without his inspirational guidance, continued patience, and enduring support, this project would have never been completed. I would like to thank Bonnie Meguid and Kevin Clarke for their helpful comments and advice at various stages of this project. Discussions with them allowed me to improve this dissertation. My higher education started at the University of Warsaw Institute of Sociology, where my undergraduate mentors, professors Grzegorz Lissowski and Jacek Haman, introduced me to quantitative and formal approaches to social science. I learned alot by taking classes and interacting with both of them. This dissertation benefitted greatly from all I learned at the University of Rochester. My learning process was improved substantially by many of my fellow grad students, particularly Nicole Assmussen, Jessica Stoll, J. Tyson Chatagnier, Jonathan Klingler, Gary Hollibaugh, and Lukas Pfaff. Special thanks go to Peter Haschke for finding time to discuss various ideas related to this dissertation. I am indebted to Janet Marek for moral support, encouragement, and believing in me even when I had my doubts about my research or the feasibility of finishing this project. Janet also patiently read numerous drafts of this dissertation, for which I will be forever grateful.

5 v Lastly, I need to mention my Father Jan with whom I watched evening news ever since I can remember. Our discussion of current events shaped my interests in social sciences, and in political science in particular. I will never forget his excitement on June 4, 1989, the day of the first meaningful elections he ever participated in. It inculcated in me the belief that elections matter and political competition is inherently interesting.

6 vi Abstract This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on party competition in parliamentary democracies. In the first chapter, I provide an introduction to the topics covered in this dissertation. In the second chapter, I propose that parties manipulate issue salience to highlight not only issues on which they are perceived to be particularly competent, but also issues on which they are positioned far away from their main competitors. I use my theoretical proposition to explain the results of the 2005 election in Poland. In the third chapter, I offer a new approach to party competition by pointing out that parties with non-overlapping electorates are not intense competitors even if they are ideologically close to each other. I argue that parties perceive political entities that are popular among similar types of voters as their close competitors. In this analysis, I propose a measure of the degree to which the electorates of any two parties are overlapping. I show that the degree to which the electorates of parties are overlapping affects party behavior in the coalition formation process. In the fourth chapter of my dissertation, I analyze the competition in regional elections in Central Europe, focusing on how parties that are in the national level of government perform in regional elections, and to what extent their performance depends on voters perceptions of national government performance. I show that the performance of national government parties in regional elections differs between countries and I offer explanations for these differences. In the last chapter of my dissertation, I discuss the implications of my findings.

7 vii Contributors and Funding Sources This work was supervised by a dissertation committee consisting of Professors G. Bingham Powell, Kevin Clarke of the Department of Political Science, and professor Jean Pedersen of the Eastman School of Music. Graduate study was supported by a University of Rochester Department of Political Science Fellowship and the University of Rochester Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies pre-doctoral fellowship. All work for the dissertation was completed independently by the student.

8 viii Contents 1 Introduction Plan Strategic Manipulation of Issue Salience. The Choice of Issues Introduction Theory The Case of Poland Empirical Expectations Empirical Analysis Evaluations of Communism and the Current System Change of Issue Position by Law and Justice Change in Cleavages Conclusion Appendix to Chapter A List of Survey Questions Used in the Chapter

9 ix 2.A.1 Polish National Election Survey A.2 Polish General Social Survey B Issue Indices Built for the Purpose of the Chapter C Average Values for Parties on the nine Indices D Descriptive Statistics E Eigenvalues and Percentages of Variance Explained Segmented Electorates and Bargaining Delay in the Government Formation Process Introduction The Concept of Segmented Electorates Data and Measurement Two Cases Bargaining Delay in the Coalition Formation Process Empirical Analysis Methods Results Conclusion Appendix to Chapter Balancing or Punishment? Performance of National Parties in Regional Elections in Central Europe Introduction

10 x 4.2 Local Governments in Central Eastern Europe Vote Switching Between Elections Electoral Balancing Barometer Elections Fortunes of Government Parties in Regional Elections Poland Czech Republic Field Work Poland Czech Republic Analysis Data and Measurement Results Conclusion Appendix to Chapter Discussion 128 Bibliography 132

11 xi List of Tables 2.1 Factor analysis: Economic and Post-Communist Dimensions in Factor Analysis: Economic-Protectionist and Libertarian Post- Communist Dimensions in Factor Analysis: Protectionist Nationalistic and Libertarian Populist Dimensions in Party Positions on Issues in Party Positions on Issues in Party Positions on Issues in Descriptive Statistics for Descriptive Statistics for Descriptive Statistics for Analysis of the 1997 election Analysis of the 2001 election Analysis of the 2005 election

12 xii 3.1 Left-Right Placement of Parties in Poland in Electorates in Poland Left-Right Placement of Parties in Germany in Electorates in Germany Estimation results : Cox Estimation results : Cox model with cabinet preference range Descriptive Statistics of Variables Used in Chapter Performance of the main Polish parties in national and regional elections Regional Coalition Outcomes in Poland Performance of the main Czech parties in national and regional elections Regional Coalition Outcomes in the Czech Republic Effect of Difference in Unemployment and GDP growth on Vote Shares in Regional Elections Effect of Government Approval on Vote Shares in Regional Elections Effect of Prime Minister on Vote Shares in Regional Elections Behavior of Voters in Poland and the Czech Republic Effect of Time on Performance of Government Parties in Regional Elections Effect of Economic Position on Punishment of Parties

13 xiii 4.11 Descriptive Statistics of Variables Used in Chapter

14 xiv List of Figures 2.1 Comparison of Current and Former Regimes Shows Lack Clear Time Pattern Feelings About Communism as a Form of Government Benefits/losses after 1989 for most Poles show no clear time pattern Importance of and attitudes toward decommunization show no clear time pattern Party Positions Marginal Effect of Being a Government Party on Vote Share over Government Approval Marginal Effect of Being a Prime Minister s on Vote Share over Change in Unemployment Rate The Marginal Effect of Being a Prime Minister s Party on Vote Shares of Government Parties The Marginal Effect of Time

15 4.5 Marginal Effect of Change in GDP Growth Rate xv

16 1 Chapter 1 Introduction The following dissertation consists of three essays on party competition in parliamentary democracies. Party competition is a broad topic within the field of political science and each of my three essays addresses the issue from a different angle. The first essay focuses on the strategies that parties undertake in order to improve their chances of electoral victories. This means that the competition of parties in elections is the primary focus of this essay. The second essay, while drawing attention to non-ideological aspect of party competition, analyzes how competition related characteristics of parties affect the behavior of parties in the government formation process. In other words, in this essay I analyze how party competition affects cooperation between parties. Finally, the third of the essays focuses on the relationship between the performance of parties in regional and national elections in Poland and the Czech Republic. By focusing on the performance of parties in regional

17 2 elections, I analyze how the timing of national elections, as well as the performance of parties in national government, affects party competition in regional elections. 1.1 Plan In the first of three essays (chapter 2), I analyze how parties strategically manipulate the salience of political issues in order to decrease their perceived distance from voters. According to the issue based theory of party competition, parties compete by putting emphasis on issues in order to affect issue salience (Budge and Farlie 1983, Bélanger and Meguid 2008), because they might benefit from a particular issue being salient. Parties do that by strategically emphasizing and deemphasizing the salience of particular issues. According to this literature, one way for a party to gain an electoral advantage is to emphasize an issue of which the party is an owner. A party is considered an owner of an issue if it is considered by voters as particularly competent to solve any problems related to that issue. It is, however, unclear which issues parties should emphasize in order to gain a strategic advantage over their competitors, since there are many issues to choose from. By emphasizing an issue, a party draws voters attention to the positions of all parties on that issue. I argue that this approach overlooks the position of other parties on the issue that a party is attempting to bring attention to. I believe that it is advantageous for a party to emphasize an issue on which a party is positioned

18 3 away from its main competitors, but at the same time located close to a portion of the electorate. In that case, if a party successfully brings attention to an issue and its position on that issue, it will receive the votes of some of the voters that care about this particular issue and agree with the position of the party. At the same time it would not be advantageous for a party to emphasize an issue on which it is located close to its competitors, as that move would not result in attracting many new supporters. I use this theoretical proposition to explain the results of the 2005 elections in Poland and the loss of importance of the post-communist vs. anticommunist divide. Up until the 2005 parliamentary elections in Poland, the former communist party, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), was successfully running in elections, but it lost a majority of its voters between the 2001 and the 2005 elections. The Democratic Left Alliance was believed to have been benefiting from the salience of the post-communist vs. anticommunist cleavage as it was the only party that was attracting the votes of people with positive attitudes toward the previous regime. The electoral defeat of the Democratic Left Alliance poses a question of the continuity of this cleavage. I show that this cleavage did not actually disappear, but that right of center parties successfully increased the salience of other issues, thereby bringing the attention of voters away from the post-communist divide. In the third chapter of my dissertation, I look at both party competition and the government formation process. I analyzed the degree to which the electorates of any two parties are overlapping. This idea comes from

19 4 interviews which I conducted in Poland in 2010 with politicians from regional governments. At the time, Poland had an interesting coalition which had formed at both the national and regional levels. This coalition was formed by the Civic Platform and the Polish Peasant Party. This is particularly interesting as the Civic Platform is especially popular among young, educated people from large cities, and the Polish Peasant Party has its strongholds in rural areas. Independently from each other, my interviewees (one from each of the coalition parties) credited non-overlapping electorates for the success of that coalition. They stated that this coalition works well because these two parties have non-overlapping electorates. This prevents them from competing with each other, as voters are unlikely to switch between the two parties. My interviewees believed that the fact that they do not compete for the same type of voters allows them to have a successful coalition because they are not afraid of their coalition partner becoming more popular, as that will not result in the loss of their support. This led me to consider a new aspect of the electoral competition, which political scientists have until now overlooked, which is that parties take into consideration not only ideological distance from their competitors, but also to what extent their voters are likely to switch their vote to other parties. I propose a new approach to party competition, which takes into account the degree to which the electorates of any two parties are overlapping. I believe that party competition is affected not only by the ideological distance between the parties, but also by some characteristics of the electorates that affect between which parties voters are

20 5 likely to switch their votes. In other words, even though some parties might be ideologically close to each other, they do not need to have the perception that they are intense competitors for the same pool of voters. I measure the segmentation of electorates by analyzing the degree to which the support of any two parties co-varies across geographical units. I believe that parties that have strongholds in different geographical units are parties whose electorates come disproportionably from different demographic groups, and whose electorates are segmented. I use the measure of how segmented electorates are to analyze the duration of the cabinet formation process. Parties with segmented electorates tend to focus on different policy areas, and need to deliver different electoral promises to their electorates. I, therefore, test whether parties with segmented electorates take longer to negotiate coalition cabinets. In the fourth chapter of my dissertation, I investigate the puzzle of national government parties varying performances in regional elections in the countries of Central Eastern Europe. Whereas some parties are able to win second order elections while being in government at the national level, others struggle. While conducting interviews with regional politicians in the Czech Republic, I discovered that these politicians believe that parties which are in power at the national level are bound to lose regional level elections. The obvious question is whether voters simply want to balance power across levels or whether they are disappointed by the performance of the national level government. On the other hand in Poland, the performance of the parties in regional elections

21 6 does seem to be affected by the performance of the national level government. This essay analyzes both election results and surveys on government performance to test the hypotheses that regional elections are used to balance power across levels of government or are perceived as referenda on national government performance. The analysis shows mixed results. While government performance does affect the performance of parties in regional elections in Poland, it has no affect on parties performance in regional elections in the Czech Republic. I also find that prime minister s party receives more blame for poor government performance than its coalition partner, and that position of parties on economy affects the degree to which voters hold parties accountable for changes of economic conditions.

22 7 Chapter 2 Strategic Manipulation of Issue Salience. The Choice of Issues 2.1 Introduction According to the issue based theory of party competition, parties compete by putting emphasizes on issues in order to affect issue salience (Budge & Farlie, 1983; Éric Bélanger & Meguid, 2008). They do that by strategically emphasizing and deemphasizing the salience of particular issues. According to this literature, one way for a party to gain an electoral advantage is to emphasize a particular issue of which the party is an owner. A party is considered an owner of an issue if it is considered by voters as particularly competent to solve any problems related to that issue. It is, however, unclear which issues parties should emphasize in order to gain a strategic advantage over their competitors. By emphasizing an issue, a party draws voters

23 8 attention to the positions of all parties on that issue. I argue that this approach, by focusing on issue ownership, overlooks the position of other parties on the issue that a party is attempting to bring attention to. I believe that it is advantageous for a party to emphasize an issue on which a party is positioned away from its main competitors, but at the same time located close to a portion of the electorate. In that case, if a party successfully brings attention to an issue and its position on that issue, it will receive the votes of some of the voters that care about this particular issue and agree with the position of the party. At the same time, it would not be advantageous for a party to emphasize an issue on which it is located close to its competitors, as that move would not result in attracting many new supporters. I use my theory to explain the electoral defeat of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) 1 in the 2005 Polish election. Even though there exists a wide consensus that evaluations of the communist regime had created a particular cleavage in Polish society (Grabowska, 2004; Tworzecki, 2003; Bakke & Sitter, 2005; Bell, 1997; Shabad & Slomczynski, 1999), and that this divide largely benefited the post-communist 2 Democratic Left Alliance by creating a stable base of supporters for that party, SLD, after being by far the most successful 1 Former activists of the Communist Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) established the Social Democracy of Poland (SdPR) which was the leading member of a Democratic Left Alliance grouping. In 1999 the SLD transformed itself into a party. 2 Post-communist is a term used to refer to parties that evolved out of Communist Parties in Central and Eastern Europe which did not hold pro-communist, but rather anti-anti-communist stances, and the cleavage that defines two groups: post-communist and anti-communist, based on their attitude toward the communist regime and the extent to which former communist functionaries should be prosecuted.

24 9 party after democratization in Poland, suffered an unprecedented electoral defeat in the 2005 elections. As early as 1993, the Democratic Left Alliance managed to secure 20.4% of the votes, and its support continued to grow, reaching 27.1% in 1997 and 41% in On the other side of the postcommunist cleavage, the right parties with strong anti-communist stances, despite having ever-changing leaders, names and allies, together received 29.6% of votes in 1993, 39.4% in 2001, and 35.7% in the 2005 elections. 4 However, in 2005, the Democratic Left Alliance received only 11.3% of votes. Since the salience of the post-communist cleavage was providing the SLD with the stable electoral support of voters with more favorable views on the communist past, the decrease in the electoral support for the SLD suggests a decline in importance of the post-communist divide. I contend that it is advantageous for parties to increase the salience of issues on which they are located far away from their most intense competitors. I will show that the right of center Law and Justice party increased the salience of new issues in the 2005 campaign in Poland, as well as changed their positions on other issues, in order to decrease the salience of the postcommunist cleavage. The Law and Justice party was able to do this because the post-communists never emphasized the post-communist cleavage, and 3 for the coalition of the Democratic Left Alliance and the Labour Union. 4 Right-wing parties include: Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland (ROP), Christian National Union (ZChN), Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN), Independent Bloc to Support the Reforms (BBWR), Solidarity, and Center Alliance (PC) in 1993; Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland and Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) in 1997; and Law and Justice (PiS), Civic Platform (PO), League of Polish Families (LPR), and Solidarity Electoral Action of the Right in 2001.

25 10 by emphasizing other issues, they took voters attention away from the postcommunist cleavage. The change resulted in the Law and Justice party being perceived as distinct from other anti-communist parties (mainly the Civic Platform) and decreasing their perceived distance from the Democratic Left Alliance. As a result, the SLD no longer occupied an ideological space that was very different from other parties. Therefore, some of the voters who previously supported the Democratic Left Alliance because of their opposition to decommunization 5 and the increasing influence of the Catholic Church, chose to vote for other parties because of their positions on the newly salient issues. This chapter proceeds as follows. In the next section I describe my theoretical proposition. I then discuss the literature on political cleavages and explain the origins and substance of the post-communist divide in Poland. An empirical section comes next, followed by concluding remarks. 2.2 Theory Spatial theories of party competition have focused on parties changing issue positions in order to attract new voters. In a Downsian framework, officeseeking parties position themselves in a way that minimizes the distance between parties and the voters. Downs stated that in a multiparty system, 5 The term decommunization is used to refer to the idea of identification of the people connected with the former regime (so called nomenklatura ) and their removal from public offices and state positions.

26 11 parties will strive to distinguish themselves ideologically from each other and maintain the purity of their positions (Downs, 1957, p. 126), thus parties need to be ideologically distinct to attract voters. Yet the possibility of dramatic shifts in issue positions in a Downsian framework is limited. Parties are ideologically immobile because they need to be reliable and responsible (Downs, 1957, p. 109). They cannot change their policy position too much and too often because by doing that they undermine their commitment to any political stances that they take. The limitation of the positional framework of party competition is that it only discusses the positions of the parties on a set of issues with fixed or equal salience. Parties can compete only by choosing advantageous positions on those issues. However, studies of party competition reveal that parties can strategically enhance or weaken the salience of the ideological dimensions that structure party competition or introduce completely new issues. Riker (1982) suggested that politicians who are currently in the minority can strategically bring up issues to break up majorities. In fact, he believes that politicians constantly look for new issues to introduce as a possible alternative. If the alternative does not help to create a new majority, it is quickly forgotten. On the other hand, if the issue finds a significant audience, it starts a life on its own, and no longer belongs to the politician who proposed it. Riker, however, does not explain which alternatives are chosen by politicians. He stresses the fact that new issues are produced more or less randomly (Riker, 1982, p. 210) and that most of them fail.

27 12 Budge & Farlie (1983) argue that parties compete by emphasizing the importance of different issues and that parties stress particular issues because they almost always work in their favor (p. 271). They can either choose an issue on which they hold a popular stance or an issue on which they have more credibility to implement the desired policy than other parties - an issue they own. Parties own issues if they are perceived as particularly competent to solve problems connected to a particular political issue. Thus, according to this framework, parties can own issues and they will try to emphasize issues that they own. The main goal of parties is to emphasize issues and issue positions on which they can attract new voters. Therefore, in order to benefit from emphasizing certain issues, parties need to hold distinct positions from all other parties or be more credible than other parties on these issues. Also, as Meguid (2005, 2008) suggests, party positions on an issue are not given, and parties can introduce new issues on which the positions of some parties are unknown until they take a stance. Thus, parties can introduce their positions on new issues on which other parties do not necessarily have any specific positions. Meguid argues that parties have a choice of responding or not to the introduction of a new issue by either taking a position on the issue being introduced or ignoring the new issue altogether. Thus, in order to attract voters, parties can change issue position, issue salience, or both. Changing issue salience also includes introducing new issues on which other parties do not have stances. A related question is which issues parties should choose to emphasize.

28 13 I propose that parties should emphasize issues on which they are located away from their competitors. Otherwise, they will be one of many parties benefiting from the salience of that particular issue. This also means that it is to their advantage to decrease the importance of issues on which they do not take positions that are distinct from those occupied by other parties. If an issue that a party is trying to emphasize becomes more salient, the party competition will focus on that issue. Thus, they have to make strategic decisions about which issue to emphasize and which to deemphasize. Holding a position close to the positions of a number of other parties will result in voters sharing that position to split their votes among all of the parties with similar stances on the issue. Thus, it is advantageous for a party to be located away from its competitors on an issue that might become salient. If the party succeeds in increasing the salience of such an issue, the party will garner the support of all of the voters who agree with the party on that issue. Voters are expected to vote for the party which is closest to them on the issues that are salient. Obviously voters attach varying importance to the currently salient issues. Thus, they may care about the distance from the position of the party on some issues more than about the distance on some other issues. When parties strategically emphasize and deemphasize issues, or change their position on previously non-salient issues, voters are expected to reevaluate their party choices. Depending on how much they care about issues that became salient and issues that remain salient, they may change their party preference in favor of a party that is close to them on the

29 14 newly emphasized issues. Voters are also expected not to punish parties for changing positions on non-salient issues and later emphasizing these issues. When issues were not salient, voters did not pay too much attention to them and information about non-salient issues was not available. Once previously non-salient issues are emphasized, voters evaluate parties based on their positions on these issues, but most of the voters do not electorally punish parties for flip-flopping, as they do not remember the positions of parties on issues that were not salient. 2.3 The Case of Poland The Communist Party suppressed, banned, and took control of political parties and organizations. According to Geddes (1995), in comparison to other forms of authoritarian rule, Leninist regimes made a much more thorough sweep of preexisting political organizations (p. 242) Therefore, the emergence of democracy in Poland creates a question about the existence of any political identities among voters. And although some scholars were sceptical about the development of cleavages in post-communist countries, analyses reveal that cleavages play an important role in most of the Central Eastern European countries. Evans & Whitefield (2000) contend that distributional issues are somewhat important in all countries, but at the same time, they find that in Poland, social and political liberalism is the second dimension (after the

30 15 economic dimension) dimension structuring electoral competition. 6 Furthermore, a number of studies that focus on Poland find that its communist past influences voting behavior. Shabad & Slomczynski (1999) contend that voters in Poland have been able to form meaningful political identities that are shaped by social group membership and individuals experiences under communism. They conclude that political identities are rooted in the social structure as well as in individuals political biographies (Shabad & Slomczynski, 1999, p. 716). These findings are consistent with the results of Bielasiak & Blunck (2002) who analyze voting data from Poland and find that membership in the Communist Party and Solidarity affects post-transition voting behavior, even after controlling for issue, economic, and social variables. In a similar vein, Tworzecki (2003), in his study of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, finds that historical cleavages from both the precommunist and communist periods influenced the current political divisions. He identifies two important dimensions that anchor both the ideological preferences of voters and their perception of the parties: left-right (economic) and cultural (decommunization and clericalism). 7 He believes that voters have stable, well-oriented ideological positions, in which religion, economic status and urban versus rural residence matter (Tworzecki, 2003, p. 208). 6 On one end are libertarians who are in favor of individual rights to pursue independent life-styles, religious beliefs, or sexual preferences. On the other end are authoritarians who expect the state or the community to take actions or use force to inhibit or promote such differences. 7 The term clericalism is used to denote positive attitudes toward religion and the presence of the Church in public life.

31 16 About Poland, he states that assessments of the communist era produced a cleavage between those who saw the old system in a uniformly negative light and those who rejected such wholesome condemnation. The latter included not only individuals who had worked for the regime s political and administrative apparatus, but also a far broader stratum of the general population who experienced economic and social advancement in the post war years (Tworzecki, 2003, p. 21). The significance of the communist past for voting behavior in Poland is also emphasized by Grabowska (2004). She claims that communism created a deep social divide that is reflected in the identities, beliefs and electoral behavior of Polish citizens, and also shapes political parties and their elites. She contends that in as early as 1946, two opposing sides were well defined. On one side were those who became public servants in the new communist system those who supported the changes (sometimes just for ideological reasons), and those who benefited from them. The other side consisted of people in the underground, banned political organizations, legalized opposition, and a majority of the society (Grabowska, 2004, pp ). Sometimes the opposition was more visible, sometimes less visible and weaker. However it was always present to the extent that it was possible to talk about the existence of two sides: communist and anticommunist (Grabowska, 2004, p. 119). 8 8 All of the quotes from Grabowska were translated from Polish by the author of this dissertation.

32 17 Thus, although communism deprived Poles of voting and competing in meaningful elections, it provided them with experiences significant enough to be the basis for a social cleavage that was reflected in the first fifteen years after the democratic transformation of The post-communist cleavage is about attitudes toward the communist regime and the extent to which former communist functionaries should be prosecuted and barred from equal participation in political and economic life. The first group defined by this cleavage consists of those who have a very critical opinion about communist Poland, contested the one-party dictatorship, were for the most part members of Solidarity and believe in democracy as a form of government. They are also more likely to be deeply religious and to have more conservative social values. In the other group, we find people who are former members of the Polish Socialist Workers Party, less religious, in favor of limiting the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in politics, and more ambivalent about pre-1989 Poland (Grabowska, 2004). Grabowska believes that the post-communist cleavage is supported by history, biographies and identities, at different levels of political life in institutions and voting behavior and at different levels of religiosity in individual religiosity, in connections with the Church as an institution, and in the preferred model of state-church relations (Grabowska, 2004, p. 337). In the same vein as Grabowska and Tworzecki, I find the post-communist cleavage to be primarily about decommunization with clericalism coinciding to a large extent with attitudes toward nomenklatura. From the early days

33 18 of Polish democracy, this cleavage defined two poles one occupied by the successor party of the Polish United Workers Party, and the other by the Right, usually divided into several small political groupings with most politicians emphasizing their biographies as fighters for democracy in Poland. The two orientations with more moderate positions on these issues were liberals 9 who were anticommunist but also secular, and the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), supported mostly by farmers, who, although religious, were not interested in decommunization. 2.4 Empirical Expectations Given that the existing literature identifies the post-communist cleavage as important and stable and does not offer any theory-based explanation for its disappearance, the results of the 2005 election are puzzling. If the postcommunist cleavage was still important, the desertion of the post-communist voters from the Democratic Left Alliance is difficult to explain. However, the previous literature on cleavages in Poland overlooks the role of party strategies in shaping the electoral competition and influencing the salience of particular cleavages. The post-communist cleavage, although clearly defining two groups of voters and politicians throughout the 1990s, was emphasized only by those located on the anti-communist pole. The politicians of the Democratic Left 9 They represented the European liberal tradition and advocated a free market economy, rapid privatization, European integration, secularism, and individual freedom.

34 19 Alliance, without a doubt, benefitted from the cleavage. However, they continued to deny its very existence by claiming that, on one hand, all people were involved in cooperation with the communist regime, and, on the other hand, all had been listeners of foreign radio stations, readers of underground publications and fighters for democracy. At the same time, the right parties emphasized the importance of the post-communist cleavage and their moral superiority throughout the 1990s and to some extent in the 2001 electoral campaign. They also tried to build a unified bloc to counterbalance the popularity of the Democratic Left Alliance. The results of the 2005 election signaled a change in the strategies of the right parties. The anti-communist politicians no longer emphasized the postcommunist cleavage. The question then is, why did the right parties decide to change their strategies? If my theory of party competition holds, we would expect parties to emphasize issues on which they are able to attract new voters. Specifically, I expect that right parties, once they realized that they could not create a unified bloc, emphasized new issues to attract new voters and break up the support for the Democratic Left Alliance as well as to position themselves away from other right of center parties. Emphasizing the post-communist cleavage was no longer beneficial for them, since many right parties occupied the anti-communist pole. Thus, these parties should start to deemphasize the importance of the post-communist cleavage. At the same time, we would expect that right parties changed their positions on some other issues

35 20 to differentiate themselves from other political groupings and started to emphasize new issues on which they held positions distinct from other parties to attract new voters. The right parties changed their strategy from focusing on maintaining distance from post-communists to focusing on occupying distinct issue positions from all other parties, not only post-communists. Consequently, since the mainstream ideological space is not unlimited, the right parties would be closer in ideological space to the Democratic Left Alliance. I expect parties to emphasize those issues that will place them closer to the voters they would like to attract, and those on which they can take positions unoccupied by other mainstream parties, which is true about the issue of European integration. Specifically, I expect the issues of European integration and the welfare state to play a larger role in the 2005 election. Since I claim that certain right parties wanted to distance themselves from other right parties, the previously downplayed economic issues would suit the purpose. Previously, anti-communist parties tended to downplay their differences on these issues in order to emphasize the post-communist cleavage and put themselves in opposition to post-communists, thus before the 2005 elections they could use the economic issues to distance themselves from other post-solidarity groups. The two other explanations that might be used to explain the decline in the importance of the post-communist cleavage focus on the age of the voters and the time that had passed since transformation. According to the first

36 21 explanation, younger voters are not very interested in moral assessments of the communist past, a past which they have not experienced. As more time elapses from the time of transformation, a higher percentage of voters have not experienced the communist system, and the post-communist cleavage is expected to fade away. The second counter-explanation emphasizes the time that has elapsed since transformation and suggests that as more time elapses since transformation, the less interested voters are in the issue of decommunization. According to this argument, with time, the assessments of the communist past are less important to voters since other issues have become more pressing. This is true for voters of all generations. Thus, both counter explanations focus on the decline in the importance of the post-communist cleavage. If these counter-explanations hold, we would expect that the time that has elapsed since transformation matters, and, as a result, the issues that created the post-communist cleavage will lose their importance. These issues include the assessments of Poles on the communist past and the role of the Church in public life. We would expect that the opinions of Polish voters on transformation and the former regime have converged, and that the perceived importance of the issue of decommunization has decreased. If the counter explanation about younger voters holds, we would expect that the stances on decommunization and the perceived importance of the issue of decommunization depends on the age of the voters.

37 Empirical Analysis Evaluations of Communism and the Current System For the post-communist cleavage to remain stable, Poles have to disagree about their evaluations of communist Poland and the comparison between the previous and current regime. If their evaluations of the past converge, then the existence of the post-communist cleavage is threatened. Figure 2.1 presents the opinions on the comparison between the current and the former regime; each time the opinions of the respondents who reported voting in the election conducted prior to the survey are presented. The voters in the 1997 election were the most favorable to the current democratic regime, and those in the 2001 election voters were the least favorable to the current regime. This is somewhat consistent with the victory of the anti-communist Solidarity Electoral Action in the 1997 election and the victory of the SLD-UP coalition in the 2001 election, in which the major force was the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance. It is more difficult to explain the results for the 2005 election, which are mixed. The opinions were much more favorable for the current regime in 2005 than they were in 2001, but did not reach the level of The data from the Polish General Social Survey (PGSS) present a similar

38 23 Figure 2.1: Comparison of Current and Former Regimes Shows Lack Clear Time Pattern current regime is much better current regime is slightly better neither better, nor worse current regime is slightly worse current regime is much better pattern. When asked their opinion about communism as a form of government, 2002 respondents who reported voting in the 2001 election have the most favorable opinions about communism. However, we cannot see any pattern across time in Figure 2.2, meaning that Poles do not present an increasingly favorable opinion about communism as times passes, but rather present more fluctuating opinions that coincide with the electoral success of the two opposing electoral groups, with anti-communists winning whenever opinions about the current regime are more favorable than opinions about the former regime. The answers to another question from the PGSS on whether transformation brought Poland more benefits or losses, presented in Figure 2.3, show a similar pattern, with Poles expressing the most dissatisfaction with transformation in 2001, the year of the electoral victory of the coalition led by the Democratic

39 24 60 Figure 2.2: Feelings About Communism as a Form of Government worst form bad, but not worse than some other forms good for some countries good form of government Figure 2.3: Benefits/losses after 1989 for most Poles show no clear time pattern only benefits more benefits than losses as many benefits as losses more losses than benefits only losses

40 25 Left Alliance. Thus, opinions on the comparison of the former regime to the current regime, the communist system, and the results of transformation do not show any pattern across time that would suggest that with time Poles are becoming more or less nostalgic about the communist past. This suggests that at the time of the 2005 election, Poles held similar opinions to the ones that they held at the time of the 1997 and 2001 elections. In other words, although the electoral defeat of the Democratic Left Alliance in the 2005 election should not necessarily come as a surprise, the scale of the victory of the right-wing parties and the continuity of this trend in the 2007 election is puzzling. Figure 2.4: Importance of and attitudes toward decommunization show no clear time pattern position importance In a similar fashion, the position of voting Poles on the issue of decommunization, presented in Figure 2.4, does not show any time pattern, with the average position on decommunization on an 11-point scale (where higher

41 26 values represent more forgiving attitudes toward nomenklatura ) being 3.87 in 1997, 5.18 in 2001 and 3.53 in This means that the issues of decommunization did not become less divisive. Furthermore, the perceived importance of the issue of decommunization (see Figure 2.4) is lowest among the 2001 voters, but it is significantly higher among both the 1997 and 2005 voters. Similarly, the perceived importance of decommunization and voters positions on the issue of decommunization are uncorrelated with the age of the respondents. 10 Thus, younger voters do not show less interest in the issue of decommunization, nor are they more forgiving of people s past. Therefore, I do not find any signs that would suggest that the post-communist cleavage has simply faded away Change of Issue Position by Law and Justice My theory predicts that right-wing parties focuses on new issues, that in the 2005 election, they differentiated themselves from each other, and that they were responsible for the change in salience of cleavages in Poland. To support my claim that the right-wing parties orchestrated the shift in important dimensions structuring electoral competition in Poland, I present descriptive evidence about the role of the Law and Justice party in the 2005 electoral campaign. Law and Justice offered Poles a new conflict line - between 10 Correlations between importance of decommunization and age were equal to -.02 among the 1997 and 2001 voters, and 0.1 among the 2005 voters. The correlations between position on the issue of decommunization and age were equal to 0.04 in 1997, 0.06 in 2001 and in 2005.

42 27 liberals and solidarists (a catchy label in Poland) (Markowski (2006, p. 820) see also Millard (2007); Szczerbiak (2005)). The relative success of Law and Justice in the 2005 Polish election was achieved at the expense of retreating from their former clearly conservative programme and embarking on a nationalist-populist one (Markowski, 2006, p. 824), and by doing so they shifted the main dimensions of electoral competition. The discussed shift in the issue attention by Law and Justice is also noticeable when looking at the results of Polish National Election Surveys and the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) data. When looking at the CMP data we can observe that the Law and Justice party paid more attention to the issue of the welfare state in 2005 than in their 2001 manifesto. While 13% of the Law and Justice manifesto discussed the welfare state issue in 2001, as much as 20% of the 2005 Law and Justice manifesto focused on the welfare state issue, which confirms the increase of attention paid by the Law and Justice party to typically leftist issues. We can observe changes in perceived issue positions by the Law and Justice party by looking at the Polish National Election Survey data. PNES asks respondents to place parties on four selected issues, and although the selection of issues changes to some degree from one edition of PNES to the other, we can compare the placement of parties on the issue of privatization by the 2001 and 2005 PNES respondents. While the respondents on average perceived the leftist Democratic Left Alliance to be less opposed to privatization in 2001 than in 2005 (change from 4.99 to 4.04 on the 0 10 scale, with 0 denoting the