The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation. / Master of Arts / The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation.

This thesis investigates discursive identity creation used in the discourses of the governing populist political parties of Hungary and Poland, Fidesz and PiS. Considering the important role construction of social identities play in populism, this article argues that we need to enhance our understanding of how the Self and the Other is described and used in populist discourse. The analytical framework draws on earlier literature from the broader field of populism as well as from the fields of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), security studies and discourse analysis. In this thesis, the Self is conceptualised as Hungary and Poland, respectively, and the Other is conceptualised as the West. The findings show that Hungary and Poland are depicted as unique, strong and brave, and that “the people” share a common and distinctive culture. Meanwhile, the West is depicted as controlling and not to be trusted. The historical victimization of the nation in relation to the West is important, and used to legitimize the current relationship of the two. Moreover, both discourses use similar rhetoric strategies to defend these identities. However, the analysis also points to differences between the discourse used by PiS and the discourse used by Fidesz, where the latter is more extreme in its identity construction. Hungary is depicted as more unique and the identity of the West entail a more radical degree of Otherness carrying a more direct threat towards the existence of the Hungarian nation. In the discourse used by PiS, on the other hand, the West does pose a threat to the sovereignty of the Polish nation, but Poland simultaneously identifies with and wishes to integrate further with the West. Lastly, the findings show that the discursive identity construction of Hungary, Polandand the West is closely related to new legislation planned or implemented by the parties, and is hence not only a rhetoric device.

Within the last decade, European states, particularly in the post-Communist and post-Soviet region, have elected more rightist-led governments. Poland is no exception and after a surprising election in 2015 led to a Law and Justice Party (PiS) government majority in the state, questions of how this political shift in the "role model" Eastern European state could impact Polish security began to circulate. (Lupitu, 2016, p. 25) This study analyses the PiS's security actions within its first year as the Polish government majority (2015-2016) to discern the potential agency political actors have in determining how regional security organisations function through a structure vs. agency framework. Using NATO as a unit of analysis, the study aims to synthesise regional security implications of Poland's political shift on the Alliance. To do so, a triangulated methodology is applied to four key security events and actions PiS took within 2015-2016 using both a document and news media analyses as well as three elite interviews. These four events include a controversial pardoning of the minister responsible for all Polish Special Services, lustration activities within Polish security agencies, a controversial dismissal of the head of NATO's Centre of Excellence in Warsaw and the Warsaw Summit of 2016. A common...

The Polish Independence Day march in Warsaw in November 2017 drew a flurry of international media attention for its shocking mass display of far-right nationalism, connections to neo-Nazi groups, and feature of openly racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, and homophobic slogans. However, the dangerously “othering” nationalist ideologies expressed in Poland during this demonstration are far from unique. Over the past 20-30 years, eerily similar nationalist movements have simultaneously emerged across Eastern Europe and the West. Paradoxically, the nation-state has perhaps never had less agency as increasingly global capitalism continues to encroach upon the dominance of the nation itself. I argue that this trend of new nationalist movements indicates a departure from the traditional definitions of nationalism that requires a distinct category, which I refer to as neo-nationalism. In Chapter 1, I differentiate neo-nationalism from conventional understandings of nationalist politics and provide a working definition of neo- nationalism in the twenty-first century. I aim to show that a contextualization of these neo- nationalist movements alongside increasingly global capitalism is essential to understanding the othering natures of neo-nationalist ideologies and their paradoxical nature – both national and transnational, both shocking and entirely banal. I illustrate this by returning to the case of modern Poland, employing a visual rhetorical analysis from a Marxist-feminist perspective in order to demonstrate the manifestations of particular and dangerous dynamics of othering in Polish neo- nationalism. I refer to these dynamics as “capital-isms,” such that they are the “shocking” expression of what are in fact pervasive prejudices brought to the surface by the changing conditions of global capitalism. In Chapter 2, I examine the rhetoric surrounding the Polish Independence Day march in 2017 to highlight the paradoxes and power mechanisms at play in Polish neo-nationalism. I follow with an exploration of the rhetoric employed by the Polish far- right nationalist party, Law and Justice, with particular contextualization with regard to its relationship with the European Union in Chapter 3. Finally, I conclude this thesis by considering the implications of this research for the study of neo-nationalism going forward. / M.A. / The Polish Independence Day march in Warsaw in November 2017 drew a flurry of international media attention for its shocking mass display of far-right nationalism, connections to neo-Nazi groups, and feature of openly racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, and homophobic slogans. However, the dangerously “othering” nationalist ideologies expressed in Poland during this demonstration are far from unique. Over the past 20-30 years, eerily similar nationalist movements have simultaneously emerged across Eastern Europe and the West. In this thesis, I theorize the Polish far-right nationalism on display at the Independence Day march as part of a broader trend of neo-nationalist movements, which I demonstrate are paradoxical in nature. After establishing the defining characteristics of neo-nationalism as a phenomenon, I highlight these paradoxes through an analysis of Polish neo-nationalist rhetoric. Furthermore, by placing this rhetoric within its socioeconomic and historical contexts, I demonstrate that the “shocking” display of far-right nationalism in the march is an expression of what are in fact pervasive prejudices brought to the surface by the changing conditions of global capitalism.

CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE Faculty of Social Sciences Institute of Political Studies Adam Komenda Political profile of Kaczyński brothers Master thesis Abstract The thesis is about two major Polish politicians, Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński. The thesis describes factors that have had a significant impact on their value orientation and political goals, focusing on key events of their life and, above all, political trajectories, capturing, characterizing and evaluating their political profile. In the thesis, it is stated which political goals the Kaczyński brothers managed to realize and which, on the contrary, did not succeed. The thesis also reflects the leadership style of the Kaczyński brothers in terms of leadership theory, especially from the point of view of Max Weber's The Three Types of Legitimate Rule and in therms of Transformational leadership by Bernard M. Bass. Keywords Bronisław Geremek, Fourth Polish Republic, Donald Tusk, Jarosław Kaczyński, pragmatism of Kaczyński, Lech Kaczyński, Lech Wałęsa, screening, Civic Platform, political, Poland, Centre Agreement, Law and Justice, Sejm of the Republic of Poland, Smolensk tragedy, Smolensk myth, Solidarity, leadership.

This diploma thesis deals with the development of Poland during the single-party government of the national conservative right-wing party Law and Justice (PiS) between 2015 and 2019 and the presentation of this development in the German national conservative right-wing weekly Junge Freiheit. The work aims to find out how this periodical reports on the individual steps taken by the Polish government in the areas of migration policy, judicial reform, public media reform, views on history and family policies with regard to cultural proximity and the shared values of the PiS government and this medium, and also the present anti-German element in the strong nationalist rhetoric of the ruling party. Among the sources used are mainly articles from the archives of the printed version of Junge Freiheit, as well as articles from its online version, and laws passed by the Polish Sejm in the given period. The thesis is divided into three chapters, the first of which briefly deals with the development of Poland until October 2015, i.e. the parliamentary elections won by PiS. The second chapter deals with the political development of Poland between 2015 and 2019; specifically, the work focuses on migration policy, judicial reform, public media reform, views on history and family policies. The third chapter...

The government in Poland led by the Law and Justice party (PiS) and characterized by its anti-genderism and right-wing populist politics, is framing its opposition to the Istanbul Convention in human rights language. This leads to a puzzling occurrence of the women’s rights Convention being opposed with rights rhetoric. This puzzle was addressed in the thesis by investigating how the PiS-led government is mimicking human rights rhetoric in their opposition to the Convention. That was done in accordance with the ‘Rights as Weapons’ theory, developed by Bob Clifford. Findings revealed that the PiS-led government in their right rhetoric denies the necessity, effectiveness, and apoliticality of the Convention, invokes fears, presents Polish society as victims of 'gender ideology,' and puts forward opposing rights to those enshrined in the Convention. Moreover, their rights rhetoric heavily relies on fear, misinformation, and misinterpretation of the Convention.

The thesis deals with the process of reconciliation in Polish-German relations after 1945. Lily Gardner Feldman's invented a concept which defines the prerequisites for the reconciliation process. In her concept she defines four essential pillars of the reconciliation process - history, leadership, institutions and international context. Although Polish-German relations have undergone a long development and both sides have built up a stable and firm mutual relationship, it is possible to see changes within the four categories mentioned. The aim of this thesis is to outline the process of reconciliation in Polish-German relations after 1945 and capture the qualitative changes in mutual relations during the first rule of the Law and Justice party between 2005 and 2007, which represented a critical point in Polish-German relations and a change in the Polish foreign policy towards Germany since 1989. In the first part the thesis discusses the development of the Polish-German relations until the end of the 1990s, and in the second part of the thesis, the concept is applied to the Law and Justice party government's "critical" period (2005-2007), focusing on the four categories mentioned and on the most discussed topics. In the final part of the thesis there follows an evaluation of the validity of the used...