Poland’s Successful Losers
WARSAW
– How can a government with the best economic record in Europe (indeed
in the entire OECD) be humiliated at the polls by a Euroskeptic,
nationalistic, and economically illiterate opposition – one deemed
unelectable only a year ago? That is the question many Poles, and
friends of Poland, are now asking, following the defeat on October 25 of
the Civic Platform government. If creating jobs and boosting incomes
can’t get you re-elected, what can?
One
reason for the opposition’s victory is, of course, universal: after a
time, people everywhere want change, and Civic Platform had been in
power since 2007. And impatience with the status quo is arguably
stronger in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe,
where much of the social, political, and economic order is yet to be
generally accepted. Indeed, Civic Platform’s Donald Tusk was Poland’s
first post-communist prime minister to win successive terms.
Moreover,
as parties govern longer, their strongest personalities tend to be
replaced by weaker ones. Civic Platform contested this election after
replacing Tusk with Ewa Kopacz, and has had the same problem with a
number of other “substitutions.”
What
is specific to Poland is that the past eight years have apparently
created a pronounced case of cognitive dissonance. Annual GDP growth
averaged 3.2% over this period; and, unlike in the rich West, both
inequality and unemployment have actually fallen, with growth mainly
benefiting the middle three quintiles of the income distribution. This
segment of the population – usually politically crucial – enjoyed a 28%
rise in per capita real income from 2007 to 2014.
At
one level, Poles are aware of this, with large majorities describing
financial conditions in their own families, workplaces, and social
environments as either “good” or “very good.” The dissonance is that
equally large majorities also describe Poland’s economic situation and
the “direction in which the country is moving” as either “bad” or “very
bad.”
Poland’s
transformation is visible not only in the form of new motorways, local
roads, airports, hospitals and stadiums, but also in the appearance of
vast numbers of new and refurbished housing units, supermarkets, and
modern factories. And this has not been achieved by mortgaging the
future. Poland has recorded the fourth lowest increase in public debt
(as a percentage of GDP) in the European Union.
And
yet the disconnect between this reality and the Poland “in ruins” or
“on the verge of catastrophe” perceived by many voters was too strong to
ignore. Even Kopacz admitted the contrast between the “public
affluence” that everyone sees and the “private penury” that many feel
persists (at least relative to Germany, the preferred benchmark for
Poles).
In
today’s Poland, it is harder to accept wages – nominally about a third
of those in Germany – that had seemed perfectly adequate in 2007, when
they were only a quarter of the German level. But, unsurprisingly,
Kopacz’s campaign slogan, “A strong economy – higher wages,” and her
implicit promise to address the issue in one parliamentary term, did not
appear credible.
Although
the problem faced by Kopacz and Civic Platform was specifically Polish,
it contains a universal truth: to win, politicians must define the
context in which they operate. During Tusk’s premiership, the government
was perversely reluctant to claim credit for Poland’s economic success.
Tusk praised Poles themselves for their hard work, but neglected to
emphasize that without the government’s effective macroeconomic
policies, that work would have been wasted. He never even reminded
voters that the government’s choices in managing the fallout from the
2008 global financial crisis – which were neither obvious nor easy,
because they required rejecting the EU’s austerity consensus – was the
right one.
Given
that most voters do not consider themselves able to judge competence in
government, they base their choice of party on the general direction in
which it intends to take the country and the overarching principles by
which it intends to govern. Civic Platform came to power in 2007 with a
strongly pro-business and free-market ethos. During the financial
crisis, it had to moderate these views considerably, taking steps that
ran counter to its ideology: increasing deficits in the trough of the
crisis (2009-2010) and raising taxes once growth resumed (2011).
And
then, when the government reduced the size of the absurdly expensive,
but popular, funded pension system (2011-2014), Tusk attempted to
compensate voters by pumping all additional free resources into family
benefits. Although this was justified, given Poland’s very low birth
rate, it was also intended to appeal to his urban electorate. But, to
many voters, it seemed that Civic Platform, which had identified itself
in 2007 as socially conservative and economically liberal, was drifting
to the economic (as well as the cultural) left.
By
2014, the government was perceived as being so pragmatic as to be
almost value-free. That perception naturally raised the suspicion that
self-interest had become Civic Platform’s main motivation. As the
party’s narrative became an endless litany of the good social things it
had done (or was about to do), Poles came to view the campaign as a
cynical attempt to buy their votes – and to do so with their own money.
Even the fact that these promises, though plentiful, were mostly
inexpensive (certainly compared to those of the opposition) was not used
to convey a commitment to fiscal responsibility.
Elections
are a choice, not an auction between competing lists of promises, with
victory simply going to the highest bidder. Civic Platform lost because
it failed to explain to Poles its own view of that choice. It hardly
mattered that the opposition’s program lacked credibility: Civic
Platform had already become the architect of its own defeat.
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