Between participation demand and self-assertion. Polish debates on the European constitutional treaty and the war in Ukraine

Abstract

The chapter explores politicisation using the example of the images of Europe within the political discourse of the Third Polish Republic (1990 2016). Based on consecutive phases of Poland’s EU politics (adaptation, contestation, cooperation and sovereigntism) the chapter argues that the phases cannot be explained with changing domestic power constellations alone. Therefore, the chapter scrutinizes the dynamics of the images of Europe in Poland, since these images can correlate with varying politicisation potentials. First, the chapter presents the theoretical approach focusing on the concept of the images of Europe. Next, two case studies with a high degree of polarisation are examined, as they can be attributed to the phases of confrontation and sovereigntism: the debate on the European constitutional treaty of 2005 and the Eastern policy in the course of the war in Ukraine in 2014. The case of Poland supports the hypothesis that political parties are the primary agents of politicisation. On the one hand, as a result of high polarisation of the images of Europe diverging political positions within the population can be reflected more visibly at the level of the political elites. On the other hand, polarisation can increase the volatility of the images of Europe even within one party, thus increasing the politicisation dynamics.