Partisan Polarisation and its Perception among the Elites in Poland

Since the general elections 2015 we have witnessed a new intensity of political mobilization in Poland. The analysis of quantitative electorate data from the past thirteen years indicates a deepening partisan division characterized by an electoral social sorting respectively a gradual political identity alignment (CBOS 2017), while its quality is being hardly studied by social science scholars (Matyja 2018). Based on narrative elites interviews and following Charles Taylor's social imaginary theory, the paper examines the perception of processes of polarization and seeks to formulate key elements of the Polish social imaginary regarding political representation. One of the most important functions of an elite interview is to try to assist the political scientist in understanding the theoretical positions of the interviewees, their perceptions, beliefs and ideologies (Dexter 2006). Which conceptions of the people, legitimate modes of party competition and democracy do they share? Are the party cleavages mirroring the cleavages in the society? Which specific attributes from the polish political culture do the two sides of the division try to evoke or reinterpret? What is their personal normative engagement with the processes and practices linked to political polarization? My research aims not only at the mere ideas but also at modes of social relations amongst members of the Polish elites. The motivation to conduct research on elites is not only due to their active role in shaping the social imaginary. In the new elite paradigm worked out by John Higley and his colleagues from the 1980s, he put stress on the social and political preconditions of the stability of liberal democracies (Field, Higley 1980; Higley, Burton 2012). They argued, that the basis of the stability of a democratic regime is the forming of an underlying consensus among elites rather than among voters. For the democratic transition Higley and Burton saw especially in the Polish roundtable an instance of contemporary elite settlements. Currently the intensity of political polarization calls into question the actual achievement of elite consensus (Baylis 2012), which following Taylor can also indicates a legitimation crisis as a clash of political self-interpretations. On the contrary, after the evaluation of 43 narrative interviews, the thesis of the unfolding of a newform of party in - the Expanded Party (Bernstein 1999) - can be drafted for the polish case. It's defined as networks of actors, who are formally independent from each other but cooperate in a close manner and share a common partisan identity. A set of two big networks of ideological team-mates emerged from before existing and new installed NGOs, partisan media and Think Tanks with no institutionalized bridges to the other side. The battle for a national narrative has fuelled the discourse among the elites. Public intellectuals, journalists, film-makers, museum designers and even the technical intelligentsia have been engaged in a fierce fight over the shape of politics and the polish state. The parties don't even try to increase regular party memberships but organise supporters in different civic organisations as interface organizations.