After the fall of communism, central and eastern European states faced the challenge of building pluralist party systems, requiring authoritarian communist parties to adapt. Most underwent a reorientation towards social democracy and in time became the strongest leftwing parties in their respective states – including in Poland.
Here the postcommunist social democratic left, represented by the Democratic Left Alliance, the SLD, has been in coalition government twice and its candidate has won the presidential election on two occasions. SLD politicians were the architects behind the institutional foundations of modern Polish democracy and played a significant role in the creation of the new constitution. It was also a leftwing Polish government which took the country into the European Union.
Despite its origins, the SLD did not question the principles of liberal democracy – on the contrary, it often defended them from the radical right. But it was also accused of lacking a clear leftwing identity, accepting neoliberal economic and social policy and pursuing a pro-American foreign policy – the SLD government supported the war in Iraq and provided troops. The leading elites of postcommunist social democratic parties in central and eastern Europe originated mainly from technocratic and pragmatic groups in the communist party; their representatives had no trouble accepting the free-market economy and parliamentary democracy. It was, therefore, not through profound ideological debate that the party assumed its social democratic identity but was rather a method of achieving legitimacy and adapting to the new political reality.
In its greatest triumphs the SLD successfully mobilised three groups of voters: former officials of the communist state; people disillusioned with the neoliberal economic transformation after it deprived them of a sense of social security; and culturally liberal voters and those averse to the strength of the Catholic church. However, since the SLD’s electoral defeat in 2005 the dominance of two rightwing parties, Civic Platform of Donald Tusk and Radosław Sikorski, and the Kaczynski twins’ Law and Justice, has brought significant change to the electoral landscape.
The problem for the SLD is that the number of people from the first group of voters is, naturally, growing smaller each year, the anger and frustration felt towards neoliberal economic policy has been channelled by the populism of Law and Justice, while liberal and pro-European voters opt for Civic Platform. For the last 10 years the SLD has unsuccessfully tried to break the hegemony of the right. One of its greatest failures has been its attempt to reach out to the younger generation of voters who, in this year’s elections to the European parliament, in great numbers supported the radically rightwing and pro-market Congress of the New Right.
In his book Ill Fares the Land, Tony Judt rightly said: ‘Young people in eastern Europe have been led to suppose that economic freedom and the interventionist state are mutually exclusive.’ For the SLD to regain its former strength it must create a coherent leftwing narrative addressing socioeconomic issues, to which both middle-class and less well-off Poles can relate. But for this sort of appeal to be successful, the party must regain its trust among voters, something which may prove to be its hardest challenge yet.
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