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Explaining Kwasniewski's Landslide: The October 2000 Polish Presidential Election

2001; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/714003588

1743-9116

Aleks Szczerbiak,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

The Polish presidential election of October 2000 represented a tremendous personal and political triumph for the incumbent, Aleksander Kwasniewski. It was the culmination of a sophisticated and very thorough long-term political strategy based on promoting Kwasniewski as the guarantor of stability, inclusiveness and political consensus. The election result also contained important signals about the future shape of the Polish political scene. However, although it appears to indicate the declining salience of the issue of attitudes towards the communist past, it is too early to draw any solid conclusions about possible electoral realignments on the basis of this election alone.