Research projects

Research
Projects

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Jean Monnet Chair: Representative Democracy in Crisis Mode : Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Covid 19 Pandemic

ReDemo

Principal investigator: prof. Aleksandra Maatsch, University of Wroclaw
Duration: 36 months (2022-25)
Funded by: European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), ERASMUS+
Budget: 50 000 EUR

COST Action: Regaining linkage? Digital technologies improving civic engagement, political organisations and democracy

ReLink

Principal investigator: prof. Michał Jacuński, University of Wroclaw
Duration: 48 months (2024-28)
Funded by: Open Research Europe
Budget: 690 000 EUR
Webpage: https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA23114/

Financing Common Defence in Multilevel Policies

SECURE_U

Principal investigator: dr. Tomasz Woźniakowski, University of Wroclaw
Duration: 60 months (2026-31)
Funded by: National Science Centre (NCN), SONATA BIS 15
Budget: 1 221 518 PLN

Digital Transformation for Building Democratic Resilience

DIGI ENLARGE

Principal investigator: prof. David Ramiro Troitiño, Tallinn University of Technology (COO)Mazur, Tallinn University of Technology (COO)
Partner: Aleksandra Maatsch (WP-2 leader)
Duration: 36 months (2026-29)
Funded by: HORIZON EUROPE (Call HORIZON-CL2-2025-01)
Budget total: 3 491 875 EUR, budget UWr 356 250 EUR

The Domestic Politics of EU Action against Democratic Backsliding

DEUDEM

Principal investigator NCN: Aleksandra Maatsch
Principal investigator DFG: Arndt Wonka
Principal investigator FWF: Michael Blauberger
Duration: 36 months, project start May 2025
Funded by: Weave framework (NCN, FWF, DFG), budget 889 648 EUR
Project Webpage

After years of hesitation, the European Union (EU) has finally recognized democratic backsliding as one of its biggest challenges and has become more assertive. Research on (countering) democratic backsliding is growing quickly, but mostly focused on either domestic causes of backsliding or EU-level accounts of counter-measures. What is systematically neglected is the link between both levels: the domestic politics before and after the EU takes action. The domestic politics of EU action against democratic backsliding, as understood in this project, consist of domestic party positions and arguments on EU action and their effects on citizens’ attitudes. Our basic assumption is that the EU’s ability to act and to have an impact against member state backsliding crucially depends on domestic political support.

Consequently, our project addresses the following research questions: Which political parties support and oppose EU action against backsliding and why (step 1)? Which effects do these party-political arguments have on citizens’ attitudes regarding EU action against backsliding (step 2)? To analyze political parties’ relative support for and opposition to EU actions as well as the arguments they rely upon to substantiate their positions, we will rely on texts such as protocols of parliamentary debates. These texts will be analyzed relying on automated text analysis as well as manual coding strategies. The effects of parties’ cues and frames on citizens’ evaluation of EU actions against backsliding will be identified with survey experiments. Finally, to learn more about political actors’ motives and strategic choices, we will rely on interviews with personnel of political parties that the project identifies as having played a key role in the domestic politics of EU actions against backsliding.

Apart from its novel focus on the link between EU action and domestic politics, this projects also goes beyond existing research regarding its empirical scope. Our country selection comprises Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia. The project thus covers not only the “usual suspects” of backsliding EU member states, but also domestic politics in EU member states that are democratically stable (“non-backsliding states”), threatened by democratic backsliding (“potential backsliding states”), and seeking to re-establish democratic principles (“potential recovering states”). The project’s results will be of academic and societal relevance, as they will improve our understanding of how the EU can contribute to countering autocratic developments in EU member states and thereby facilitate democratic stability in Europe.

Comparative Perspectives on Oppostion to Autocratisation

DPWS

Principal investigator: Sonja Priebus (Viadrina)
Partner: Aleksandra Maatsch
Duration: 6 months (2025)
Funded by: German-Polish Science Foundation (Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung), 200-2025-00929
Budget: 6 655 EUR

Institutional Design for Rule of Law Compliance in the EU

InDeComply

Principal investigator: prof. Carlos Closa Montero (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, CSIC)
Partners: dr. Ruth Ferrero Turrion (Complutense), prof. Aleksandra Maatsch (Jean Monnet Chair, University of Wroclaw) & Gisela Hernandez Gonzalez (CSIC)
Duration: 36 months, 2023-
Funded by: Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion
Budget: 4 999 686 EUR

National compliance with rule of law has become a salient problem for the European Union because of the challenges of some illiberal governments. The EU has devised a number of instruments seeking to extract compliance but in general they lack strong enforcement capacity. Research has adopted normative positions on the issue by prescribing what the EU institutions should do. However, we lack deep understanding on why institutions behave in the way they do when facing the challenge of enforcing rule of law. This project addresses precisely this gap: adding knowledge to why do institutions behave as they do when they have to enforce rule of law. The logic differs among institutions: for the Commission, avoiding risking its own authority as guardian of the treaties leads it to a cautious position in relation to enforcement. Previous research has shown that the Commission also anticipates the position of the Council on enforcement to decide its own position. This leads to a preference for dialogue as a mechanism for compliance (instead of enforcement).

The Council, in turn, is a reluctant enforcer because its members face a logic of collective action problem. The positions of national governments differ depending on several factors (ideology, geopolitical position, size, etc) but none of the possible combination of factors leads to the activation of enforcement mechanisms. Finally, the EP has followed a partisanship logic when engaging with rule of law enforcement: EP parties tend to protect governments of their own adscription and prevent sanctioning activity. In turn, they act more assertively when enforcement concerns governments ascribed to rival parties in parliament. Much of the scholarly debate on rule of law provides prescriptive positions demanding EU institutional action. In turn, this project aims at explaining the factors that account and condition institutional action/inaction and how these affect also both compliance and enforcement mechanisms. the project will produce solid empirical evidence from interviews with decision-makers on their motivations, preferences and perceptions for using different enforcement instruments and how expectations on compliance weight also in their decisions. Because of this, findings transcend the specific domain of rule of law and are significant for the theorizing on compliance and enforcement in general within EU and other regional organizations. The project will produce also an interdisciplinary impact: findings will assist legal debates on shaping EU instruments: Lawyers normally dominate these debates and they do not usually produce the kind of instrumental knowledge needed to calibrate the instruments.

The impact of the findings of the project are relevant both in theoretical and practical terms. Theoretically, much of the scholarly debate on rule of law provides prescriptive positions demanding EU institutional action. In turn, this project aims at explaining the factors that account and condition institutional action/inaction and how these affect also both compliance and enforcement mechanisms. The project will produce solid empirical evidence from interviews with decision-makers on their motivations, preferences and perceptions for using different enforcement instruments and how expectations on compliance weight also in their decisions. Because of this, findings transcend the specific domain of rule of law and are significant for the theorizing on compliance and enforcement in general within EU and other regional organizations. The project will also produce an interdisciplinary impact: findings will assist legal debates on shaping EU instruments: Lawyers normally dominate these debates and they do not usually produce the kind of instrumental knowledge needed to calibrate the instruments. practical impact of the project refers to its salience for policy transfer: EU institutions seek to improve their enforcement of rule of law and this project will assist in the search for improving existing mechanisms and/or adding new ones to the toolbox.

E-governance and Digital Transformation in the European Union

ENDE

Principal investigator: prof. David Ramiro Troitino (Tallinna Tehkikaülikool)
Partners: full list
Duration: 36 months, 2023
Funded by: European Union, EACEA ERASMUS-JMO-2023-NETWORKS
Budget: 800 000 EUR
Project website

Jean Monnet Networks are EU-funded prestigious research networks made up of scientists heading Jean Monnet Centers, Chairs or Modules. The main areas of the recently established ENDE network are related to the practical implementation of e-governance in the European Union. The rapid development of digitization not only changes the lives of citizens, but also affects the perception of the European Union and the functioning of institutions such as political parties and national parliaments.

The aim of the interdisciplinary project, which combines political and European sciences, economics, law, international relations, and sociology, is to understand these processes, forecast trends and consequences of the ongoing changes. In the ENDE network, the Jean Monnet Chair in Wrocław is responsible for the Digital Politics area. Beyond Aleksandra Maatsch, core members of the JMC team will be involved in the scientific work, i.e. Professor Anna Pacześniak (Institute of European Studies), Professor Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka (Institute of Political Science) and Dr. Edgars Eihmanis (Institute of European Studies).

Electoral Defeat as ‘Mother of Party Change’: Comparative Analysis of Political Parties in Europe

NAWA

Principal investigator: Anna Pacześniak

Duration: Sept 2021-April 2022

Funded by: Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, PPN/BEK/2020/1/00018/U/00001

Budget: 25 000 PLN

Democratic Legitimacy in the Post-Crisis Economic Governance

CONCILIA

Principal investigator: dr Tomasz Woźniakowski
Duration: 36 months, 2022-2025
Funded by: NCN SONATA 17, budget 687106 PLN

,,W ostatnim dziesięcioleciu Unia Europejska (UE) zdobyła znaczną władzę w nadzorowaniu polityk fiskalnych. Jest to konsekwencja kryzysu strefy euro. Europejska koordynacja politykfiskalnych może być zilustrowana jako oddawanie przez rządy i parlamenty narodowe kluczowych aspektów zarządzania i kontroli budżetów. Tym samym instytucje te przekazują na poziom UE kluczowy aspekt swej polityki. Dlaczego? W jaki sposób te nowe mechanizmy wpływają na uprawnienia kontroli parlamentarnej nad budżetem? Między innymi na te pytania odpowiem w trakcie prowadzonych badań. “

,,Poruszany temat jest również ważny z punktu widzenia odpowiedzialności demokratycznej i może w ten sposób przyczynić się do debaty na temat demokracji w Europie. Analizując parlamentarną kontrolę zarządzania gospodarczego w UE, pomogę rozwiązać ten problem i tym samym wypełnić ważną lukę w literaturze. CONCILIA będzie pierwszym projektem ukazującym porównawczy dyskurs polityczny na temat polityki fiskalnej osadzonej w europejskich ramach instytucjonalnych. W jaki sposób parlamenty narodowe mogą kontrolować rząd w dziedzinie zarządzania gospodarczego? “

,,Aby odpowiedzieć na to pytanie, zbadane zostaną odpowiednie debaty i przesłuchania w parlamentach narodowych, co pozwoli na odkrycie wzorców kontroli i konfliktów politycznych. Głównym celem CONCILIA jest zbadanie i wyjaśnienie mechanizmów kontroli i konfliktów politycznych w ramach europejskiego zarządzania gospodarczego. Badanie to zostanie przeprowadzone na reprezentatywnym spektrum parlamentów.”

,,Czerpiąc z moich poprzednich badań nad europeizacją ekonomicznych i politycznych systemów krajowych, mam zamiar zademonstrować wzorce zaangażowania parlamentów narodowych w zarządzanie gospodarcze w UE. Jak dokładnie stały się one„europeizowane” w ramach kształtowania polityki gospodarczej? Odpowiem na to pytanie poprzez dogłębne studia przypadków i interdyscyplinarne podejście do metody śledzenia procesów (‘process tracing’), łącząc metody nauk politycznych i historii, które mogą być interesujące dla szerszej grupy naukowców wykonujących jakościowe studia przypadków. Ponadto, przeprowadzając wywiady z posłami i innymi decydentami, będę w stanie wykazać również nieformalne sposoby kontroli. “

,,Dzięki prezentacji wyników projektu na konferencjach naukowych i publikacji artykułów zostanie uzupełniona luka badawcza. Jednocześnie rezultaty badań mogą wpłynąć na szerszą dyscyplinę nauk politycznych.”

Shifting Territorial Politics after the Pandemic in Germany and Beyond

ShiftTerr

Principal investigator: dr. Ed Turner (Aston University)
Partners: Stuttgart University, University of Wroclaw – Jean Monnet Chair, University of Padova and American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS)
Duration: 2022–24
Funded by: German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), budget 88 995 EUR
Strona internetowa

The over-arching question of this proposed project is the following: “How – if at all – has the pandemic re-shaped relationships between national and sub-state tiers of government, and the activity of sub-state authorities, in Germany and other European countries?”.

To address this question, the project assembles a major new international consortium, establishing a new international network of scholars and practitioners, with membership in the UK, Germany, Poland (at the Willy-Brandt-Centre for German Studies), and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, and also involving experts on Spain and Italy. The network will meet (virtually and physically), have joint publication outputs and share expertise and data, both amongst its members, through academic publications and with the wider interested public. It will allow a view of changed territorial politics in Germany to be understood in the context of wider European comparison (specifically with the UK, Spain, Italy and Poland).

Two sides of the same coin? Unraveling the potential of inter-parliamentary cooperation in the European Union

InPaCo

Principal investigator: Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka
Duration: 2022-2025
Funded by: National Science Centre (NCN), budget 200 000 EUR

National parliaments (NPs) and the European Parliament (EP) are two sides of the same coin – the European Union’s (EU) representative democracy (as defined in art. 10 of the Treaty on European Union) – and have an important role to play in the EU multi-level governance system as legitimacy intermediaries. Yet, the unfulfilled potential of their cooperation is one of the factors behind the surge of Euroscepticism, populist parties as well as the general disenchantment of citizens with the grand idea of ‘European project’. At a time when the pandemic has increased social and economic inequalities across the EU and highlighted the mutual interconnectedness of European societies within the framework of health policy, single market, Economic and Monetary Union or environmental and energy policy, inter-parliamentary cooperation (IPC) is also an important legitimizing factor behind shaping EU policies and responses to public policy problems.

Neither the EP nor national parliaments alone are able to perform effectively the scrutiny, policy-shaping or agenda-setting function in the EU governance system. The EP does not have the tools to hold accountable the fragmented executive at the EU level, often lacking formal powers to veto, modify or even review decisions taken in the various intergovernmental fora. In contrast, each national parliament can oversee and sanction no more than one national government. There is also considerable variation in NPs ability to ‘fight back’ against the crisis-related trend of ‘deparliamentarisation’. Against this background effective IPC is expected to act as a remedy to the weaknesses of democratic accountability in the EU increasingly dominated by inter-governmentalism.

InPaCo starts from the observation of an important gap between the political relevance of IPC for democratic transformation of the EU and the deficit of theoretical and empirical research explaining the driving and inhibiting factors behind effective IPC. Consequently, the underlying objective of the project is to explore the potential of inter-parliamentary relations by identifying factors that foster and impede effective cooperation between national parliaments and the EP in the area of EU affairs. The first research objective is therefore to map and explain the hitherto unexplored institutional preferences of the EP and national parliaments with regard to mutual cooperation. The research questions the project poses are:

– Are the factors behind these preferences endogenous (i.e. related to political affiliation or nationality) or exogenous (i.e. determined by policy sectors or type of IPC)?
– What preferences do the EP and national parliaments have with respect to potential reforms to strengthen IPC in the EU?

The second research objective of the project is to examine the impact of the recently concluded Conference on the Future of Europe, as well as its related follow-up, on interparliamentary dynamics in the EU. The research questions are:

– Did the CoFoE act as a driver or hindrance to IPC and why ?
– Has it triggered any new forms of transnational parliamentarism in the EU?
– In what areas have we seen improvement or deterioration of IPC and why ?

Democracy in Pandemic Times: A Decline or a NEW Form of Representative Democracy?

PANDEMO

Principal investigator: Aleksandra Maatsch

Duration: 2020–24

Funded by: National Science Centre (NCN), budget 460 000 PLN

Project webpage

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, all national governments of the EU member states have found themselves in unusual circumstances. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognized the coronavirus as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. As there was no vaccine against the highly contagious virus, decision-makers across the EU member states opted for various preventive measures. For that reason it became common practice to limit – or freeze –economic, social and political activity. The success of these extraordinary measures in preventing the spread of the virus depended on rapid implementation.

Representative democracy is unthinkable without a parliament in which citizens’ interests are represented in the decision-making process. For a representative democracy to thrive, national parliaments need their capacity to control and to hold governments accountable and to debate and vote on legislative projects while also representing the variety of interests in the deliberative and law-making process. Parliaments are namely the institutional foundation of representative democracy. Despite that, the importance of national parliaments seems to have radically declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, most governments introduced preventive measures, sending all “non-essential” workers home. And so almost all national parliaments across the EU, and beyond, were… sent home. While most parliaments continued to work in a very limited extent, in Canada, for instance, the parliament closed for five weeks allowing only a short session to pass extraordinary legislation regarding the COVID-19. This trend raised serious concerns as it demonstrated to the public that national parliaments are non-essential in a crisis situation. Are we therefore witnessing a demise of representative democracy due to the COVID-19 pandemic? Or have national parliaments managed to defend their powers by adopting to new circumstances?

The overall goal of the project is therefore to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the legislative (law-making) powers and practices of national parliaments across the EU member states. The questions this project poses are:

Are we witnessing a demise of representative democracy or a NEW form of representative democracy emerging?

Have we observed a change of formal powers or practices regarding the law-making function of national parliaments during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic?

What is the effect of the pandemic on parliamentary law-making powers and practices across the EU member states? In which states have we observed (a) disempowerment, (b) no change or (c) empowerment of national parliaments?

Which formal or informal measures have been employed by the governments of the EU member states under study? What was the legal basis of these measures? How can we evaluate their legality and legitimacy?

The role of national parliaments in the post-pandemic EU policy-making

LabEx TEPSIS & Universite Panthéon-Sorbonne

Project: co-financed by LabEx TEPSIS & Universite Panthéon-Sorbonne

Principal co-investigators: Guillaume Sacriste, Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka and Antoine Vauchez

Duration: 2021- 2023

National parliaments as ‘multi-arena players’ in the European Union?

OPUS

Principal investigator: Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka
Duration: 2019–2022
Funded by: OPUS research grant financed by the National Science Centre (NCN) (grant number: 2018/29 /B/HS5/00085,

The underlying goal of this research project is to explain the differences in the patterns of national parliamentary mobilization in European affairs across EU Member States. Building on a new conceptualization of the role of national parliaments (NPs) as “multi-arena players” in the European Union (Auel and Neuhold 2017) this project sets itself three concrete research objectives.

First, it aims at explaining what factors influence parliamentary mobilization in the six EU-oriented arenas available for NPs’ participation and linked to the EU legislative process: (1) the Early Warning System for subsidiarity control; (2) the Political Dialogue with the European Commission; (3) the green card initiative for proposing or reviewing EU legislation; (4) inter-parliamentary conferences (IPCs) on the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy; on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance in the EU; and a Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Group for Europol; (5) scrutiny of national governments in EU affairs and (6) domestic monitoring of the implementation of EU law. Each of these arenas present an institutional opportunity structure through which NPs can control and influence the EU
policy-making process.

Second, the project will cast light on the interplay among the analyzed arenas. Here the research question becomes whether and how the EU-oriented activities of NPs influence each other. For
example, does a strong ex-ante scrutiny of national governments reduce external activity or rather enhances it? Has the emergence of the green card procedure reduced or enhanced the use of EWS or political dialogue?

Third, it will address the long-neglected question whether NPs consider themselves primarily domestic actors or European players and to what extent their parliamentary self-perception vary from what is generally expected from them by experts and the general public

The envisaged research will be divided into three stages. In the first, based mainly on desk-research and literature review, an analytical framework will be developed in order to determine a set of independent variables. These will be derived from theoretical perspectives of the new institutionalism, multi-level governance and Europeanization.

On such basis, a questionnaire tailored at NPs will be constructed and sent out. The second stage will entail measuring and mapping the activity of 27 NPs in the abovementioned arenas in order to produce a unique set of multidimensional data on the parliamentary EU-oriented activity. In the third stage, empirical verification of the hypotheses and addressing research questions will take place based on the feedback received from questionnaires and other sources (interviews, documents analysis). There are two main reasons for which this project has been undertaken:

First, the question of national parliamentary engagement in EU affairs has recently become very salient in the field of EU politics. Strengthening of NPs in the EU was not only one of the British bargaining chips in the process of negotiation of a new settlement for the UK in the EU but is also postulated at EU level by other Member States ( i.e. V4 countries, the Netherlands, Denmark). EU institutions also admit that NPs can and should play a more meaningful role in the EU policy-making. It might be therefore all the more confusing to acknowledge that many NPs still appear unable or reluctant to make use of the existing windows of opportunity. This project will try to address this puzzle. By combining the transnational and cross-arena perspective it will empirically verify the notion of NPs as ‘multi-arena players’ and cast light on the existing discrepancies.

Second, the empirical literature on NPs in the EU lacks a comprehensive cross-country and cross-arena overview of NPs’ mobilization which would account for the existing differences. This project will compensate this lacuna by conducting a systematic analysis of the causal factors behind parliamentary EU-oriented activity across 27 Member States. By doing this, it will help answer the question of whether the latest inter-institutional dynamics have had any impact on the existing conceptualizations of parliamentary roles, thus further developing the theoretical strand of the literature.

National parliaments and EU decision-making transparency: The French socio-institutional and political perspective

NAWA

Principal investigator: Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka
Duration: 2020–2021
Funded by: Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) pursued at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris, Bekker scholarship

Polskie partie polityczne w relacji z otoczeniem społecznym. Analiza strategii organizacyjnych i komunikacyjnych

NCN

Principal investigator: Anna Pacześniak
Duration: 2016–2020.
Funded by: National Science Centre (NCN), programme Sonata Bis 5

The aim of the research was to analyse the activities of Polish political parties in terms of their organisational and communication activities (external and internal) in the context of the declining interest of citizens in participating in traditionally understood politics, the low level of public trust in political parties, competition from non-party political entities, dynamic and multidimensional social changes associated with the development of digital information and communication technologies (ITC). These phenomena affect the way political parties function and, theoretically, should be a determinant of major changes within political parties and at the interface between parties and their social environment, as well as a motivating factor for the search for new areas of organisational and communication activity. The main objective of the research was a multidimensional analysis of the changes taking place in Polish political parties and an assessment of their scope.

Quantitative and qualitative research was conducted from two perspectives: political science and communication studies. The project had a theoretical–cognitive character. The cognitive value of the project was to identify the barriers which prevent citizens from increasing their membership in political parties and the factors limiting political mobilisation.

Electoral defeat as a catalyst for change in European political parties

NCN

Principal investigator: Anna PacześniakOkres trwania projektu: 2018–2022
Duration: 2018–2022
Funded by: National Science Centre (NCN), programme OPUS-14

The main objective of the project is to identify the factors influencing the nature, depth, scope and effects of political parties’ adaptation to the situation after losing parliamentary elections. In this context, both the influence of objective variables, such as the developmental phase of the party, the political status of the party prior to the defeat (whether it was a ruling party, co-ruling party, opposition party), and the influence of subjective variables, i.e. how the reasons for the unfavourable electoral outcome are perceived and interpreted by party decision-making bodies, are analysed. The combination of theoretical findings, results of qualitative research to be conducted in parties in Poland, Great Britain and Belgium, and quantitative research in parties from EU member states as well as Switzerland and Norway, will lead to the creation of a catalogue of relationships and correlations describing changes in political parties after electoral defeats. Implementation of the project will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of European political parties in the context of their adaptation to impulses coming from the social environment (understood as granting or refusing support in parliamentary elections).

Electoral defeat is treated not so much as an effect of previous actions or omissions, but as a beginning, a catalyst for a process of change in a political party. Losing an election has numerous consequences for the party organisation, its political programme, leadership, parliamentarians, members, co-workers and supporters. To a greater or lesser extent, it changes the balance of power between factions, may lead to secession, or even the collapse of the party. Defeat often becomes an instrument for a new ordering of internal relations, it is a factor that triggers the internal circulation of elites, starting with the resignation of the current leader. As a rule, a change of leader destabilises the existing system of connections within the party, and may trigger not only a change in the way a political party is managed, but also new programme concepts.

A new research thread is the broadening of the perspective to include volitional-conscious factors, by linking intra-party changes with the subjective perception of changes occurring in the party environment by party decision-makers. This stems from the assumption that a party – in order to undertake ‘corrective’ measures – must not only objectively lose elections, but must also have a subjective sense of defeat.

Determinants of stability and cohesion of Polish representation in the European Parliament

NCN

Principal investigator: Krysztof Zuba (University of Opole), team-member: Anna Pacześniak with Aleksandra Trzcielińska Polus
Duration: 2018–2022
Funded by: National Science Centre (NCN), programme OPUS-12

The aim of the conducted research is to determine the stability (variability) of Polish representation in the European Parliament (EP) and to determine the ideological, programmatic and operational coherence of Polish political parties within party groups in the EP in the years: 2004-2019.

The project formulated four hypotheses: 1) The level of political stability of Polish parties in the EP is conditioned not only by EP elections, but also by the results of parliamentary elections in Poland; 2) The level of personal stability of Polish parties in the EP is conditioned by the way candidates for MEPs are selected; 3) The ideological and programme coherence of Polish parties within the EP party groups is conditioned by ideological and programme differences between parties forming the EP party group; 4) The more pro-European a given Polish party is, the closer its programme and votes are to the programme and votes of other parties within the EP party group.

The project will contribute to a better understanding of the influence of political parties on the European integration process and the process of Europeanisation on political parties. It will allow a better understanding of the activities of Polish political parties in a supranational environment, broadening the understanding of the mechanisms of shaping the European political space. The results of the research will also provide answers to the question of the extent to which decisions and votes of MEPs are conditioned by membership in party groups in the EP and whether the observed programme and ideological differences between Polish parties in the EP are similar to those observed in the Polish Sejm.