Agrarian representation in Democratic PolandFrances Millard

Communism fell in Poland in 1989. Round Table negotiations between the government and the-then still illegal Solidarity trade union led to a rigged election in June. By this means the regime aimed to provide limited space for Solidarity influence while retaining overall control of parliament and hence of government. However, Solidarity unexpectedly triumphed in the elections, winning all but one of the seats it was permitted to contest. The defection of the communists’ hitherto faithful satellite parties, including the UnitedPeasant Party (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe, ZSL), generated a political crisis that was resolved only with the formation of a Grand Coalition of all parties and Solidarity. In September 1989 Solidarity’s Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the region’s first non-communist leaderfor over forty years. Thus began the period of democracy-building in Poland and the investigation of the workings of its new institutions and its developing political parties.

The notion of a profound gap between urban and ruraldwellers has a long pedigree in Polish sociology. The inter-war categories of (urban) ‘Poland A’ and (rural) ‘Poland B’ were partly eroded but not eliminated by the determined push to industrialization experienced under the communist regime (c. 1945-1989). Of course, the expansion of the cities drew labour from the countryside and the working class expanded dramatically. In 1966 for the first time more people lived in cities and towns thanin the countryside. At the same time, the ‘peasant-worker’, commuting to factories in town while still working on the land, created a new intermediate category,less isolated and more knowledgeable about urban ways than the traditional peasantry. The penetration of the national media, including television, also broke down cultural barriers between town and country. Still, the countryside remained chronically under-resourced comparedto urban areas and the cultural gap remained.1 Compared toother communist states, which saw the large-scale transformation of peasants into agricultural labourers,

rural Poland remained distinctive in four respects: the failure of collectivization and the largely private nature of its agriculture; the continuing importance of the Catholic Church; the presence of a satellite party ZSL, with its network of rural ancillary organisations; and the capacity for peasant mobilization. These divisions served to maintain a distinctive rural culture.

In 1980, when Solidarity formed the first independent trade union in Eastern Europe, the peasants rapidly followed suit. By the autumn four main centres ofpeasant trade unionism had emerged in various parts of the country. The authorities’ resistance to registering peasant unions led to a seven-week protest centred on Rzeszów in the southeast.2 The agreement signed in Rzeszówwith government representatives included a guarantee of land ownership, improved agricultural investment, better prices for agricultural goods, and advantageous provisions for old age pensions. Rzeszów proved the prelude to the unifying congress in March 1981 of what became the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union of Private Farmers’ Solidarity (Solidarność Rolników Indywidualnych, Solidarity RI). Support from Solidarity and the Catholic hierarchy led finally to the formal registration of Solidarity RI on 10 May.

The suppression of peasant political activity, including the ban on Solidarity and Solidarity RI during the period of martial law (1981-83), was relatively successful; but the legacy of the Solidarity experience was ultimately to make itself felt in the period after 1989. In the 1980s peasants were - especially in the crisis period of martial law - less politically active than other social groups, mistrustful and ambivalent in the face of Solidarity battles, and antipathetic to Solidarity strikes.3 Shortages of foodstuffs on the official market during martial law reactivated some old tensions, as blue-collar workers in particular began again accusing the peasants of deliberately withholding food and trying to ‘enrich themselves at the cost of the urban working class’.4 Peasants were rather milder in their attitudes to martial law and less enthusiastic about the changes introduced in 1989 than urbanites. The material conditions of the peasantry had improved and

their standard of living grew closer to that of their urban counterparts.5 State procurement and subsidies, control of credit and investment and full incorporation into the welfare state were among the factors binding thepeasants into an interdependent relationship with the state.

Yet despite changes in the social structure, underlying social cleavages translated into political competition were detected by observers of the post-communist scene. The Lipset-Rokkan model (see chapter 1) seemed to apply, at least in part. Certainly there is some evidence in Poland of a social division between those who live in the countryside and work the land and those who make their living in the industrial, service, or knowledge-based sectors of the economy. For example, Paczyńska saw 'two essentially distinct countries forming…the prosperous and well-educated urban population(and)…the increasingly impoverished and lacking in skillspopulation of small towns and rural areas.'6 For her this is a new conflict, essentially between urban modernizers and rural non-modernizers, rather than the continuation of an older social division. So it could be seen as a rural-urban cleavage. At the same time it is plausible toview agrarian parties as the historic residue of a class cleavage between peasants or smallholders and large landowners, underpinned by continuing cultural differentiation and the strong conservative culture of the peasant. In particular, the PSL is often treated as arare example of a class party in Central Europe.7 Poles themselves consistently viewed the PSL as a party representing farmers’ interests. There is also evidence of a historic divide, emerging from experiences of the communist period and reflected in different attitudes to the past, different attitudes to the opposition movement,and different experiences of the state. Indeed, the sociologist Mirosław Grabowska has argued that this divide between the former opposition and the former establishment created a distinctive and fundamental post-communist cleavage in the Lipset-Rokkan sense of the term.8 This cleavage not only shaped voting behaviour but also dominated coalition construction up until 2005.9

So the cleavage model has certainly been applied to Poland, though without much consensus.10 It has also beenapplied rather narrowly, since for most elements of the population voting was not found to be linked to objectivesocio-economic characteristics. The Grabowska view, depending on a rather different notion of a historic cleavage, ignored those who voted neither for ‘Solidarity’ nor ‘establishment’ parties as well as thosewho ‘crossed the line’, for example in supporting the presidency of Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who came from within the ‘establishment’ camp. This leads us to three questions. Is there an underlying cleavage reflecting agrarian interests? The answer offered here is a qualified ‘yes’. Is this cleavage translated into clear lines of political conflict? Here the answer is ‘to a very limited extent’. Is there any sign of the consolidation and stabilizing of the parties that appear to translate these cleavages into the political realm?11 Here our answer is a resounding ‘no’. Agrarian parties appealed to the rural electorate, but the electorate did not develop strong loyalties to individual parties.

The Structure of AgricultureIn 2008 Poland still had a larger rural population

than most developed countries. Almost 40 per cent of the population resided in the countryside, and the geographical distribution of urban concentrations was rather uneven. The most rural populations were in the south and east, in the sub-Carpathian region (podkarpackie)and in Lublin (lubelskie) and Świętokrzyski provinces, whereover half the population lived in rural areas (see Table 1) which were also among the poorest parts of the European Union.

Table 1. Population structure by province (2005)

province (województwo)

total population urban rural

%rural

podkarpackie   2098263  846826  1251437 59.6świętokrzyskie  1285007  583488  701519  54.6lubelskie   2179611  1016865  1162746  53.3małopolskie 3266187  1619398  1646789  50.4

opolskie 1047407  551238  496169  47.4wielkopolskie 3372417  1925481  1446936  42.9podlaskie 1199689  709950  489739  40.8warmińsko-mazurskie 1428601  857850  570751  40.0kujawsko-pomorskie 2068253  1272615  795638  38.5lubuskie   1009198  647054  362144  35.9łódzkie 2577465  1665261  912204  35.4mazowieckie  5157729  3338255  1819474  35.3pomorskie 2199043  1480133  718910  32.7zachodnopomorskie 1694178  1171908  522270  30.8dolnośląskie   2888232  2052094  836138  28.9śląskie  4685775  3685324  1000451  21.4Total 38157055 23423740 14733315 38.6Source: calculated from GUS data from http://www.stat.gov.pl/cgi_bin/demografia/xrap?woj=101&table=web_lsa&rok=2005&woj=16&mw=2

In the communist era a substantial part of the land was farmed privately by peasant smallholders, and by 2005virtually all of agriculture (99.96%) was in private hands after the break-up of the large state farms of the northeast. There were 2.7 million agricultural households, with 34.6 per cent comprising up to one hectare (2.2 acres) and 37.8 per cent from one to five hectares. Thus a massive 72.4 per cent of the total consisted of dwarf or small holdings. A further 14.2 per cent consisted of holdings of 5-10 hectares, with holdings of 10-50 hectares constituting 12.6 per cent of the total and 50-100 hectare farms amounting to only 0.5%. There were very few farms over 100 hectares.12 Holdings were larger in the north than in the southeast.

Family farms predominated. Of just over 5.1 million working on agricultural holdings in 2005, 5 million were family members. Work on the farm was not always a full-time occupation. Almost two-thirds of family members worked exclusively on the family farm. About six per centworked mainly on the farm but also outside agriculture. About 29 per cent worked mainly outside agriculture but also contributed work on the farm.13 Farming provided the main source of income for about 27 per cent of these households; for 30 per cent hiring out their labour to

other farmers was the main source, and for about 30 per cent it was pensions and welfare benefits. Only five per cent gained their main source of income from work outsideagriculture.14

Economic and social differences were still marked. In the communist period mechanization was limited and individual farms were ‘very small and relatively very backward’.15 Although the 1980s saw material conditions improve and rural standards of living grow closer to thatof their urban counterparts, rural-urban disparities increased again in the 1990s. In 2004 (the year of Poland’s accession to the European Union) the average family income of city dwellers was 54 per cent higher than that of families living in the countryside.16 Rural areas had less infrastructure. Though the situation improved steadily, homes were less well equipped than in urban areas, including with running water and sewage disposal. Only 18 per cent of homes had a gas supply, compared to 55 per cent for the country as a whole.17 Rural areas had fewer telephones, radios and televisions.The rural population was also less educated than its urban counterparts. In 2002 43 per cent of the rural population had only partial or completed primary education compared with 24 per cent of the urban population. Over sixty per cent of those ‘in charge of’ family holdings had no agricultural education, while 22 per cent had the basic agricultural diploma.18

The farming population was badly hit by the economicdownturn that characterised the first years of the move to the market economy. From January 1990 Minister of Finance Leszek Balcerowicz pursued a strategy of ‘shock therapy’. The depth of the subsequent recession was unexpected, and the population experienced both high inflation and rising unemployment. In the countryside open and hidden unemployment emerged, with lack of guaranteed state procurement and drastic falls in agricultural income. The peasants rapidly emerged as themost discontented element of society, hostile to transition and opposed to or ambivalent about membership of the European Union. Peasant protest emerged in 1990 and continued throughout the decade (see below).

Despite criticisms of successive governments’ lack of a clear policy for agricultural development, changes in the wider economy had an impact in rural areas too. From the 1990s onward the Polish countryside became increasingly differentiated and multi-functional.19 In some measure at least Poland saw processes of ‘depeasantisation’, and agriculture lost its central roleas a development mechanism in the countryside. Maria Halamska identified numerous factors contributing to the ‘end of the peasants’.20 Gradually the concept of the peasant (chlop), with its heavy cultural loading, was being replaced by the concept of the more neutral farmer (rolnik), though the two terms were often used interchangeably in common discourse. Hanna Podwedworna drew attention to the phenomenon of the ‘disappearing middle’ with a growing sector of modern farms supplying the market and a sector of smallholdings producing largely for their own needs, with a variety of environmental, tourist-oriented, and socio-cultural functions changing the basis of rural social relations.21 The Organisation of Agrarian Interests

Rural life had long been marked by social and cultural engagement. Despite the communist authorities’ attempts to counter its influence, the Catholic Church served as a bulwark against the undermining of traditional peasant values, and the peasants ‘remained the strongest and most faithful ally of the Church’.22 Rural society was also organised in a wide variety of social, economic, cultural and educational organisations,including Agricultural Circles (revived by the governmentin 195623); cooperatives, volunteer fire brigades, choirs,folk dancing groups, ‘people’s universities’, women’s groups, and many others. Many such organisations had links to the United Peasant Party (ZSL), including the Circles and also the Union of Rural Youth (Wici). These organisations survived the fall of communism. So too did Solidarity RI which re-emerged as a farmers’ trade union.Linked informally to the heir of the ZSL, the reshaped Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL), was theNational Union of Farmers and Farming Clubs and Organisations (Krajowy Związek Rolników, Kółek i Organizacji Rolniczych, KZRKiOR). A new rural trade union also emerged,

the Self-Defence (Samoobrona) trade union. All three combined their ‘union’ activities with political organisation in the strict sense.

Thus in addition to socio-economic and cultural activities three political currents found expression in the countryside after 1989. The first was linked to the Solidarity movement and the anti-communist opposition. The second centred on the successor to the United PeasantParty, the Polish Peasant Party (PSL). The third was Self-Defence (Samoobrona, SO) which emerged in 1991, grew to national significance by the end of the century, and then collapsed in the elections of 2007. All three claimed to represent the interests of peasants and farmers, and all three enjoyed representation in governments after 1989. In the early 1990s there was considerable disarray amongst the Solidarity peasant groupings. Several Polish Peasant Parties (PSL) claimed that name, all claiming to represent agrarian interests and all appealing to past heroes of the peasant movement such as Wincenty Witos andStanisław Mikołajczyk. The PSL (Wilanów) had strong linkswith the émigré movement. The Solidarity Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe 'Solidarnosc' or PSL (S)) declared itself the creation and heir of Individual Farmers’ Solidarity (Solidarity RI) with the support of forty deputies and Senators in September 1989. SolidarityRI, however, continued its independent trade union activities and declared itself in favour of a united peasant party; it had members of all elements of the peasant movement. The Solidarity movement also generated the smaller PSL (M) (for Mikołajczyk).

In the 1991 election (most of) the Solidarity groupings stood together as the PSL Peasant Accord (Porozumienie Ludowe), PSL-PL. They formed an element of JanOlszewski’s minority coalition government (December 1991 - June 1992), but their unity did not last. PSL-S withdrew and formed its own parliamentary faction, while the PL continued in government as a member of Hanna Suchocka’s coalition (July 1992-May 1993). In May 1992 PSL (S) morphed into the People’s Christian Party (Stronnictwo Ludowo-Chrześcijańskie, SLCh). In the 1993 electionthe PSL-PL was the only Solidarity peasants’ organisation

that stood, and it failed to cross the electoral threshold. That proved to be the last election in which an agrarian party of Solidarity origin stood separately. In 1997 they stood as part of the wider formation, Solidarity Election Action (AWS). This strategy did not, however, signal the end of Solidarity influence in the countryside (see below).

The communist satellite ZSL also took the PSL name, first in its incarnation as PSL (O) [PSL (Reborn)] in November 1989 and then from May 1990, after merging with part of the Wilanów group, simply as the PSL. It also attracted some former Solidarity activists, including its1990 presidential candidate Roman Bartoszcze, who led theparty from May 1990 to June 1991 (he then founded yet another party, the Polish People's Christian 'Heritage' Forum (Forum Ludowe-Chrześcijańskie 'Ojcowizna'). The ZSL formed part of the Grand Coalition that served under Prime Minister Mazowiecki after Solidarity’s triumph in Poland’s semi-free election of June 1989. In September 1990, now as the PSL, it withdrew its support from Mazowiecki’s government: this was partly a reflection of continuing hostility to the government's agricultural policies and partly because it lost the Ministry of Agriculture in a government reshuffle. The PSL was the most successful agrarian party in the post-communist period. Its membership, some 185,000 in July 1991, remained the highest of all Polish parties. It also retained much of the structural penetration of the old ZSL, with party organisations in every province and in 93per cent of rural communes (gmina). It had a clear profile as a party with a rural electorate, a ‘party of the peasants and the countryside’.24

Self-Defence (SO) represented the third strand of rural activism. Andrzej Lepper established Self-Defence as a rural trade union in January 1992 following a seriesof demonstrations and hunger strikes. It soon claimed a membership of some 300,000. In April SO’s occupation of the Ministry of Agriculture led to an agreement with the president, which SO expected to ameliorate the situation of peasants unable to cope with debt repayments. Nothing came of the agreement (President Wałęsa had by-passed thegovernment and appeared to be sanctioning illegal

actions) and SO accused the president of making empty promises. In June SO extended its ambit when Lepper formed a new political ‘party of working people, of the impoverished, of the injured (skrzywdzonych)’,25 also known as Self-Defence (SO). Lepper took a radical populist stand. He blamed the banks for the situation of the peasantry, along with the architect of shock therapy Balcerowicz, the International Monetary Fund, Western governments ‘dumping cheap produce’, and President Wałęsa. SO renewed its efforts to prevent seizure of assets from peasant debtors through direct action and demanded a debt moratorium for the whole country, as wellas cheap credits for the harvest of soft fruit.

The peasants’ organisations were the first to react against the consequences of the ‘shock therapy’ introduced by Mazowiecki’s Finance Minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, in January 1990. Part of the problem stemmedfrom the rapid rise in interest rates because of runaway inflation, creating a situation in which many farmers whohad borrowed now faced huge rises in their repayment obligations. Self-Defence gained its reputation as the representative of peasant debtors. However, there was a strand of radicalism in all the peasant unions. In spring1990 Individual Farmers’ Solidarity (Solidarity RI) underthe leadership of Gabriel Janowski organised protests against the Mazowiecki government’s agricultural policy. Solidarity RI also cooperated with the Agricultural Circles (Koła). In July 29 thousand vehicles erected 979 road blockades throughout the country. In March 1991 barricades were set up at 500 road blocks.26 The Agriculture Circles also demanded minimum price guarantees and mobilised farmers to march with black coffins symbolizing the death of agriculture. In 1991 agricultural workers of the defunct state farming collectives staged a large-scale strike.

Self-Defence rose to national prominence by escalating these direct-action methods to embrace violence and intimidation, as well as hunger strikes, blockades, occupations, and demonstrations. Its tactics included a three-week occupation of the Ministry of Agriculture in April 1992. In summer that year SO organised convoys of trucks, tractors and other

agricultural vehicles to blockade major roads.27 Skirmishes with the police became common, including a confrontation in the Sejm’s courtyard in April 1993.28

The election of the PSL-Social Democrat government in 1993 and the establishment of the Fund for Restructuring Agriculture and Rural Indebtedness brought a temporary slowdown to peasant protest. Lepper himself spent two months in prison in 1994 for inciting violence against a farm manager (he later received a 2 1/2 year suspended sentence). However, renewed farmers' militancy emerged in 1998 and 1999 following institutional reforms by Jerzy Buzek’s newly elected Solidarity government (1997) and a sharp drop in agricultural exports to Russiafollowing a severe financial crisis. 1999 began with blockades of 24 national and 150 local roads on 29 January.

The demands voiced by the demonstrating farmers werestill broadly econaomic in nature. They demanded the initiation of intervention prices for meat, milk, and butter as well as a moratorium for peasant debts and a delineation of the government’s policies for ‘protecting agriculture from excessive imports’.29 The blockades of highways and of border crossings familiar from previous farmers' campaigns were augmented by a new tactic, dumping shipments of foreign grain being brought into thecountry by rail. Andrzej Lepper of Self-Defence and Marian Zagórny of Solidarity RI became familiar faces in the national media because of such operations. The long campaign saw a number of violent confrontations. While allthree major farmers' unions cooperated during this round of protests, Self Defence was also pursuing its parallel task of organising as a political party. SO began increasingly to accentuate its differences from the othertwo farmers’ unions, and when Solidarity RI and the Agricultural Circles reached a compromise agreement with the government, Self Defence waited several months to join, when the fighting mood among the farmers began to wane. However, despite Lepper’s increasing visibility, Self-Defence made no electoral impression until 2001. Electoral Performance of Agrarian Parties

Rural voters responded to agrarian parties but they did not develop strong loyalties to individual parties.

Party history in the countryside reflected the fluidity of parties and the disillusionment of voters. For most ofthe 1990s the main political divisions in the countrysidereplicated the opposition-establishment divide, with Solidarity peasant parties in Solidarity governments in 1991-93 and the PSL in government with the social democrats from 1993-7. After 1996 Solidarity Election Action (AWS) attempted to reunite the former opposition movement around the core of the Solidarity trade union. AWS included Solidarity peasant parties among its twenty-five or so constituent elements. It briefly united agrarian with urban elements and won the 1997 election bya considerable margin. In coalition with another party ofSolidarity provenance, the Freedom Union (Unia Wolności, UW), AWS governed from 1997-2000 and then alone for a further year. The disintegration of AWS after 2000 effectively spelt the end of agrarian Solidarity parties,whose leaders dispersed across a range of new Solidarity parties, including Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) and the League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzinm LPR). However, the new challenger to PSL in the countryside was Samo-Obrona, which entered parliament in 2001 and repeated this success in 2005, after which it entered government in coalition with Law and Justice (PiS). In 2007 premature elections followed the collapse of the coalition. The PSL recovered somewhat and allied with the victorious Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO) as the junior member of Donald Tusk’s coalition. Samo-Obrona did not cross the electoral threshold in 2007 and thus failed to enter parliament.

However, it would not be accurate to view Poland’s peasants and farmers as dividing their votes first between Solidarity peasant parties and the PSL and subsequently between the PSL and SO. Electoral behaviour in Poland was exceptionally volatile and voter turnout for parliamentary elections was low. There were considerable regional differences. The historic ‘Solidarity versus establishment’ division remained important, but it was also difficult to distinguish from other factors such as religion, especially in south-eastern provinces. In other words urban-rural differences

did not translate directly into a clearly articulated political cleavage with strong party identification.

In the elections of 1991 and 1993 PSL, PL, and SO gained their votes from rural voters, but not all rural voters voted for PSL and PL. Table 2 shows votes for these two parties in 1991 and additionally for SO in 1993 (in 1991 SO fielded only three candidates in one constituency).

Table 2. Votes for Agrarian Parties in 1991 and 19931991 1993votes %

voteseats

votes %vote

seats

Polish Peasant Party(PSL)

972952 8.67 48 2124367

15.4

0

132

Peasant Alliance (PL)Porozumienie Ludowe)2

613626 5.47 28 327085 2.37 0

'Piast' Peasant Alliance 1

42031 0.37 1 - - -

Peasant Unity1

18902 0.17 1 - - -

Self-Defence (SO)

383967 2.78 0

Total 1647511

14.68

78 2835419

20.55

132

1In Tarnów PSL and PL stood separately while ‘Piast’ combined supporters of both; in Bydgoszcz PSL did not stand alone but as an element of Peasant Unity (Jedność Ludowa).Source: Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza

According to exit polls in 1991 74 per cent of PSL voters lived in the countryside or in small towns and this was no different - 75 per cent - in 1993. In 1991 almost every second peasant (including retirees) voted for PSL.30 Solidarity’s PL enjoyed its main strength in areas where Solidarity had been most active amongst the peasantry. It was stronger than the PSL in Siedlce-Białopodlaskie (23.5% and 17.4% respectively) and in Zamość-Chełm (18.8% and 14.7%). However, even in the most

rural constituencies not all voters chose peasant parties. In 1991 the PSL and PL gained their highest combined vote of 41 per cent in the most rural constituency of all, Siedlce-Białopodlaskie; but CatholicElection Action (WAK, dominated by the clerical-nationalist Christian National Union, ZChN) came second to the combined peasant parties (11.2%) and the social democrats (SLD) came third (10.5%). The pattern in other rural constituencies was similar. In Nowy Sącz two Solidarity-religious parties WAK and the Centrum (PC) together gained more votes (25.9%) than did the combined peasant parties (20.7%). In Ciechanów-Ostrołęka-Łomża thepeasant parties (27.5%) only just exceeded the vote of the religious parties (26.4%) and the SLD also did quite well (11%).31 The PC and WAK also did well in Krosno-Przemyśl: the peasant parties won 30 per cent of the voteand the religious parties 22 per cent. In Zamość-Chełm the combined peasant parties got one-third of the vote and the two main religious parties 18 per cent, slightly more than the social democrats with 17.4 per cent. It is unwise to read too much into aggregate data, and the highdegree of fragmentation and lower than average turnout inrural constituencies makes us especially cautious. However, it seems clear that alongside class, religion (also associated with the Solidarity movement) was a major identity-marker for rural voters.32

In 1993 this picture did not change much despite thesignificantly increased vote of the PSL, which took votesfrom the PL after the latter’s poor performance in government (see below). The PSL remained an overwhelmingly rural party. According to exit polls it attracted 46 per cent of the peasant-farmer vote.33 In four constituencies it attracted more than thirty per cent of the vote. Its highest share came in Płock, where it also did best in 1991. On a larger turnout (up from x to y) PSL’s vote share increased from 22.5 per cent in 1991 to 44 percent in 1993. Płock was the stronghold of PSL leader Waldemar Pawlak, who commanded a strong personal vote: he attracted 62 per cent of PSL’s preference votes in Płock in 1991 and 92 per cent in 1993. As in 1991 the PSL also did well in Zamość-Chełm and in Sierądz-Białopodlaskie. Here the PL vote had

exceeded that of the PSL in 1991. In 1993 the PL vote collapsed: 4.6 per cent in Zamość-Chełm and 7.3 per cent in Sierądz-Białopodlaskie 34 The SO did not make a national impression, but in the northeast it won 14 per cent of the vote in Koszalin, Lepper’s home constituency,and ten per cent in Słupsk. The PSL got 11 per cent of the vote in Koszalin and 15 per cent in Słupsk.

While the PSL made no inroads into the cities, in 1993 the social democrats (SLD) did manage to gain votes in rural areas - about 20 per cent of their vote came there. The SLD won eight per cent of peasants’ and farmers’ (and 22 per cent of retired persons’) votes35 andit was the second party in the constituencies where the PSL performed best. However, in areas with high levels ofchurch attendance such as Nowy Sącz the second strongest party was the religious coalition ‘Fatherland’ (in which,as with Catholic Action in 1991 the Christian National Union was dominant). Neither the two religious parties nor the PL nor Self-Defence entered parliament in 1993 after the introduction of constituency thresholds in the electoral law.The 1997 Election

Indeed, constituency thresholds meant that in 1993 only three Solidarity parties - Mazowiecki’s liberal Democratic Union; the Labour Union (Unia Pracy) and the disparate pro-presidential alliance the Non-Party Reform Bloc (BBWR) - gained seats in the lower house (Sejm) alongside the SLD, PSL, the Confederation for IndependentPoland (KPN), and the German Minority. The failure of many small Solidarity parties (including the PL) to crossthe threshold gave the two largest parties, the SLD and the PSL, a large seat premium and a near constitutional majority. However, it took SLD leader Aleksander Kwaśniewski’s defeat of Lech Wałęsa in the 1995 presidential election to galvanise the Solidarity movement. Under the auspices of the Solidarity trade union Solidarity Election Action (AWS) took shape as a broad electoral alliance of the self-styled Solidarity Right. By the time of the election some thirty-seven groups and ‘parties’ had joined AWS. These included the Peasant Accord (PL). It also included Individual Farmers’Solidarity for AWS (Porozumienie na Rzecz AWS ‘Solidarność’ RI), a

group from Solidarity RI unwilling to accept its preferred alliance with another right-wing party, the Movement for Rebuilding Poland (ROP). Much of the People’s Christian Party (Stronnictwo Ludowo-Chrześcijański, SLCh, see above) had by now joined the Conservative People’s Party (SKL), which also affiliated to AWS. One of AWS’s twelve programmatic working parties was devoted to ‘agriculture and the inhabitants of the countryside and small towns’. AWS also gathered together the Solidarity religious parties and groups such as the Association of Catholic Families. AWS’s pro-Church stanceand its emphasis on Christian values also provided a source of appeal to traditional rural voters.

At the same time it was clear that the PSL had not consolidated its hold on the peasantry. In the 1995 presidential election its leader and former prime minister Waldemar Pawlak gained 770419 votes (4.3 per cent) compared with over two million PSL votes in the 1993 parliamentary election. Serious divisions emerged; the party was beset by factional infighting36 and it was openly quarrelling with its coalition partner in government. It had not resolved its problems by the time of the 1997 parliamentary election.

OBOP’s survey of attitudes to parties in June 1997 found that 72 per cent of respondents still saw the PSL as the party ‘best representing peasants’ interests’.37 However, the PSL was squeezed as the election increasingly appeared a head-to-head contest between AWS and SLD. The PSL even failed to present a separate election manifesto, citing instead programmatic materialsfrom the party’s Fifth Congress in December 1996. These materials also indicated a shift in strategy, as the PSL sought to present itself as a national party rather than an agrarian party as hitherto – albeit with stress on therural dimensions of its programme and with continuing factional struggle.

Despite this polarization, turnout in September 1997remained low at 47.9 per cent. The PSL’s worst fears wereconfirmed by the scale of the AWS victory. The PSL vote slumped to 7.3 per cent. In the country as a whole AWS received 33.8 per cent of the vote. It scored its highestvictories in rural constituencies. AWS gained massive

vote shares in the southern constituencies where PL had been relatively strong in 1991. In Rzeszów, Nowy Sącz, and Tarnów more than half the electorate supported AWS and in Krosno, Łomża, and Przemyśl more than 45 per cent.

The SLD also improved its share of the vote, winningan average of 27 per cent. Indeed, exit polls show that both AWS and SLD took votes in the countryside (see Table3). Olszewski’s tiny ROP, partly supported by elements ofSolidarity RI, gained only 5.6 per cent of the national vote but considerably increased that figure in Łomża (11%), Krosno (10%) and Chełm (9.5%). The PSL’s own best results came once again in Zamość and Płock (where AWS had its third poorest result). But the PSL’s vote share slipped from 40 per cent to 24.6 per cent in the former (AWS won 33%) and from 44 per cent to 21.3 per cent in the latter (the SLD won 31 per cent).

. Table 3. Support for victorious parties in the 1997

election (%)national vote

rural areas

cities 10-100 thousand

cities 100 thousand+

AWS33.8

34.0(35.8)

33.0 31.4

SLD27.1

22.3(21.4)

28.1 29.8

UW13.4

9.5(7.7)

16.7 20.7

PSL7.3

15.1(17.5)

1.3 4.3

ROP5.6

6.0(5.6)

5.4 5.2

Source: for national vote Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza; for residence OBOP exit polls in Życie, 23 September 1997; in brackets PBS exit polls from Rzeczpospolita, 22 September 1997.

In 1997 Samo-Obrona did not mount a serious electoralchallenge. Lepper had stood in the 1995 presidential election, when he received a paltry 1.3 per cent of the vote. The result in 1997 was even worse. Because it

failed to field party lists in all districts, SO was not allocated free broadcasting slots and remained largely invisible. Its vote never reached one per cent in any constituency. Following the election Lepper organised further agrarian protests with elements of Solidarity RI and the Agricultural Circles (see above). Still, SO did not register in monthly polls by the premier polling agency CBOS until March 1999, when it had the support of two per cent of respondents. From then until the end of the year SO’s support remained in the one-two per cent bracket.38

The Elections of 2001, 2005, and 2007The oscillation in power of Solidarity parties and

successor parties continued in 2001, when the SLD won an impressive victory and once again formed a coalition government with the PSL. Unlike 1993, however, this government was short-lived as Prime Minister Leszek Miller ejected PSL from the coalition in March 2003, and two minority governments followed. The SLD split and its popularity plummeted as a result of corruption scandals. In 2005 the pattern of oscillation changed, as Law and Justice (PiS), the largest party to emerge from the 2005 elections, formed a coalition with two parties hitherto regarded as coalition untouchables. Relations within the PiS coalition with Self-Defence (SO) and the League of Polish Families (LPR) proved difficult and unstable. It collapsed twice before the calling of premature electionsin October 2007. After the 2007 elections the new government also bridged the Solidarity-successor gap by aligning the largest party, Civic Platform (PO), with thePolish Peasant Party (PSL) in a four-party Sejm (see below, Table 4). Neither Self-Defence nor the League of Polish Families crossed the threshold, and neither appeared likely to survive.

After its poor showing in 1997 the PSL’s elected a new leader, Jarosław Kalinowski, who set out to recapturethe peasants and at the same time to broaden the party’s appeal. The PSL contested the 1998 local government elections as the Social Alliance (Przymierze Społeczne) with the Labour Union (UP) and the Pensioners’ Party (KPEiR), neither of which had entered parliament in 1997. The Alliance did quite well, coming third to AWS and the SLD;

within the Alliance the PSL was the clear victor.39 The 2000 presidential election did not test the parties’ support because President Kwaśniewski was so popular among all sections of the population. Neither Lepper nor Kalinowski performed well, and Kwaśniewski won convincingly on the first ballot (53.9%). Kalinowski received six per cent of the vote and Lepper three per cent. However, the presidential election had a major

1 A. Woś, Społeczno-Ekonomiczna Przebudowa Wsi i Rolnictwa w Polsce, Warsaw: IPPM-L, 1981.2 For an eyewitness account see Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution. Solidarity 1980-1982, London: Jonathan Cape, 1983, pp. 110-134.3 Krystyna Szafraniec, ‘Polskie residuum systemowe, czyli pytanie o role wsi i chłopów w procesach przekształceń ustrojowych’ (from Kultura i Społeczeństwo, vol. 2, 2002, at www.irwirpan.waw.pl/polski/Krystyna_Szafraniec_Polskie_residuum_systemowe.pdf , p. 5.4 Korbonski p. 88.5 Wilkin, pp. 70-71.6 Anita Paczynska, 'Inequality, Political Participation, and Democratic Deepening', East European Politics & Societies, 19, 4, fall 2005, p. 593.7 Aleks Szczerbiak, 'The Polish Peasant Party: A Mass Party in Postcommunist Eastern Europe?', East European Politics and Societies, vol. 15,no. 3, fall 2001, pp. 554-88.8 Mirosława Grabowska, Podział Postkomunistyczny, Warsaw 9 See Jacek Raciborski, ‘Forming government elites in a new democracy: The case of Poland’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 40 (2007) pp. 17-40.10 In Hungary by contrast Tóka argued that cleavages were weak in Hungary and were moreover ‘squeezed by the institutions’; see Gábor Tóka, ‘Hungary’ in Sten Berglund, Joakim Ekman and Frank Aarebrot, Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004 (2nd ed), p. 289 (289-336).11 Cf Jakub Zieliński, ‘Translating Social Cleavages into Party Systems: The Significance of New Democracies’, World Politics, vol. 54, January 2002, p. 193 (pp. 184-211).12 Główny Urząd Statystyczny w Olsztynie, ‘Charakterystyka obszarów wiejskich w 2005 r.’, Olsztyn 2006, Table 14, p. 126.13 Główny Urząd Statystyczny w Olsztynie, ‘Charakterystyka obszarów wiejskich w 2005 r.’, Olsztyn 2006, p. 78.14 Główny Urząd Statystyczny w Olsztynie, ‘Charakterystyka obszarów wiejskich w 2005 r.’, Olsztyn 2006, pp. 78-9.15 Jerzy Wilkin, ‘Private Agriculture and Socialism: the Polish Experience’ in Roger Clarke, Poland. The Economy in the 1980s, Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1989, p. 64 (61-71)16 GUS, ‘Warunki życia ludności Polski w latach 2004-2005,’ Warsaw: GUS, Departament Statystyki Społecznej, 2007, p. 21, from

impact on party development. It accelerated the disintegration of AWS and the emergence of two new parties, Civic Platform (PO) and Law and Justice (PiS) from its ruins. The Conservative People’s Party (SKL), which included agrarian elements, allied itself with Civic Platform, but its allegiance to PO was far from assured. Some AWS defectors, including Gabriel Janowski of PL, joined with extra-parliamentary nationalists to form the new League of Polish Families (LPR).

http://www.stat.gov.pl/gus/45_3218_PLK_HTML.htm, 17 GUS, ‘Warunki życia ludności Polski w latach 2004-2005,’ Warsaw: GUS, Departament Statystyki Społecznej, 2007, p. 65.18 Główny Urząd Statystyczny w Olsztynie, ‘Charakterystyka obszarów wiejskich w 2005 r.’, Olsztyn 2006, p. 77.19 Główny Urząd Statystyczny w Olsztynie, ‘Charakterystyka obszarów wiejskich w 2005 r.’, Olsztyn 2006 from http://www.stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/xbcr/gus/PUBL_charakter_obszar_wiejskich_w_2005.pdf (accessed2 May 2007)20 M. Halamska, Rolnictwo rodzinne w transformacji postkomunistycznej. Anatomia zmian, Warsaw: IRWiR PAN, 2003.21 Hanna Podedworna, ‘Przemiany zbiorowości wiejskich’ in Jacek Wasilewski ed., Współczesne Społeczeństwo Polskie. Dynamika zmian, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukower Scholar, 2006, p, 221, 225 (pp. 199-230).22 Szajkowski, p. 3. 23 Tadeusz Cieplak, ‘Private Farming and the Status of the Polish Peasantry since World War II’ in Ivan Volgyes ed., The Peasantry of Eastern Europe, New York: Pergamon Press, p.29 (25-38)24 Mirosława Grabowska and Tadeusz Szawiel, Budowanie demokracji. Podziały społeczne, partie polityczne i społeczeńsatwo obywatelskie w postkomunistycznej Polsce, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2001, p. 198, p. 209.25 Rzeczpospolita, 16 June 1992; also Rzeczpospolita 3 July 1992.26 Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society. Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989-1993, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999, p. 111.27 Ewa Czaczkowska, ‘Bojownicy’, Rzeczpospolita, 3 July 1992; Krystyna Naszkowska, ‘Nowy Szela’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 4-5 July 1992; Witold Pawlowski, ‘Bizony na Sztorc’, Polityka no. 27, 4 July 1992. 28 Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society. Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989-1993, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999, p. 111.29 Rzeczpospolita, 30-31 January 1999; see also Mateusz Piskorski, ‘Samoobrona Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej’ in Krzysztof Kowalczyk and Jerzy Sielski, eds., Polskie partie i Ugrupowania Parlamentarne, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2005, p.203 (197-226)..30 Jacek Raciborski, Polskie Wybory. Zachowania wyborcze społeczeństwapolskiego w latach 1989-1995, Warsaw, pp. 54-5.31 These and subsequent electoral data are calculated by the author from datasets compiled since 1991 on the basis of data from the StateElectoral Commission (Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza). These datasets are

The victory of the social democrats in the 2001 election was widely expected, and the new parties did notperform as well as they had hoped (see Table 4). However,three newly formed parties (PO, PiS, and LPR) and one extra-parliamentary party (SO) entered parliament for thefirst time. Voters excluded from parliament the hitherto governing parties, the rump Solidarity Action of the Right (AWSP) and the Freedom Union (UW), both of which failed to cross the electoral thresholds for the Sejm. Only the SLD and PSL survived from previous parliaments.

Table 4. Results of Major Parties in the Elections of September 2001 to the SejmParty/coalition* Vote % vote seats %

seatsSLD-UP: Alliance of theDemocratic Left-LabourUnion (Sojusz LewicyDemokratycznej-Unia Pracy)

5342519 41.04 216 46.96

PO: Civic Platform(Platforma Obywatelska)

1651099 12.68 65 14.13

SO: Self-Defence (Samo-obrona)

1327624 10.20 53 11.52

available at www.essex.ac.uk/elections.32 See Markowski33 Zycie Warszawy 222, 22 September 199334 Where constituencies were split for the 1993 elections, the data have been combined to provide results for their 1991 counterparts. 35 Zycie Warszawy 222, 22 September 1993.36 Krzysztof Urbaniak, ‘Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe - między rządem a oposycją’ in Stanisłasw Gebethner ed., Wybory ’97. Partie i programy wyborcze, Warsaw: Elipsa, 1997, pp. 128-31.37 OBOP, ‘Czyje interesy reprezentują różne partie polityczne’, Warsaw: July 1997.38 CBOS, ‘Preferencje Partyjne w marcu’, Komunikat z Badań BS/42/99, Warsaw, March 1999; CBOS, ‘Preferencje Partyjne w lipcu’, Komunikat zBadań BS/114/99, Warsaw: CBOS July 1999; ‘Preferencje Partyjne w sierpniu’, Komunikat z Badań BS/129/99, Warsaw: August 1999; ‘Preferencje Partyjne we wrześniu’, Komunikat z Badań BS/141/99 September, 1999; ‘Preferencje Partyjne we grudniu’, Komunikat z BadańBS/189/99, December 1999.39 Aleks Szczerbiak, ‘The Impact of the 1998 Local Elections on the Emerging Polish Party System’, The Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, vol. 15, no. 3 (September 1999), pp. 91-2 (80-100).

PiS: Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość)

1236787 9.50 44 9.56

PSL: Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe)

1168659 8.98 42 9.13

LPR: League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin)

1025148 7.87 38 8.26

MN: German Minority (Mniejszość Niemiecka)1

47230 0.02 2 0.43

AWSP: Solidarity Election Action - the Right (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność – Prawica)

729207 5.60 0 n/a

UW: Freedom Union (Unia Wolności)

404074 3.10 0 n/a

Alternatywa: The Alternative

54266 0.42 0 n/a1Minorities were exempt from thresholdsSource: Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza

The PSL improved its performance somewhat over 1997,while turnout dropped slightly from 47.9 per cent to 46.2per cent. The PSL won nine per cent of the vote and 1168659 votes in 2001 compared with 7.3 per cent and 956184 votes in 1997. The campaign themes of the PSL stressed the importance of rural development but the party sought to broaden its appeal beyond the narrow class base of its natural rural constituency. Alongside the agricultural circles and some elements of Solidarity RI, the PSL associated itself with a number of small right-wing groupings. It also placed the left-wing formerleader of the Labour Union (UP) Ryszard Bugaj first on its list in the capital Warsaw – not of course a stronghold of agrarian parties - and gave places to the splinter group Self-Defence Fatherland and the trade union of nurses and midwives. PSL also tried to ensure that local organizations fed candidate recommendations tocounty level and to encourage the recruitment of women and young people.40

This strategy failed, and the PSL remained the partyof the countryside. But it gained fewer votes than ever and lost votes to Self-Defence. SO became a national party in 2001. Its performance was the biggest surprise of the election. Until late in the campaign it was not regarded as a real contender, and not all observers had

detected its sudden rise in the opinion polls. The Centrefor Regional Studies found that counties with the highestincrease in turnout compared with 1997 also showed the highest increases in support for SO.41

Between 1997 and 2001 a great change took place, with the majority of voters voting for a different party in 2001.42 The PSL retained many loyal voters - about 60 per cent of its 1997 support. But Self- Defence took morethan 17 per cent of the PSL’s previous voters, while the Social Democrat-Labour Union (SLD-UP) electoral alliance took over ten per cent. Both PSL and SO drew their supportlargely from the countryside, though SO made inroads intosmall and medium-sized towns. In 2001 PSL got 72 per centand SO 55 per cent of its voters from rural areas. PSL gained the vote of one-third of those working in agriculture and SO about 28 per cent. SO was stronger among men (64% of its voters) and very weak among those with higher education (just over 3%).43 SO voters were least satisfied (only 24% were content) with the functioning of Polish democracy44 and most critical of the economic situation.45 SO did best in Koszalin (23%), where Lepper received 95.6 per cent of his party’s vote, and in Sierądz (17.8%). The PSL did best in Siedlce (23%)and Chełm (21.4%).

After flirting with Self-Defence, the victorious SLDreturned to its old partner the PSL to form a coalition government. The experience was uncomfortable for both partners. Prime Minister Leszek Miller finally lost patience when the PSL voted against a highway tolls’ billwithout advising the government. In March 2003 he expelled the PSL from government. Many PSL deputies had been unenthusiastic about joining the coalition, and the party was failing to rise to the challenge of Self-Defence. It was reportedly losing ten thousand members a year, and it was openly divided between the so-called ‘nationalists’ and ‘pragmatists’. Miller also accused the PSL of hindering EU negotiations.

In the event Miller paid dearly for the loss of a majority government. By 2005 the Polish political landscape had shifted once again. Just as AWS had fallen apart after 1997, so the SLD split after 2001 under the shadow of major corruption allegations and the so-called

Rywingate scandal. The SLD was reduced again to its core support, as voters switched away from the left in huge numbers. In 2005 the parties represented in the Sejm did not change, but their relative strengths were now radically different.

The PSL did not fare well after its expulsion from Miller’s government. The Electoral Commission rejected its financial report for the election, but Kalinowski hung on for another year. Factional in-fighting and financial disaster led to his replacement by Janusz Wojciechowski in early 2004. Wojciechowski further divided the party by approaching other parties, includingthe Christian nationalists (ZChN) and the Conservative People’s Party (SKL), with a view to forming a broader based Christian-peasant formation.

Wojciechowski’s unauthorised negotiations, coupled with a poor performance in elections to the European Parliament (6.3% of the vote and four seats) and his frequent absences (he won a Euro-seat) led to the return of Waldemar Pawlak as leader in January 2005. However, continuing ructions, including the virtual disintegrationof its Euro-caucus in Strasbourg, left the PSL fighting for its life. Throughout the summer of 2005 the PSL’s standing in the polls hovered just above or just below the five per cent threshold.46 A week before the electionsCBOS still registered PSL support at five per cent, with Self-Defence on 12 per cent.47 Lepper's redefinition of Self-Defence as a left-wing party gave the PSL the chanceto win voters on the right; but recasting a new vision ofthe PSL as a modern Christian democratic party which stressed traditional values and spoke in moderate tones did not prove straightforward. Moreover, PiS and LPR alsoheld attractions for rural voters on the right.

The results of the 2005 elections may be seen in Table 5. Once the SLD was no longer seen as a challenger,the electoral battle played itself out between Law and Justice (PiS) and Civic Platform (PO). Lech Kaczyński’s success in the near-simultaneous presidential election 46 GfK polls in Rz 19/7/05, 10/8/05, Rz 24/8/05, OBOP in Pol 35, 3/9/05, CBOS, ‘Jak Polacy będą głosować 25 września - preferencje partyjne w lipcu, Komunikat z badań BS/120/2005, July 2005.47 CBOS, ‘preferencje partyjne na tydzień przed wyborami’, Komunikat z badań BS/150/2005, September 2005.

gave PiS the presidency as well as making it the largest parliamentary party. The collapse of the SLD made the electorate as volatile as ever: almost two-thirds of voters (63%) cast their votes for a different party than in 2001, and more than one-quarter (28%) shifted their vote for a left-wing party to a party of the right.48 Six parties entered the Sejm, along with the German Minority.Turnout sank to 40.5%. With 27% of the vote PiS won a plurality in the Sejm along with a near-majority in the Senate. PO's second place (24%) came as a shock to that party, which had assumed it would lead the next government. Self-Defence was third with little more thanits 2001 vote but just ahead of the SLD. The SLD did better than many had expected but not well enough to constitute the desired 'strong opposition to the right'. The Families failed to live up to their own expectations,achieving the vote share of 2001 but fewer votes. The Peasant Party had its worst result ever, but it was relieved to be comfortably across the threshold.

Table 5. Results for Major Parties of the 2005 Elections to the Sejm Party/Grouping vote %

voteseat

s%

seats

ruralvote (%)

Law and Justice (PiS) 3185714 26.99 155 33.7 25.7(25)

Civic Platform (PO) 2849259 24.14 133 28.9 16.1(16)

40 Rzeczpospolita, 1 June 2001.41 Wisła Surażska, 'Populistyczna mobilizacja', Rzeczpospolita, 11 December 2001.42 Radosław Markowski, 'Centrum. jest czy go nie ma?', Polityka 8, 26/2/05.43 PBS and OBOP figures are identical for the SLD but they differ slightly for other parties, so I have not given exact figures. OBOP data are no longer available from the archive (tns-global.pl), but Aleks Szczerbiak published them in Szczerbiak, p. 52 (Table 4). 44 Markowski and Cześnik, p. 21.45 Krzysztof Jasiewicz, ‘Czyj prezydent, czyj parlament? Wartości i interesy a zachowania wyborcze w 2000 oraz 2001 r.’, Studia Polityczne, no. 13, 2002, p. 244.48 Radosław Markowski, ‘Polak zdradza za kotara’, Polityka 35, 1 September 2007; check WEP

Self-Defence (SO) 1347355 11.41 56 12.2 18.3(20)

Alliance of the DemocraticLeft (SLD)

1335257 11.31 55 12 7.2 (8)

League of Polish Families (LPR)

940762 7.97 34 7.4 12.6(13)

Polish Peasant Party (PSL) 821656 6.96 25 5.4 12.4(12)

German Minority (MN)* 34469 0.29 2 0.4Polish Social Democracy (SdPl)

459380 3.89 - -

Democratic Party (PD) 289276 2.45 - -Total 100 460 100* exempt from national thresholdsSource: national totals from Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza; rural vote from OBOP/PBS for Polish Television (TVP), 25 September 2005; and GFKPolonia for Rzeczpospolita (published 26 September 2005) and TVN; GfK results are in brackets.

As expected, Law and Justice drew support from the countryside, further undermining PSL’s claim to be the major party of rural voters. PiS attracted the Solidarity-element of the countryside and gained added support with its emphasis on the need for state intervention in the economy and more welfare, as well as offering the prospect of a ‘moral revolution’ based on traditional Christian values. The two exit polls presented in Table 6 show both the strength of PiS and the erosion of PSL support among rural voters. With SO still maintaining its vote, the very future of the PSL looked uncertain. SO maintained its supremacy in Koszalin(23%) and Sierądz (22%). It overtook the PSL in its previous strongholds of Chełm, with 21.8 per cent of the vote to the PSL’s 18.3 per cent, and Siedlce with 19 per cent to 16.4 per cent.

After 2005, with Self-Defence in government, the PSLappeared to be in terminal decline. Its national opinion poll results ranged from 1-3 per cent until November 2006. However, it benefited from SO’s performance in government, where it proved a truculent partner for Law and Justice. Urged by necessity, as a result of PiS’s adoption of an apparantement agreement49 with SO and LPR

for the local elections of 2006, PSL ‘blocked’ its votes with those of Civic Platform (PO).50 The strategy of alliance was effective, and PSL did far better than expected, winning voters back from SO. This was also in part a tribute to PSL leader Pawlak, who was strongly associated with the defence of local government in the fact of the government’s centralizing tendencies.51

Its relative success in the local elections did not see an enduring rise in the PSL’s poll ratings, which soon slipped once again below the election threshold. However, the collapse of the government and the calling of premature elections once again led to dramatic shifts in party support. Just as AWS and SLD had squeezed the smaller parties in 1997, so PO and PiS squeezed them in 2007. The 2007 election was widely seen as a referendum on the style and performance of PiS’s Jarosław Kaczyński,with the electorate becoming more and more polarized. Civic Platform won a stunning victory. It triumphed in the cities and owed much of its increased support to young voters (see Table 6). SO’s reputation declined, andSO voters moved in large numbers to Law and Justice. PiS was easily the strongest party in the countryside, where it also took support from the League of Polish Families (LPR). The PSL in turn made up some lost ground. In the 2007 elections SO did not cross the threshold in any constituency.

Table 6. Selected Results in 2007Party/Grouping vote % vote seat

s%

seatsCivic Platform (PO) 6701010 41.51 209 45.4Law and Justice (PiS) 5183477 32.11 166 36.1Left and Democrats (LiD) 2122981 13.15 53 11.5

49 With appartenement parties can pool votes for the count.50 Andrzej Stankiewicz and Michał Zieliński, ‘Koalicja pójdzie do wyborów razem, a Platforma z ludowcami’, Rzeczpospolita, 20 October 2006.51 See for example Janina Paradowska, ‘Zablokowani’, Polityka 47, 25 November 2006; Ewa Czaczkowska, ‘Lepper stracił zaufanie rolników (Interview with Barbara Fedyszak-Radziejowska), Rzeczpospolita, 15 November 2006.

Polish Peasant Party (PSL) 1437638 8.91 31 6.7Self-Defence (SO) 247335 1.53 - -League of Polish Families (LPR)

209171 1.30 - -

German Minority (MN)* 32462 0.20 1 0.2Source: Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza

Following the election the PSL was back in government, this time with the Civic Platform (PO). This gave the PSL the opportunity to restore both its image and its party structures. It seemed highly improbable that SO could recover. Even its strongest voters in Koszalin deserted it, and many of its activists had already joined Law and Justice (PiS). However, changes inthe countryside also contributed to the erosion of the link between rural voters and agrarian parties. European Union structural funds were already increasing the rural infrastructure, though they also increased the distance between the ‘farmers’ receiving CAP funds and the ‘peasants’, subsisting on their small plots and often outside ‘the market’ altogether. Civic Platform did bestin the western part of the country and in the largest cities. Yet even in its worst performing constituencies, the rural heartland of Rzeszów, Sieldce, and Chełm, PO got 27.7 per cent, 24.8 per cent, and 24.1 per cent of the vote respectively. Representation of Agrarian Interests

It should not be deduced from these changes that rural interests or interests of those engaged in agriculture were no longer relevant. Significant differences remained between town and countryside, especially in those areas far from any large city. The countryside lagged in educational attainment and opportunity, in occupational mobility, and generally in human capital. Religion remained important, and the ruralprovinces of the southeast remained the most strongly religious of all.52 However, given the availability of parties claiming to represent the interests of peasants and farmers, it is perhaps surprising that the rural electorate proved so volatile.

One explanation centres on the failure of the agrarian parties to maintain a strong social connection with their voters. This was a result of the parties’ failure to nurture their social roots, but it was also because rural voters could choose between competing parties stressing agrarian interests and traditional moral values. Another (linked) approach centres on the failures of agrarian parties in government. They were troublesome coalition partners and they did not succeed in convincing their electorates that they had delivered on their election promises.

In general many Poles saw the sphere of politics as complex, corrupt, incomprehensible, inaccessible and unfriendly. Successive CBOS reports tracked the electorate’s negative attitudes to political parties in general and the lack of enduring identification with particular parties. In spring 2007 54 per cent of respondents found no party ‘close to them’, the lowest level thus far registered in democratic Poland. Of those with a ‘close’ party eight per cent supported SO and fiveper cent PSL.53

In early elections PSL gained because its deputies and senators paid close attention to voters in their constituencies and because it maintained close links withrural communities through organisations such as the Volunteer Fire Brigade, the Circles of Rural Women, and the Union of Rural Youth.54 In 1997 a CBOS poll found that65 per cent of farmers and peasants identified the PSL asa party ‘serving their interests’. However, in many regions the historical link with rural Solidarity partiesremained strong, and the countryside voted in large numbers for AWS in 1997. AWS was centred organisationallyon the Solidarity trade union itself, and its constituentsmall parties did not develop their structures in the countryside. In 2001 Self-Defence, with its record of direct action, Law and Justice, with its popular anti-corruption theme and its moral rhetoric, and the League of Polish Families, supported by Catholic fundamentalists

53 CBOS, ‘Partie Bliższe i Dalsze - Identifykacja Partyjne Polaków’, Komunikat z Badań BS/73/2007, Warsaw, May 2007.

associated with Radio Maryja, became plausible alternatives to the PSL. By early 2007 those identifying ‘more or less’ with the PSL had fallen to 46 per cent, but 63 per cent of the potential PSL electorate also identified PiS as ‘expressing their attitudes and interests’.55 PSL had less support in the countryside thanSelf-Defence and PiS. By the end of 2007 Self-Defence andthe League of Polish Families had dissipated their support, but PiS retained its strong presence in the countryside. The PSL failed to claw back its impressive vote of 1993.

How could those who worked the land have become so disillusioned with those claiming to represent them? In every government after 1989 agrarian parties controlled the Ministry of Agriculture and other major ministries (see Table 7).

Table 7. Agrarian Parties in Government 1989-2007Prime Minister

Minister Party Ministry held dates

Mazowiecki Czesław Janicki ZSL Agriculture 12.9.89-6.7.90

Janusz Byliński PSL(S)

Agriculture 14.9.90-14.12.90

Artur Balazs PSL(S)

Rural Social & Cultural Affairs

12.9.89-12.1.91

Andrzej Kosiniak-Kamysz

ZSL Health and Social Care

12.9.89-12.1.91

Aleksander Bentkowski

ZSL Justice 12.9.89-12.1.91

Olszewski Gabriel Janowski PL Agriculture 23.12.1991-10.7.92

Suchocka Gabriel Janowski PL Agriculture 11.7.92-8.4.93

Janusz Bylinski PL Agriculture (acting minister)

10.4.93-July93

Jacek Janiszewski

SLCh Agriculture (acting minister)

July 93-26.10.93

Zygmunt Hortmanowicz

PL Environment 11.7.92-26.10.93

Pawlak Waldemar Pawlak PSL Prime Minister 26.10.93-1.3.95

Andrzej Śmietanko

PSL Agriculture 26.10.93-6.3.95

Stanisław Żelichowski

PSL Environment 26.10.93-6.3.95

Mirosław Pietrewicz

PSL Central PlanningBureau

26.10.93-6.3.95

Aleksander Łuczak

PSL Education 26.10.93-6.3.95

Kazimierz Dejmek PSL Culture 26.10.93-

52Janusz Czapiński and Tomasz Panek eds., Diagnoza Społeczna 2007, Warsaw: Rada Monitoringu Społecznego, 10/9/2007 at http://www.diagnoza.com/files/diagnoza2007/raport_11.11.2007.pdf (downloaded 6/12/07).54 S. Gebethner, ‘Partie i ich koalicje przed wyborami parlamentarnymi1997 r.’ in S. Gebethner ed., Wybory ’97. Partie i programy wyborcze, Warsaw:Elipsa, 1997, p. 33, p. 35.55 CBOS, ‘Poczucie representatywności partii politycznych’, Komunikat z badań BS/34/2007, Warsaw, February 2007

6.3.95Michał Strąk PSL Bureau of the

Council of Ministers

26.10.93-1.3.19

Lesław Podkański

PSL Foreign EconomicCooperation

26.10.93-6.3.95

Oleksy Roman Jagieliński

PSL Agriculture 7.3.95-7.2.96

Stanisław Żelichowski

PSL Environment 7.3.95-7.2.96

Mirosław Pietrewicz

PSL Central PlanningBureau

7.3.95-7.2.96

Aleksander Łuczak

PSL Committee of Scientific Research

7.3.95-7.2.96

Cimoszewicz

Roman Jagieliński

PSL Agriculture 7.2.96 - 10.04.97

Jarosław Kalinowski

PSL Agriculture 25.4.96-31.10.97

Stanisław Żelichowski

PSL Environment 7.2.96 - 31.10.97

Mirosław Pietrewicz

PSL Central PlanningBureau, then Treasury

7.2.96 - 31.10.97

Zdzisław Podkański

PSL Culture 7.2.96-31.10.97

Aleksander Łuczak

PSL Committee of Scientific Research

7.2.96 -31.10.97

Stanisław Dobrzański

PSL Defence 7.2.96 -31.10.97

Buzek Jacek Janiszewski

(SKL) Agriculture 31.10.97-26.3.99

Artur Balazs (SKL) Agriculture 26.3.99-19.10.01

Miller Jarosław Kalinowski

PSL Agriculture 19.10.01-3.3.03

Stanisław Żelichowski

PSL Environment 19.10.01 - 3.3.03

Marcinkiewicz

Andrzej Lepper SO Agriculture 5.5.06 - 14.7.06

Anna Kalata SO Labour & Social Policy

5.5.06 - 14.7.06

Kaczynski Andrzej Lepper SO Agriculture 5.5.06-22.9.06

Anna Kalata SO Labour & Social Policy

14.7.06-13.8.07

Andrzej Lepper SO Agriculture 16.10.06-9.7.07

Tusk Waldemar Pawlak PSL Economy/Deputy PM

16.11.07-

Marek Sawicki PSL Agriculture 16.11.07-Jolanta Fedak PSL Labour & Social

Policy16.11.07-

Source: compiled by the author from www.kprm.gov.pl

According to the ‘Farmers ’92’ (Rolnicy ’92) surveysin November that year, 93 per cent of respondents assessed the situation in agriculture as ‘rather bad’ or ‘very bad’.56 The government scored very low ratings, though sympathizers of Solidarity RI and PL were more positive in their assessment of the Ministry of Agriculture.57 However, only the authorities of the commune (gmina) and the PSL were perceived by the majority as serving agrarian interests (see Table 8).

Table 8. Serving the interests of Polish agriculture and the countryside? (%)

yes no hard to saycommune authorities

54 30 16

PSL 51 26 23Rural Solidarity 45 34 21PSL-PL 39 34 21agricultural circles

34 45 21

ZZ Samoobrona 31 43 26government 16 72 12President Wałęsa 14 72 14Sejm 11 79 10Note: The respondents were farmers and peasants who owned their land.Source: Starzyński, Table 3, p. 115

56 Michał Strzewski, ‘Rolnicy o sytuacji rolnictwa i warunkach życia na wsi’, Wieś i Rolnictwo, vol. 80, no. 3, 1993, p. 107 (105-119).57 Piotr Starzyński, ‘Rolnicy indywidualnei o instytucjach życia społecznego i politycznego wsi polskiej’, Wieś i Rolnictwo, vol. 80, no. 3, 1993, p. 113 (112-19).

In general farmers, like their urban compatriots, rapidly lost faith in successive governments. Although the recipients of huge tax concessions and welfare benefits - paying no income tax, for example, and little in the way of health or pensions’ contributions, farmers and peasants did not feel nurtured or protected in the new Poland. In March 1998 the performance of Buzek’s AWS government was regarded as ‘good’ by 39 per cent of ruralrespondents and 33 per cent of farmers. It was ‘bad’ for 37 and 42 per cent respectively.58 Nine months later, whenasked if they saw the current (Buzek) government as ‘creating conditions for economic improvement’, only 26 per cent of rural dwellers and 18 per cent of farmers replied in the affirmative while 59 per cent of rural residents and 65 per cent of farmers said ‘no’.59

Miller’s 2001 government fared no better, even with the PSL as its coalition partner. In June 2002 among farmers over four-fifths of respondents (82%) were convinced that ‘the government’s agricultural policies were ‘not beneficial’.60 Indeed, a large majority of the population as a whole believed in a protectionist approach to agriculture. The proportion favouring ‘agricultural subsidies from the state budget and protectionist tariffs, even if this had to lead to higheragricultural prices’ was 53 per cent in 1995, 61 per centin 1996, 63 per cent in 1997, 66 per cent in 1999, and 65per cent in 2003.61 Supporters of PSL were even more protectionist (85%) than those of Self-Defence (73%).

It should also be noted that coalition governments in Poland enjoyed a very bad press. They were without exception publicly quarrelsome and recalcitrant. Even government ministers could not always be counted upon to vote for their own government. In the summer of 1997 the PSL actually tabled a vote of no confidence in the

58 ‘Stosunek do rządu w czerwcu’. Komunikat z badań BS 83/83/98, Warsaw: CBOS, July 1998.59 K. Pankowski, ‘Stosunek do rządu in marcu’, Warsaw: CBOS, March 1999.60 ‘Ocena polityki rządu wobec rolnictwa i stosunek do protestów rolników, Komunikar z badań BS/105/2002, Warsaw: CBOS, June 2002.61 ‘Poglądy elektoratów partyjnych na temat istotnych kwestii społeczno-politycznych’, Komunikat z badań BS/75/2003, Warsaw: CBOS, May 2003.

Cimoszewicz government of which it was a member; it did not withdraw from the coalition nor did it withdraw its ministers. Andrzej Lepper of SO was not only a troublesome member of the 2006-7 PiS government, but his tenure as minister of agriculture was regarded as notablyunsuccessful, and he was personally accused of impropriety in the ‘sex for jobs’ scandal during his tenure in office. Ironically, the young Wojciech Olejniczak of the SLD, minister of agriculture in Miller’s second (minority) government, was regarded as Poland’s most successful minister of agriculture. Electoral volatility reflected these negative assessments, and swings of voters away from serving governments showed just how tenuous were links to political parties. Conclusion

We have offered evidence of the partial relevance ofan agrarian-based cleavage in Polish politics. Elites didnot ‘translate’ this cleavage directly into segmented politics, and initially the Solidarity v. establishment division of Polish politics cut across this axis. Both the Solidarity-based peasant parties and the PSL appealedexplicitly to agricultural interests, and there were no serious programmatic disputes among them. Indeed, it is difficult to speak of this as constituting social conflict translated into political conflict, since all political parties were generally sympathetic to the needsof agriculture. It is more accurate to speak of parties seeking to represent agrarian interests.

The farmers and peasants did not respond however - at least not in the sense of giving their enduring loyalty to these parties. Electoral volatility remained high, with dramatic increases and reductions of party support at successive elections. Agrarian parties did notconvince the voting public that they adequately represented their voters’ interests, even when the formerwere well represented in government. The large catch-all groupings like SLD and AWS both did well in attracting rural votes and so too did the religious parties and later Law and Justice. Thus even the PSL, endowed with greater resources than any other Polish party, could not hold its voters - though its support was certainly

confined to the countryside. When Self-Defence emerged asa serious challenger, its own parliamentary breakthrough came only because it broke out of its rural strongholds and made inroads into the towns. It was rather a party ofthe disadvantaged than of the countryside per se.