Parties And Politics In Post-1989 Poland

Examining the development of competitive party politics in Poland during the early stages of the transition to parliamentary democracy, this book explores how individuals acquire partisan preferences during such an evolution, and weighs the relative impact of social cleavages, political culture and attitudes, and political actors and institutions on party-system formation. The book shows that, even in the early stages of democratization, electoral behaviour is based on systematic, quantifiable factors. The author employs a wealth of statistical tools, including data from the 1995 presidential election, to demonstrate that the choices made by Polish voters were shaped by regional, demographic and attitudinal factors that have remained remarkably consistent from one election to the next.