Melis Laebens (CEU and IFiS PAN), Ewelina Nowakowska (postdoc, IFiS PAN), Kamil Sowa (PhD student, Jagiellonian University)

Thursday, December 18, 2025, 14:30 – 16:00    

Staszic Palace, Nowy Swiat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland, Room 268   

Abstract

The largest parties that dominate Polish electoral politics today, PiS and PO, appeared in 2005. While the major parties as well as their relation to one another and to other parties have been relatively stable since, the issues contested in electoral politics have changed significantly in the last two decades. Observers of Polish politics have also pointed to growing political polarization among voters, though the drivers of polarization are not entirely clear. Using data on voters’ policy preferences from the Polish National Election Study and from CBOS surveys, we document a growing ideological “separation” of voters starting in 2015. To interpret this development, we trace the evolution of a number of salient policy conflicts between PiS and PO using their election manifestos. We find that electoral competition focused on economic issues in the first decade of their competition, while cultural issues gained importance afterwards. Furthermore, we see that while the two parties moved away from each other on some issues, they moved closer together or shifted in the same direction on other issues.We use these descriptive findings to propose several hypotheses about the mechanisms of political change.

Melis Laebens, Political Science, Central European University, and IFiS PAN

Melis Laebens’ research focuses on democratic backsliding, political parties, and electoral behavior across several regions. Her book manuscript, Incumbents Against Democracy, analyzes how democratically elected incumbents gradually weaken institutions and consolidate authoritarian control without formally abolishing elections or legislatures. While much of her work centers on Turkey, she has also studied Ecuador, Colombia, and Poland. Her current projects examine how incumbent-led challenges to democratic institutions reshape political landscapes, including survey-based research on political attitudes and electoral behavior in Turkey and mixed-method research on changes in Poland’s electoral arena under consecutive United Right governments.

Ewelina Nowakowska, IFiS PAN and SWPS

Ewelina Nowakowska, is a political anthropologist and cultural studies scholar. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the NCN SONATA project led by Dr. Melis Laebens, and a lecturer at SWPS University, where she teaches on media, politics, and society. She holds degrees in journalism, cultural studies, and international relations, and is a graduate of the Euro-Atlantic Academy. Her research focuses on youth in politics and the intersections of culture, politics, and society, with additional interests in populism, democracy, and political experience. She has presented at numerous conferences and published on youth political ideology.

Kamil Sowa, PhD student, Jagiellonian University

Kamil Sowa is a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Programme Society of the Future at the Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Jagiellonian University, where he works across disciplinary approaches. His doctoral research examines patterns of left-wing party competition in Europe. He is currently a scholarship holder at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences within the project “Electoral Dynamics in Times of Democratic Erosion: Parties, Voters, and Changing Axes of Conflict” (NCN SONATA), led by Dr. Melis Laebens. He holds a degree in International Relations from the Jagiellonian University. His academic interests include party systems, electoral studies, left-wing competition, populism, radical movements, public opinion, and voting behaviour.