(submitted 21.11.2024)


This cumulative dissertation expands our knowledge of parties, political elites, and parliamentary debates since the onset of the post-socialist transformation in Poland. The long-term research period from 1989 to 2021 allows for a better understanding of the path dependencies, reverberations, and legacies from socialism as well as helps to contribute to explaining the evolution of Polish politics. As Poland converges with other OECD countries in terms of economic and political development, the study also brings Poland closer to mainstream research and offers avenues for comparisons with more established democracies in Western Europe and beyond that are often the focus of research. The single-country study comprises four case studies on the recruitment of post-socialist political elites, parliamentary debates on higher education policies, and the respective impact of populist right parties. Expectations from the state of the art are derived and tested in each of the four case studies. The dissertation finds an increasing salience of higher education policies among political elites in party manifestos, parliamentary debates, and reforms, which is comparable to trends observed in Western Europe. The qualitative content analysis of 41 party manifestos from governing and opposition parties shows differences and similarities in the positioning of Polish and West European parties. While Polish parties align with West European parties in their positioning on the control dimension, there are deviations on the redistributive dimension. The analysis shows a cross-party consensus for expanding the higher education sector based in strong popular demand for higher education after 1989. The key results for the positioning of populist right parties can be summarized as follows: the more established these parties are, the more interest they exhibit in their party manifestos and the more they engage in debates in this policy field beyond their typical core themes.  Furthermore, since the emergence of populist right parties in the early 2000s, there has been a deterioration in the culture of parliamentary debate, a growing government-opposition divide in votes, and more fundamental criticism in the rhetoric of the Polish parliament. In contrast to these party’s frequent calls for lustration and an exchange of elites, the three governments led by the populist right party Law and Justice have had only a limited impact on the composition of Polish political elites. A newly compiled data set for six post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe (n=2141) shows for the period 1990 to 2020 a sociodemographic homogeneity of elites in all researched countries. Poland exhibits comparatively strong continuities of former supporters of the socialist regime as well as the opposition among contemporary political elites. A comparison with the former GDR points to country-specific recruitment patterns with regard to the previous role in socialism and the female share of elites.
 
The dissertation is part of the research project “Obstacles to Modernization in the Economy and Science of the GDR and Neighboring Countries in Central Eastern Europe (Mod-Block-DDR)” based at the Research Centre on East European Studies at the University of Bremen.