The paper aims to tackle two problems of party organizations in Poland. First, it tries to apply the classical models of party organizations developed in western political science to the Polish case after 1989. Second, it tries to answer the question of what model do the main parties adapt and why? Are there any legal, social or political constrains that make party adapt some traits of a certain model when neglecting others? How parties try to combine different models of party organization and how does it work? Is it efficient? Have there been any attempts to apply different, maybe more coherent theoretical solutions to party organizations in any of the analysed parties? In order to answer these questions I analyse four major political parties in Poland that are present in the Sejm: the Civic Platform, the Law and Justice, the Alliance of the Democratic Left and the Polish People’s Party. Among the issues I raise are: sources of party financial support, power distribution within the party, the role of ideology, intraparty democracy (representative vs. direct), relations between the parties and their public representations (party in central vs. party in public office) and intraparty communication. The main source for the research are (1) parties’ statutes, (2) analysis how the statutes mach the reality of the party life (for example the role and interconnections between three faces of party organization), (3) the survey I conducted on the Civic Platform’s convention on the mechanisms of internal democracy within that party.
