Physically Present but Spiritually Distant: The View of the European Union in Poland

The Polish people remain staunchly in favour of the concept of a European Union. Paradoxically though, there has been strong and continued electoral support for Law and Justice (PiS), its ruling party, despite its insistence on precipitating and then continuing multifaceted conflicts with EU institu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Polak Aleksandra, Hartwell Christopher A., Sidło Katarzyna W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2023-09-01
Series:Comparative Southeast European Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2022-0054
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Polish people remain staunchly in favour of the concept of a European Union. Paradoxically though, there has been strong and continued electoral support for Law and Justice (PiS), its ruling party, despite its insistence on precipitating and then continuing multifaceted conflicts with EU institutions. This article examines the internal structural changes in Poland and the attitudes to the EU of Poland’s leaders; the article will argue that those attitudes have deepened pre-existing divisions over integration. By fusing the triple modernization theory of European integration with a two-dimensional concept of party-based Euroscepticism, the article shows how PiS’s ambiguous discourse on European integration, combined with an increasingly instrumental approach to the EU by the Polish electorate—and that electorate’s deepening polarization—have secured steady support for PiS from ostensibly Europhile voters.
ISSN:2701-8199
2701-8202