The birth of a bi-polar party system or a referendum on a polarising government? The October 2007 Polish parliamentary election

This paper argues that the 2007 Polish parliamentary election is best understood as a plebiscite on the polarising right-wing Law and Justice party-led government and its controversial ‘Fourth Republic’ political project. The liberal-conservative Civic Platform opposition won because it was able to persuade Poles that voting for them
was the most effective way of removing this government from office. The election also indicates that the ‘post-communist divide’ that dominated and provided a structural
order to the Polish political scene during the 1990s is passing into history and certainly means a more consolidated Polish party system. However, Poland still has
very high levels of electoral volatility and low electoral turnout, together with low levels of party institutionalisation and extremely weak links between parties and their supporters. This means that it is too early to say whether the election also marks the
emergence of a stable Polish party system based on a new bi-polar divide between two big centre-right groupings, with the confinement of the left to the status of a
minor actor.

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