Christian Democracy in Poland (19th-21st Century)

Abstract

Christian parties, which emerged as organized parliamentary powers in the second half of the 20th century, have a long history and initial phase, which is presented in this paper. The period of their historical, progressive development was a breakthrough, and a transition from the pre-revolutionary era to the post-revolutionary world, characterized by the liberalization of a strong state, industrialization and the emergence of social problems, new ideologies and processes of secularization. The development of Christian-democratic parties in Poland took place with almost two decades of delay in relation to the flwering of Christian democratic parties in Western Europe. The fist Christian democratic parties appeared in Poland only in the interwar period. During this period, the weakest point of Polish Christian democrats was the small share of intelligence in its ranks and lack of support from the Catholic Church. In the early 1990s, numerous Christian democratic groups began to appear on the Polish political scene, but none of them retained their positions for longer. First of all, it was characterized by a huge gap, almost arbitrary programme, which often had more to do with conservative ideology than with Christian-democratic one.