<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> This paper employs the 2010 Polish presidential election as a case study to explore the implications of memory politics, examining the Law and Justice party’s (PiS) use of national memory ahead of the June election. Through process tracing, this paper finds that the Smolensk Air Crash became the central theme of this race, which pitted Civic Platform (PO) candidate Bronisław Komorowski against the late President Lech Kaczynski’s twin brother, PiS’s Jarosław Kaczynski. Amplified by the media, PiS selectively drew on easily recognisable events and figures from Polish history to construct an “Us versus Them” conflict of “true Polish patriots” - those who supported the party and its anti-Russian stance - and “Others” - those who, although sympathetic to the crash victims, favoured Tusk and his push for renewed Polish-Russian relations. The primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate how a historical memory approach can inform the study of contemporary politics - a subject which is too oft en left solely to social scientists.</p></abstract>

This paper employs the 2010 Polish presidential election as a case study to explore the implications of memory politics, examining the Law and Justice party’s (PiS) use of national memory ahead of the June election. Through process tracing, this paper finds that the Smolensk Air Crash became the central theme of this race, which pitted Civic Platform (PO) candidate Bronisław Komorowski against the late President Lech Kaczynski’s twin brother, PiS’s Jarosław Kaczynski. Amplified by the media, PiS selectively drew on easily recognisable events and figures from Polish history to construct an “Us versus Them” conflict of “true Polish patriots” - those who supported the party and its anti-Russian stance - and “Others” - those who, although sympathetic to the crash victims, favoured Tusk and his push for renewed Polish-Russian relations. The primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate how a historical memory approach can inform the study of contemporary politics - a subject which is too oft en left solely to social scientists.

National Memory and Divisive Narrative Building in Poland’s 2010 Presidential Election

Polish Political Science Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

This paper employs the 2010 Polish presidential election as a case study to explore the implications of memory politics, examining the Law and Justice party’s...

National Memory and Divisive Narrative Building in Poland’s 2010 Presidential Election

Published Online: Jul 19, 2018

Page range: 5 - 21

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ppsr-2015-0039

Keywords
memory politics, narrative building, Law and Justice, Civic Platform

© 2018 Miranda Lupion, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

National Memory and Divisive Narrative Building in Poland’s 2010 Presidential Election

Published Online: Jul 19, 2018

Page range: 5 - 21

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ppsr-2015-0039

Keywordsmemory politics, narrative building, Law and Justice, Civic Platform

© 2018 Miranda Lupion, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
memory politics, narrative building, Law and Justice, Civic Platform