New Dimensions of Political Competition: Liberal versus Solidary Poland

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the new socio-political dimension which entered Polish politics during the 2005 electoral campaign: Solidary Poland vs Liberal Poland. Since the democratic transition in 1989 political competition in Poland was determined by the Left-Right dimension, which had mainly socio-cultural, ideological and religious aspect (Jasiewicz 2002: 97-98; Markowski 2002: 167-168). The results of our analyses show that the new dimension has a chance to replace the old one. It can become a real socio-political cleavage, which Left-Right dimension is not. Both, Solidary Poland vs Liberal Poland and Left-Right dimensions are recognised by similar number of Poles, but the former is stronger embedded in social structure. Moreover, the new dimension is strongly related to important social and economic issues and it determines political and electoral competition stronger than the old dimension.