The socio-economic ground for the right-populist turn in Poland

Abstract

The article is devoted to the social and economic background that served as the basis for the right-populist turn in Polish politics. It aims to detect whether the success of "socially-oriented rightists" (represented predominantly by the Law and Justice party) was convincingly justified by negative socioeconomic processes in the period of the liberal Civic Platform party government (2007-2015). The results of the presented analysis may be useful while determining the main models of social, economic, and ideological pressure on the directions of political changes in contemporary Europe. The reasoning presented in the study is predominantly based on data analysis, including comparative measures, and sometimes, in the case of ideological issues, on content analysis. The analysis is concentrated mainly on three issues: the question of inequality (growing social stratification), the problem of unemployment, and the vulnerable issue of immigration, which became an important topic in the EU after the Arab Spring. The search through selected data leads to the conclusion that the main indicator (Gini coefficient) presents Poland in the years 2007-2015 as a zone of obvious egalitarization. A drastic reduction of the unemployment rate in Poland was expected many years before 2015 and its dynamics precisely reflects the EU tendencies: a rise of unemployment rates after 2008 and a gradual shrink after 2012. The worries about immigration were justified neither by the declarations nor by real policies of the Civic Platform governments. Mass immigration, predominantly from Ukraine (as well as from Muslim Bangladesh) became reality after 2015 and enjoyed absolute acceptance of the new government. The conclusion of the study lies in the conviction that the socioeconomic reality before 2015 in Poland did not justify harsh criticism. The success of right populists most likely resulted from the expectations to conduct a more effective social policy.