Marcin Bogdan: Polish systemic model

For 2 years, the ruling coalition in Poland on 13 December with Donald Tuski leads the methodical demolition of the state. This is not about disastrous economical performance or political decisions that come down to vendetta on members and sympathies of the governments of the United Right. The demolition of the state concerns the dismantling of justice and the demolition of the legal foundations on which the structure of the Polish state was based.

The current constitutional model of Poland is simply a erstwhile parliamentary-office republic, that is, a form of government in which the executive power originates from the parliament and is liable to it, but there is besides a president with a strong position,with crucial powers specified as veto rights or the right to legislative initiatives which the state besides represents internationally. That is why specified a political model is besides called a semi-president. A semi-president, which is classified between the parliamentary strategy and the presidential system. erstwhile addressing this subject we face a key question, a question about the future systemic model of Poland. Whether there should be a strategy of parliamentary governments in Poland, or a presidential system, or possibly a modified and improved hybrid form combining these 2 systems.

erstwhile addressing this issue, commentators and analysts focus on which form of government will be more effective, more efficient, which will foster bold pro-development ideas, while at the same time protecting us from errors or even harmful ruling decisions. Which form of power will be stronger, will be tailored to the needs of strong Poland. However, I believe that a different criterion, a criterion of representativeness, should be decisive. The decisive thing should be which form of government will be more typical of the general Polish society, typical of the actual majority of voters. Not only the votes cast, but besides the electoral ordination, or way of electing the rulers, influence this. Let us take a brief look at the current electoral rulings in Poland for the office of president and Parliament.

There is no division into districts in the presidential election, we vote for 1 candidate chosen by us from the nationwide list of candidates submitted. Each vote, regardless of the region of the country, has the same weight. If in the first circular no of the candidates receive support exceeding 50% of the votes cast, there is simply a second circular in which we make a selection from the 2 candidates who obtained the most votes in the first round. The second circular of presidential elections is the essence of the rule of representativeness. Each voter has the right to identify his candidate and the president is the 1 who will receive more votes across the country than his competitor. It is not politicians or candidates who form coalitions, but each of the voters in their conscience and their judgement that decides which candidate is closer to his imagination of governance. In the absence of an perfect candidate, voters themselves decide to compromise, not candidates on their behalf.

Let us look at the results of the presidential elections over the last 20 years. In the table I collected the results of the second decisive circular of elections between 2005 and 2025. Right-wing candidate is presented in blue, left-liberal candidate in red:

As you can see, for 20 years the elections have practically won the right-wing candidates. With 1 exception, the 2010 post-Smolen elections were conducted in an abnormal situation. After the death of president Lech Kaczyński, the duties of the head of state were assumed by the Marshal of the Sejm Bronisław Komorowski, his countercandidate was the duplicate brother of the murdered president, Jarosław Kaczyński, and the society terrified of the assassination was afraid of the outbreak of war with Russia. Hence, the consequence of these elections can be considered a clear deviation from the regulation that the presidential elections in Poland are won by the right-wing candidate. He wins with a decreasing advantage, but with an expanding turnout, erstwhile little active in voters' politics are easier to get slogans and passwords without cover. In absolute figures in the 2025 election, Karol Nawrocki received the highest support in history. Imagine what the result of the parliamentary elections would be if they were held according to the rule that 2 parties pass to the 2nd circular with the best consequence from the 1st circular and the government forms a organization that in the 2nd circular will gain more votes of voters. It can be assumed that right-wing groups would regulation Poland for 20 years. Why didn't this happen? due to the fact that the result of the parliamentary elections in Poland is decided by electoral ordination to a greater degree than by voting preferences. An arrangement which is not typical of the degree and structure of the division of Polish society.

I'm going to go over a fewer issues that decide. I will skip the elections to the Senate, which besides have their specificity in the form of majority ordination in single-mandate constituency elections, but the legislature in Poland is purely façade, the legislature decisions can be rejected by the Sejm by a simple majority, so they have no real influence on the legislative process. In the elections to the Sejm, there is simply a proportional regulation in which 3 key issues are relevant.

Issue 1

In Poland, Members of the Sejm are elected in 41 constituencies with a rigid number of seats per constituency. The number of seats from a given territory shall not be little than 7 or more than 20. The actual number of seats per territory is theoretically dependent on the number of inhabitants. But the constituency has rigid boundaries, and the division of seats per territory is not automatically calculated before each election, but is written “once for all” in the bill. The change in both the boundaries of districts and the number of mandates so requires the Sejm to pass a fresh law, which is in practice highly difficult. While this may push through a specified majority of the Sejm, a number may object that this is simply a cyclical action, as an increase in the number of seats in a given territory must take place at the expense of another district. The full number of Members must always be 460. And here are questions about why, for example, the 13th constituency in Krakow has 14 seats alternatively than 13 or 15, why the 39th constituency in Poznań has 10 seats alternatively than 9 or 11. Why Warsaw (the alleged bagel) is simply a separate constituency, and Łódź (similarly and Wrocław) are together with the city 1 constituency. any may claim that Warsaw should have more parliamentary mandates, as it is increasing in numbers, while others may claim that less, as more and more Warsawians are moving to the periphery to the alleged bagel. It is not my aim to settle this dispute here, but to show how unrepresentative the existing, rigid division into districts and the corresponding number of mandates is.

Issue 2

The second issue is simply a kind of derivative of the first issue. It's called election tourism. The division of political preferences in Poland is uneven geographically. another views dominate the east, others dominate the west. another views dominate the north, others dominate the south. yet others in large cities and others in smaller centres. This creates a temptation for the voter to vote in a territory another than his home territory resulting from his place of residence. individual may measure that the deficiency of his voice, e.g. in Warsaw, will not consequence in the failure of his mandate by his preferred group, and that his vote given in another district, e.g. Świętokrzyskie, may contribute to gaining an additional mandate by the group sentenced to failure in the region. It is estimated that this can even increase the effective power of your voice 4 times. This argues with the rule of equal choices, but half the poorness erstwhile these are individual initiatives of individual voters. The problem arises erstwhile specified election tourism is controlled and driven from any source. This was in 2023 erstwhile there was a peculiar program on the net showing voters in which territory they should vote to give more seats to a circumstantial group. The program was a complex and powerful tool developed by a large squad of computer scientists, most likely with the support of abroad peculiar services. This alone should be the reason for the annulment of these elections, but for the purposes of this text, let us limit ourselves to the conclusion that electoral tourism is simply a pathological consequence of defective electoral ordination. Electoral ordination to the Polish Sejm is seemingly simple, but does not guarantee equality of vote. German government prefers equality of vote at all costs, even at the expense of complicated electoral system.

Issue 3

The 3rd question is D'Hondt's method, which favours larger groups. The usage of the D'Hondt method was intended to prevent the fragmentation of the Sejm, in utmost cases preventing a situation in which the Sejm would consist of 460 single-member groupings. But even the Sejm of respective twelve or more groups would most likely not be able to establish a ruling coalition. A 5% electoral threshold was so adopted for the organization and 8% for the coalition. A threshold that needs to be crossed across the country. So in the case of 20 million votes cast, a tiny party, in order to get to the Sejm, must get a minimum of 1 million votes across the country. It's a very advanced threshold. Only after gathering this criterion, after exceeding the national electoral threshold, does the group participate in the division of mandates in individual districts, where the D'Hondt method is applied at the level of each territory to allocate mandates. Let me give you a simple example, where 200,000 votes were cast into 4 groups and 10 seats were allocated:

The "A" group received 50% of the vote and 5 out of 10 seats, which is besides 50%. But the B-group, which received twice as many votes as the C-group, obtained as many as 4 times more mandates than the C. The most interesting is the case of the group ‘D’. It received 5% of the vote across the country, thus contributing to the division of seats across all districts. But in the ellipse described in the above example, the consequence of 5% after the D'Hondt method did not give the group "D" a single mandate. 5% support and zero seats in a given district.

The consequences of the D'Hondt method should be traced on another example. The elections are attended by 2 groups “X” and “Y” on the same side of the political scene. In the first case, they start separately, each under their name, and obtain, respectively, ‘X’ – 30% and ‘Y’ – 10% of support. In the second case, they start together, as 1 committee and gain 40% support. Moreover, the full of votes cast for these groups in the first case is identical to the number of votes cast in the second case to the common list. The question is, will these groups in both cases get the same number of parliamentary seats? NO. A common list with 40% of support will always give more mandates than the sum of mandates with 2 separate lists with 30% and 10% of support. This difference, depending on the distribution of votes across the country, may be respective or even respective mandates. It may be that the number of mandates obtained by the Joint Committee of the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ groupings will constitute a majority of the Sejm (>230) and will let them to form a government and the sum of the votes broken down into 2 self-starting groups will not constitute a majority (

The described electoral dysfunctions to the Sejm do not automatically like either side of the political scene. In 2015, due to the fact that the united around the SLD Left did not exceed the 8% threshold required for the coalition, The PiS obtained 235 tickets and could regulation alone. Had it not been for the D'Hondt method, the SLD would have obtained respective mandates and the PiS would have been forced to form a coalition government with the Kukiza group. In 2023, the PJJJ group, Rafał Piech, did not exceed the 5% threshold, which caused specified a failure of mandates that even the possible coalition of PiS and Confederacy did not give the required majority of 231 mandates. Paradoxically, it was the right-wing voters, the staunch Catholics, voting for PJJ Rafał Piech, that enabled Tusk to take power. These 2 examples, from 2015 and 2023, show that the division of mandates and the appointment of government can be influenced by electoral ordination alternatively than the actual preferences of voters. Until we change the political model of Poland (or at least the electoral decree to the Sejm) any electoral initiatives specified as PJJ Piecha or KKP Braun, regardless of the sincerity of the intentions of their leaders and the intentions of their voters, act to the detriment of Poland.

Right groups, with right patriotic views, must first unite to change Poland's constitutional model, and only after the choice of our representatives is typical of the structure of our society, they will then be able to advance their individuality and their concepts. For the sake of the Republic, not for its harm.

Mr Bogdan

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