Suchergebnisse

While Poland's right-wing opposition faces a serious crisis following its loss of office, it retains many important political assets and most of the ferment is on the party's fringes rather than at its core. But the situation is a dynamic one and further election defeats could bring things to a head. Law and Justice's political […]

This article deals with Poland's Law and Justice (PiS), considered a conservative party in the scholarly literature. Drawing largely on party manifestos, the article demonstrates the character, the specificities and the evolution of the party's identity and ideology. A theoretical basis for the undertaking is provided by Klaus von Beyme's concept of party families, Arend Lijphart's seven ideological dimensions and classic texts on conservatism. The analysis finds that the most important components in PiS's current identity are Catholicism itself and the great emphasis the party places on the role of the Catholic Church. Also important for the party's identity are visions of a nation conceived on ethnic principle, a strong and active state able to form society with a national spirit, anti-communism and a negation of developments in Poland since 1989. A substantial role is played by the quasi-religiously conceived legacy of the party's co-founder, Lech Kaczyński, who tragically perished in an aircraft crash. With its Catholic-nationalist profile, PiS is close to the Christian current within the conservative New Right, and to Polish National Democracy in the interwar period. ; Článek se zabývá polskou politickou stranou Právo a spravedlnost (PiS), která je v akademické literatuře považována za konzervativní stranu. Smyslem textu je zejména s pomocí stranických programů ukázat charakter, specifika a vývoj stranické identity a ideologie. Teoretickou bází tvoří koncept party families Klause von Beymeho, sedm ideologických dimenzí Arenda Lijpharta a klasické texty zabývající se konzervatismem. Analýza dochází k závěru, že nejdůležitější složkou současné identity PiS jsou katolicismus a s tím spojený enormní důraz na úlohu katolické církve. Dále jsou pro stranickou identitu významné převážně etnicky chápaný národ, vize silného a aktivního státu schopného formovat společnost v národním duchu, antikomunismus a negace vývoje Polska po roce 1989. Značnou roli hraje také kvazinábožensky pojímaný odkaz spoluzakladatele strany Lecha Kaczyńského, který tragicky zahynul při letecké havárii. Svým katolicko-nacionálním profilem má PiS blízko ke křesťanskému proudu konzervativní Nové pravice, podobně jako k polské Národní demokracii mezi světovými válkami.

Abstract
This article deals with Poland's Law and Justice (PiS), considered a conservative party in the scholarly literature. Drawing largely on party manifestos, the article demonstrates the character, the specificities and the evolution of the party's identity and ideology. A theoretical basis for the undertaking is provided by Klaus von Beyme's concept of party families, Arend Lijphart's seven ideological dimensions and classic texts on conservatism. The analysis finds that the most important components in PiS's current identity are Catholicism itself and the great emphasis the party places on the role of the Catholic Church. Also important for the party's identity are visions of a nation conceived on ethnic principle, a strong and active state able to form society with a national spirit, anti-communism and a negation of developments in Poland since 1989. A substantial role is played by the quasi-religiously conceived legacy of the party's co-founder, Lech Kaczyński, who tragically perished in an aircraft crash. With its Catholic-nationalist profile, PiS is close to the Christian current within the conservative New Right, and to Polish National Democracy in the interwar period.

The main aim of this article is to analyze the position of Law and Justice party (PiS) towards in vitro fertilization (IVF) at the level of ideological and political agenda, results of parliamentary votes, and views of the electorate. Therefore, the following concepts were analyzed: the Law and Justice party doctrinal stereotype, the party's political stance on IVF, draft bills, the position of the party's club in the parliament towards the aforementioned and the results of parliamentary votes alongside the views of the electorate on IVF. Recognizing that human dignity begins with conception, the Law and Justice party is in favor of banning IVF and imposing criminal punishments for carrying it out, experimenting on embryos, and destroying them. These methods include: qualitative analysis of ideological and political program assumptions, institutional and legal assumptions, quantitative analysis of existing data. In order to determine the position of the party's electorate towards IVF, the announcements of the Public Opinion Research Center (CBOS) were analyzed.

Patronage is central to Polish party politics. The power of a governing party to appoint its supporters to positions in public and semi-public spheres will be examined in this paper. The two governments under investigation are: the center—left coalition government of the Democratic Left Alliance, the Labour Union, and the Polish Peasant Party formed in October 2001 and the center—right minority government of the Law and Justice party formed in October 2005. A significant extent of party patronage was expected in the case of the Democratic Left Alliance, which confirmed a dominant party thesis. However, in the case of Law and Justice, party patronage was expected to be hindered by party competition. This has not been the case, which challenges two arguments put forward by Grzymała-Busse that the dispersion of parliamentary power constrains party patronage and that in Poland the general pattern is that of decreasing rent-seeking.

ABSTRACT: After eight years of hardline national-Catholic rule, the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been deprived of the opportunity to continue governing Poland. It squandered the goodwill its popular program of family benefits had built with harsh anti-abortion measures enabled by its controversial takeover of the Constitutional tribunal. Its defeat in the October elections was welcomed with euphoria by the big-tent anti-PiS camp, and with relief by those victimized by its authoritarian-conservative methods of governance, including LGBTQ people.

ABSTRACT: After eight years of hardline national-Catholic rule, the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been deprived of the opportunity to continue governing Poland. It squandered the goodwill its popular program of family benefits had built with harsh anti-abortion measures enabled by its controversial takeover of the Constitutional tribunal. Its defeat in the October elections was welcomed with euphoria by the big-tent anti-PiS camp, and with relief by those victimized by its authoritarian-conservative methods of governance, including LGBTQ people.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the deconstruction of the migration discourse of the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), looking for mythical structures in it and trying to decode them using discourse analysis. When it comes to migration politics, Poland is one of the most curious andambiguous contemporary cases. Previously predominantly a sending country, asits economy grows Poland is becoming a receiving country, faced with millions of incoming labour migrants. The Polish government lets them in, despite being anti-migrant in its rhetoric, especially when it comes to relocation of refugees within the European Union (EU). Some surveys reveal that countrywide anti-migrant sentiment is a rather new development: Polish attitudes towards immigrants have worsened since mid-2015, that is since the so-called European migration crisis was utilized by Law and Justice in their campaign at the 2015 Polish parliamentary election in order to gain fear-induced support. Therefore, Law and Justice's migration discourse is fundamental to the study of contemporary Polish migration politics. I have analysed the news, interviews and othe rpublications from the official website of the Law and Justice party (pis.org.pl) over a period between June 2015 and July 2018. Based upon E. Cassirer's, M. Eliade's and H. Tudor's understanding of political myth, I have identified a number of repetitive mythical structures and characteristics of political myths in the Law and Justice's discourse on migration that can help to better understand Law and Justice's political and ideological stances.