Normative Visions of Political Leadership in Poland

The aim of this paper is to analyse the attitudes of Poles towards political leadership, its political correlates and consequences for the political system. More specifically, we want to find out whether Poles at all think about political leadership, and have some normative visions of it. Research on political leadership has been going on for decades. However, it mainly covers mature democracies, and above all the US. Political leadership in new democracies has been a subject of empirical research less frequently. Thus academic reflection on the issue is rather poor, we know little about political leadership in these political systems, and whether it has any political impact and social significance (whether it influences political behaviour, determines political attitudes, etc.). Normative visions of political and social leadership are particularly unrecognized and under-studied topic, especially in the Central-Eastern Europe (CEE). So they undoubtedly constitute a research gap in the literature, which has not so far been addressed systematically in empirical social research. We propose three hypotheses explaining normative visions of political leadership in Poland. First, we hypothesise that existing differences in preferences (regarding leadership) are determined by socio-demographics: higher social strata prefer democratic (and expert) leadership, lower social strata prefer militaries and/or strong leaders (Fuhrer, Duce or Caudillo type). Second, we hypothesise that existing differences in preferences (regarding leadership) are determined by political factors: centrists, liberals and democrats prefer democratic (and expert) leadership, while populists, chauvinists and radicals (be it left or right) prefer militaries and/or strong leaders. Third, we hypothesise that existing differences in preferences (regarding leadership) are determined by psychological differences: individuals with authoritarian personality and/or higher levels of paranoia prefer militaries and/or strong leaders. We test empirically our hypotheses with the 2015 Polish National Election Study data. Our preliminary findings support all three hypotheses, but to a different level: particularly strong seems to be the effect of psychological traits. In such a way the paper contributes to a better understanding of the politics in the unconsolidated, new democracies. Co-author: Piotr Olaf Żylicz (ozylicz@swps.edu.pl); SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities