Rebels without a Cause
Sources and Consequences of the PiS Election Victory
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Since its election victory in the autumn of 2015, the party Law and Justice has been undoing the Third Republic’s system of institutions with revolutionary élan. Many observers suspect that this is an expression of greater social upheavals. But these are neither the result of social injustices since 1989, nor a radical right-wing revolt on the part of the youth or a belated reckoning with the communist People’s Republic. Rather, the controversy feeds primarily on the conflict between town and country, between a small vanguard of post-materialistic individualists in the major cities and a larger layer of collectivistically and materialistically thinking traditionalists. Both claim to represent the nation. The majority is silent.
(Osteuropa 1-2/2016, pp. 37–60)