Democracy in Poland: Representation, participation, competition and accountability since 1989

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to politics in contemporary Poland. Covering the period 1989-2009, the book examines the formation of modern Poland, including regime change, democratization and constitutional engineering, and outlines how the present political system operates, surveying the government, the executive-legislative nexus, the judiciary, the party system and the electoral system. It compares Poland to other democratic systems, and shows how since accession to the European Union Poland has become an integral part of the European polity, but with its own idiosyncratic features. It discusses how democracy has been successfully established in Poland, but how problems often associated with relatively new democracies are present, problems such as considerable fragmentation of political parties, high turnover of deputies, and difficulty in constructing functional government coalitions. It concludes by assessing how well Poland has done since 1989, and how politics in Poland are likely to develop going forward.