Political Participation Rates in Poland

In a successful democracy, I think everyone agrees with me that it is important that the people of the country participate in the politics. The political participation is therefore explained as the different political activities that has the goal to involve citizens in the political process. Political participation can influence the plans and actions of political leaders.

When I looked at the average turnout at elections in Poland over the past years, I found that the political participation of Polish citizens has grown a little. However, the average turnout for Polish elections is 50,96 percent. In comparison, the voter turnout in Germany is almost 34 per cent higher than in Poland.

What causes the low average voter turn-out?

After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Poland politically and economically evolved very fast. Furthermore, in this period the majority of Polish citizens was very content with the democratic form of government. I will attempt to explain why Poland now experiences economic backsliding after a successful democratic reformation.

First of all, this low political participation can be explained by the generation gap. The younger generations in Poland never experienced life under a communist regime like the older generation. The transition to democracy did not affect them personally, which meant that the younger cohort had no expectations of the Polish politics. This led to lower voter turn-out and lower political participation amongst the younger generation.

Furthermore, the establishment of a top-down, elitist political organization also created a gap between the younger cohort and the political participation. Younger citizens recognised that participation had no effect on altering policy and had no impact on any political decisions.

The participation gap, due to the low belief in democratic utility of parties, does not only hold for the younger generation. There is another part of Polish citizens that refrain from political participation. These citizens do not receive better education, better jobs or health care. Furthermore, these citizens do not have stable incomes and do not profit from the improved infrastructure. It can be perceived that these people either refrain from participating in politics or tend to vote for populist parties.

Does lower political participation lead to a backsliding democracy?

The democratic deepening that was expected after the economic and political reforms after 1989 has faced several challenges. One of the reasons is that the economic reform caused the growth in the inequality gap between the rich and poor. Among other reasons, this caused certain groups of Polish citizens to have little belief in the democratic system and prefers a pre-transition Poland.

Furthermore, the society was weak due to the absence of a stable government. This gave way for the elitist to establish governmental organisations. The blog from my colleague states that these major political transformations and their consequences resulted in lower political literacy. Therefore, democracy was only perceived as a “high standard of living” and not a political system in which every citizen has a vote.

Polish citizens continue to live through such bad circumstances. The relationship between the social, political and literal developments and the political participation rates is very negative. Resulted from elitist political organisations and social divisions, you can see that the democracy is backsliding because of this low participation rates. This will, I presume, have even worse consequences for the Polish citizens.