Poles apart – why divided Poland should become a Switzerland | Piotr Miszczuk

Poland is on the brink of an implosion. The inner conflict seems beyond control, and the country is sliding into a state of decay. Political clashes and the ensuing hostility in the public sphere leave Poles with an unenviable choice between voting either for those who pamper the self-proclaimed intelligentsia or those who, yet again, fail to cut the cord with the overbearing Catholic Church. But maybe there is a remedy that can help escape the rift and bridge the abyss between the self-righteous and the condescending?

First, we have to break down the very roots of the inner feud pervading Poland. It dates back to the times following the Third Partition in 1795 when the Western part of the country was under Prussian rule, the southern one was governed by Austria, and the East was under the Russian tsars. After two long centuries marred in statelessness, Poland finally regained a stable independence in the late 1980s, but the partition-imposed division is still too visible well into the 21st century. The conservative post-Russian East and the similarly marked by a nationalistic streak post-Austrian South-East tend to be subject to distinctly different election results, a much smaller GDP per capita and, more astoundingly, a sparser railway network, less access to sanitation facilities, as well as higher rates of alcoholism and domestic violence. Meanwhile, the West of Poland appears to be its polar opposite. The discrepancy stems from the gap between the occupied areas – being in its industrial and agricultural heyday, the Prussian part was much more affluent than the oddly latitude-supporting Austrian and the backward Russian ones. Years went by and even though some parts of present-day Poland have managed to escape the Eastern poverty trap, still almost every statistic has its spatial dimension stretched on the East-West axis.

Encouraged by those disparities, some Poles claim the country should be halved to stop the dialogue from tailing off further. Radical as it is, breaking up might be our last hope both to prevent Poland from falling apart and to avert the everlasting

condoning of politicians after each term. Throughout the years, various parties have tabled numerous ideas to pander to the electorate. From liquidating the Senate, through single-member constituencies, to setting up a big tent – one can say that Polish politicians have already tried it all. Maybe in lieu of bringing such cosmetic changes, we should push through a more seismic reform that would eventually put an end to Poland’s political turf wars.

If temporary turbulence within the political system is something we are willing to accept as a necessary evil, then the solution might be closer than we would expect – it is the empowerment of the local government. Lacking the leeway to act independently, regional authorities fail to cater necessary services to their dwellers and struggle to sustain efficacious public transport or adequate education facilities, to name but a few most burning issues. Were the local governments to be granted more responsibilities and more funding, perhaps the quality of life of those living in the Polish hinterlands would see some real improvement.

With no other cards left to play, decentralisation or, in other words, localisation is undoubtedly worth a shot. In 2019, a group of top Polish scholars and social activists launched the Social Contract Incubator, which aims at introducing far-reaching reforms in the Polish political system. As a non-partisan body, they look to quash the winner-takes-all mechanism in Polish elections. Allocating power between more actors will, in their opinion, guarantee a continuous and steady socioeconomic development in all regions. The Social Contract Incubator’s proposals are chiefly driven by placing the citizen in the middle of the political discourse. Some ideas have already been mooted in the aspects of migration, education, and social welfare. Critics nonetheless argue that the experts involved in the undertaking have put a lot of effort in vain – with Polish politics fed on atavistic spite there’s little or no room for such technical rearrangements.

However, I strongly believe it’s about time we grappled with the growing divide. Decentralisation must come to the fore, as it might potentially bring closure to the ongoing limbo, once and for all. To succeed, a power shift away from the heartland has to take place. It should commence with widening the scope of local governments’ authority, while limiting central power, and it has to be accompanied by a huge stream of money that will allow effective task fulfilment. Economic and financial factors will certainly have to be coupled with sea changes in the administration and law. Once it all plays out, it might stop MPs from taking decisions out of their wheelhouse.

There’s a path lying ahead for Poland, and it generally consists in changing from what professor John Loughlin referred to as a “centralized unitary state” to a “regional unitary state”. This would translate into the local authorities having an impact on the national law, e.g., by supplanting the Senate with an institution structurally akin to the House of Commons, which would comprise regional and local leaders. Perhaps over time, Poland would be ready to follow in Switzerland’s footsteps and become a fullyfledged federal country – a country whose head of state is non-existent to the layman.

Switzerland, deemed a true symbol of decentralisation, is at the forefront of all localisation rankings. However crippled by populist policies, including the recent Islamophobic ban on face veils, the Swiss decentralised economy and the locallygoverned higher education both made it globally. But it’s not only Switzerland that Poland can draw on; other states such as Germany, Finland, or Denmark also stepped onto a successful decentralisation path long ago. Their stories are lessons to learn for Poland, even though in our country’s case the road to empowering the local authorities is bumpy and fraught with peril. Yet, it seems that at present we don’t have much to lose. We can only trust that giving power to local political activists will enable Poland to drag its democracy indices up, and thus the country will start passing the freedom tests it’s been flunking for too long now.

Piotr Miszczuk