Transformation of Civil Society in Poland under the United Right Government

Abstract

Recent scholarship points to a growing political prominence of various non-liberal civil society organizations in many countries around the world. In Poland, this phenomenon is simultaneous with the emergence of political division in civil society driven by the policies of the United Right government. I argue that a wider historical perspective emphasizing reciprocal connections between civil society organizations and political parties helps to understand this recent surge. In Poland, the growing division in civil society builds upon the relationship between right-wing political parties and civil society organizations bound together since the beginning of the 1990s by the common vision of social memory. After taking power in 2015, the right-wing coalition in Poland centralized the supervision over the distribution of funds to civil society, providing financial support to organizations closer to its conservative agenda. At the same time, organizations that have been in frequent conflict with the right-wing government due to their main area of focus (human rights, anti-discrimination, women’s rights, environmental protection, and immigration) had limited access to government funding and were presented in a negative light by the government as well as its allied organizations and the state-controlled media. The argument in this article is based on secondary data about the organizational sphere of civil society and a case study of a set of right-wing civil society organizations, Gazeta Polska clubs.