Abstract

Chapter
First Online: 04 May 2022
Part of the Local and Urban Governance book series (LUG)

Abstract

The chapter presents the course of the election campaign and the elections for the office of the president of the Republic of Poland, which took place in the period of April–July, that is, the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The extraordinary circumstances of the fight against the pandemic and the threats it posed to the health and life of citizens made these elections, otherwise being a quite ordinary political event, a very spectacular case of parliamentary struggles and conflicts between central government and local authorities. Three main issues covered in the chapter are: (1) the modification of standard legal rules for elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) the conflict between central authorities and local governments over the responsibilities for organisation of the election; and (3) the distribution of voting turnout in demographical and territorial perspective compared against COVID-19 statistics. The case of presidential elections in Poland gives a broader insight into the more general question of adaptation strategies of major political actors to the completely new and unexpected circumstances of the electoral process that were brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also leads to some deeper reflections on using the COVID-19 pandemic as a convenient explanation for own political actions by key players on the electoral arena.

Cite this chapter
Kaczmarek, T., Mikuła, Ł. (2022). Presidential Elections in Poland During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Unexpected Challenge for Political Actors and the Relationship Between Central Government and Local Government. In: Nunes Silva, C. (eds) Local Government and the COVID-19 Pandemic. Local and Urban Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91112-6_18

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