Q&A: Polish Democracy

Last week a plane carrying the Polish president and a number of Poland’s top government officials crashed killing most on board. Since the tragedy, power has cleanly moved from the now-deceased President Lech Kaczynski and the others on board the flight to those next in line. I talked with Michigan Political Science Professor Anna Grzymala-Busse about the significance of the handover. A lightly edited transcript is below.

You mentioned that this was remarkable for Poland and Polish democracy, could you elaborate on that?

My main point was that basically twenty years after its founding, polish democratic institutions are proving to be very resilient so as soon as the news hits of President Kacznski dying, there was a complete continuity of governance. Basically you had the president pro-tempore take place, the chiefs of staff are replaced by their next in command and so on and that’s a basically a sign of consolidated democracy. It’s one that’s resilient enough that it can take this tragedy and not be susceptible to a coup or some kind of extreme destabilization or anything like that. If you look at what’s happening in Kyrgyzstan or Thailand, for instance, those are much weaker states where the institutions just aren’t resilient enough and can’t recover from these crises.

Were you surprised by this resilience?

It wasn’t so much that I was surprised, I think, it’s just a point that’s worth pointing out only because there were several other democracies where the military, for example, stepped out of its barracks in times of national crisis and asserted control. There’s a lot of talk about Poland being unstable and highly fractious and yet despite all that the democratic institutions turned out to be really consolidated.

So what happens next for the Polish government? How does this change the next elections? What’s the new dynamic?

Well the first of the significant changes is that the presidential elections that were going to be held in the fall are going to be held in June and within 60 days of the president’s death and that means the president’s party, Peace, doesn’t really have a lot of time or personnel to come up with an alternative candidate. Basically, they’ve been decapitated so there really isn’t another candidate for Peace. His brother has indicated that he doesn’t want to run, there isn’t an obvious second-in-command so they’re going to, on the one hand, enjoy a great deal of public sympathy, but on the other hand, have a great deal of trouble finding another candidate.

What does this say about democracy in the region?

I think it says two things. One, is that these are established democracies with very resilient institutions for the most part. Secondly, what this is also suggesting is that relations with Russia which have been very fraught in the region can take a turn for the better. There’s a great deal of regional solidarity and Polish newspapers keep reporting how sympathetic Russians are to the tragedy and the Poles right now and that actually means an improvement of East European/Russian relations.

Further insights here and here.

–Daniel Strauss