Liberals Versus Communitarians: Psychosocial Sources of the Conflict Over Democracy in Today’s Poland

Abstract

This article refers to the concept of collective mentality, which consists of the mental patterns most typical of a given community. The authors show some psychosocial reasons why Poland’s political system may shift from liberal to illiberal forms of democracy in recent years. This process is accompanied by an increasing sociopolitical polarization of the society, gradually becoming an expanded and destructive conflict. Previous research has shown that the Polish sociopolitical polarization’s primary psychosocial reason could be the collision of two competing value systems—purely individualistic and purely collectivist. In this article, the authors argue that both mental patterns determine two different political community visions—liberal and communitarian. In-depth empirical analyses show anti-egalitarian characteristics of the liberal orientation and traditional-conservative characteristics of the communitarian one. Furthermore, the authors show that both orientations’ followers quite differently define the proportions between individual autonomy and social identity and cohesion. These differences are particularly evident in their attitudes toward democracy and patterns of involvement in public life. Finally, the article provides empirical evidence that the division into supporters of the liberal and communitarian political community directly appears in the Polish electorate’s political preferences.