BY DANIEL BARBERO

The last few years have been troubled ones for Poland. Polish President Lech Kazcynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski—twin brothers and leaders of the Law and Justice Party—hewed closely to a populist platform that eschewed economic liberalization and European integration in favor of a focus on nationalism and social conservatism. But in October, the Civic Platform, the opposition party led by former presidential candidate Donald Tusk, surged from 133 to 209 seats in the Sejm (parliament), becoming the largest member of a new majority coalition. If Tusk and his coalition partners are able to carry out their platform promises, this election could prove to be a realigning moment, presaging a new direction for Poland as a nation, a European Union member state, and an ally of the United States.

A Divided Electorate
Since the fall of the Communist bloc, Polish politics has become increasingly divided between rural traditionalists and the educated, urban classes. The Law and Justice-led coalition acknowledged this divide themselves, trying to cast conservative Poland as the true successor to Polish history. “They said that they were going to oppose the “liberal Poland” with the Solidarity Poland,” said Grzegorz Ekiert, professor of government at Harvard University.

But when the government gambled on traditional voters, it lost. Reform-minded Poles turned out in droves, in the highest numbers since the first post-Communist elections. “It was a polarizing government… and had been elected by a rural majority, and had really annoyed the politically engaged class,” said Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, in an interview with HPR. According to Ekiert, the strongest indicators of voting patterns were age and education. “The younger the voters, and the more educated, the more likely they voted for Platform,” said Ekiert. Abroad, the majority of Polish voters living in other EU countries voted for the Civic Platform. Donald Tusk even made campaign stops in the United Kingdom, where almost one million Poles reside. For them, the benefits of opened labor markets and European development aid far outweighed nationalist concerns or nostalgia for the welfare state of years past.

Different Principles, Different Priorities
With this election, government policy appears likely to change in meaningful ways. While the populist right wing has kept the Polish state actively involved in the economy, Civic Platform advocates increased economic liberalization measures such as health care privatization and flat taxes. And although almost all major parties tout some form of social conservatism—always important in heavily Catholic Poland—the Platform puts less emphasis on enforcing social and cultural mores, in contrast to the investigations of Communist-era collaborators and bans on gay rights parades that characterized the Law and Justice administration.

One of Tusk’s foreign policy priorities is repairing relations with the European Union. As Prime Minister, he is likely to scale back the nationalist posturing of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who alluded to the Nazi past when dealing with Germany, blocked EU attempts to negotiate with Russia, and insisted on references to Christianity in the European constitution. And while President Lech Kaczynski is still a force to be reckoned with, parliament is solidly behind the Civic Platform, and political change in Poland tends to come quickly. “It’s beginning already,” said Krzysztof Bobinski of the Unia & Polska Foundation in an interview with HPR.

For America, the results may be unsettling. The former leadership strongly supported the Iraq war, but Donald Tusk has promised to withdraw Polish troops, a position which has widespread popular support. A planned missile defense base to be placed in northern Poland is now also up in the air. Certainly, the new governing coalition seems to focus its foreign policy more on Brussels than on Washington. “There is a question mark about Polish-U.S. relations,” said Ekiert. All the same, it does not appear that the relationship will be antagonistic; Tusk recently called the United States “our closest ally, our greatest friend.”

A new Poland is emerging, one more closely aligned with Europe and less suspicious of the free market. The traditional right made an appeal to tradition and lost to the forces of economic and social change. And while the new governing coalition has only just taken office, the change that its victory represents is nothing short of revolutionary. ]]>