Party positions on higher education in a state with a fluid party system

The positioning of parties on higher education remains topical in political science, since recent studies cannot fully explain persisting differences among party families and between countries. The main focus of research has so far been on differences between parties on a left-right scale in industrial societies with several decades of sustainable democratic regimes. This case study on Poland from its political and economic transformation in 1989 to the present time indicates further dividing lines between and the influence of national peculiarities on party positions. The parliamentary debates about higher education in this consolidating party system as well as positions of new party types in the country remained understudied to date. The Polish party system as well as those of its neighboring countries are often considered a laboratory for future developments in Western Europe. Therefore, along with green, liberal, social democratic and conservative parties already discussed in the literature, three different new party types are scrutinized in detail. First, since the very beginning of the transformation anti-establishment parties with partly populist rhetoric and in many cases rather temporary presence in parliament are an important feature of the Polish political system. Research on the positions of these parties has commenced only recently and is enriched with examples from Poland. Additionally, the resulting strongly changing composition of the Polish parliament makes it an ideal case to study, to which extent the debate about higher education shifts when parties enter and leave parliament. Second, well before the election of the current Polish government, parties with a strong nationalist rhetoric have been elected to the parliament. The case study expands therefore knowledge on positions of (extreme) right parties. Third, communist successor parties in the sample, which strived to disavow from their communist past, allow for a further differentiation of left party positions. Finally, the extensive analysis of party positions over a period of more than 30 years is expected to prove that there is no consensus among parties on the issue of higher education in the strongly polarized party system. Employing a qualitative content analysis of parliamentary debates as well as party manifestos from 1989 to 2020, party positions from governing and main opposition parties are derived. The analysis focusses on legitimization strategies for reforms (including references to national history as well as OECD and the Bologna Process), policy proposals on higher education governance and higher education expansion as well as funding mechanisms of public, private and catholic higher education institutions. Moreover, the framing of higher education policies by each party is scrutinized. Given the diverse party system, a variety of frames from economic and social policies over nation building, decommunization, democratization to preparations for the EU accession is expected. Party positions are categorized, grouped into party families and compared with findings from other OECD members.