Democratic or Undemocratic Here is the Question? The Candidate Selection Process in Polish Political Parties

The process of crystallization of political behavior patterns has started with the widespread of democratic mechanisms in political and party systems in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The transition period was followed by the consolidation of party systems. It was the start of the stabilization of political processes, which are similar to those of the mature Western democracies, as well as internal mechanisms of political parties. The intra-party democracy develops here as it has developed within political parties in Western countries (Hazan and Rahat 2010, van Biezen 2013, Cross and Katz 2013, Sandri, Seddone and Venturino 2015, Scarrow, Webb and Poguntke 2017). Political parties in Central and Eastern as well as in Western Europe are also facing the decline of party membership (van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke 2012, van Biezen and Poguntke 2014) and ‘prezidentialization of politics’ (Webb, Poguntke 2005). In the recent years political parties of the region have responded by proactively increasing the role of their members as well as activists in the recruitment of candidates, selection of leaders and in the policymaking process. The primary aim of this paper is to examine the main threats for the inner-party democracy specially in the recruitment process of candidates. The paper will offer an analysis of the selected political parties of the Polish political scene during the last elections (2015). The focus of the analysis will also extend to the parties that achieved the threshold of 3% of votes – a requirement that guarantees state budget financing of their activities. This clearly defined scope of the research will enable the author to address the following hypothesis: well-established political parties with relatively stable support tend to be more centralized, while the role of their leaders is gaining more, and more importance in candidate selection process. Moreover, these parties, when compared with the new political groupings, in which personalization is equally high, however, the intra-party democracy is much more developed have introduced limited mechanisms of the intra-party democracy. The following research questions will facilitate this study: do mechanisms of democracy regarding to candidate selection process within political parties exist? If the answer would be in the affirmative, then it is necessary to identify and asses how they work.