NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

Secondly, in comparison to the 1989 elections, the number of competing political parties increased significantly. By the middle of 1991, the number of registered political parties reached almost two hundred. 87 However, from the over 60 registered election committees, only 27 schieved the status of a national election committee. The criteria required to reach the status of a national election committee were to either get 50,000 signatures on the candidate lists, or to be registered in at least five regional election districts. Only the election committees of particular ethnic minorities did not have to meet such criteria. For the purpose of this study, only the manifestos of those election committees that gained the status of a national election committee are considered. Another criterion was the ability of a particular party to enter the parliament. The programmes of the political parties will be evaluated from several points of view. Firstly, I will divide the political parties in three groups. The first group encompasses those parties whose political programmes do not contain any nationalist populist slogans. The second group is composed of those parties that, more or less openly, use nationalist populist slogans in their manifestos. The final group has a specific character – it is comprised of the political parties belonging to ethnic minorities. Such a division will enable me to roughly distinguish the parties that do not use nationalist populist appeals from those whose programmes contain at least a certain portion of nationalist populist slogans. The second part of the analysis concerns the semantics of the programme slogans. Here, I distinguish between the so-called patriotic nationalism that is demonstrated through positive national self-presentation or adoration of the Polish nation. The programmes that stress the name “Pole” instead of “Polish citizen” also fall into this category. Next, the slogans supporting the economic dimension of nationalism are analysed. Last but not least, the programme slogans with the appearance of ethnic prejudices and animosity toward “others” are analysed. This chosen pattern of categorisation will enable me to cover quite a broad range of the types of nationalist populist appeals in the programmes of the political parties that managed to gain seats in the parliament.

87 Inka Słodkowska, “Wstep”, Inka Słodkowska (ed.) Wybory 1991. Programy partii i ugrupowań politycznych. (Warszawa: Instytut studiów politycznych PAN, 2001), p. 23.

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