Party institutionalisation is a central problem in political science. The literature tends to understand it as a syndrome and therefore has difficulty explaining variations. This article suggests a new approach based on the transaction between a legislative party and its deputies, the failure of which is observable in party switching. Three routes to institutionalisation are identified by appealing to the vote‐seeking, office‐seeking or policy‐seeking motivations of deputies. Poland has had a large volume of party switching, along with wide variation in the incentives facing differently‐motivated deputies. Survival analyses of switching in four Polish parliaments find that vote‐seeking is the most likely route to institutionalisation for Polish parties. Moreover, in this article a concrete hypothesis is established for comparative testing: legislative parties can survive as long as their popular support exceeds 40 per cent of their share in the previous election.

This article disentangles the complexity of right-wing populism and feminist politics using an original framework based on inputs (representative claims) and outputs (policies) to examine a Polish case. In 2015, the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) formed a single-party majority government led by a female prime minister after winning the elections. PiS is ideologically conservative, promotes traditional and national values and is supported by the Catholic Church. Additionally, it is hostile towards what it calls ‘gender-ideology’ and is reluctant to implement feminist policies. This article also reveals that PiS represents conservative women’s interests and advocates an aspect of conservative feminism, therefore possessing a duality in its claims and policies. Overall, this article draws inferences about the nexus between social conservatism, populism and feminism, and thus seeks to contribute to the scholarly literature by examining a timely issue against the backdrop of rising populism, illiberalism and anti-gender campaigns.

Gender quotas aim to increase women's parliamentary representation. However, the effectiveness of quotas varies. This article explores this issue further by examining the case of Poland, where gender quotas were introduced in 2011. The Polish case presents an interesting puzzle. Although the overall number of women candidates increased almost twofold in comparison with the pre-quota period, this translated into only a slight increase in the number of women deputies in 2011 and 2015. Hence, the impact of quotas was limited. However, the partisan analysis shows that there was a significant variation among individual parties: whereas some parties promoted wholeheartedly women's access to political office, other parties did not facilitate it.By drawing on rational choice institutionalism, this article shows that institutions and preferences of political parties matter for the effectiveness of gender quotas. In the case of ineffective gender quota policy, political parties have a final say in women's parliamentary representation. 4 The literature points to a third institutional provision too, that is, the gender quota size. But it will not be examined here because it has remained the same in Poland (quota size of 35%). 5 Three parties, the Freedom Union, the Labour Union and the Democratic Left Alliance, introduced party quotas of at least 30% of each gender on candidates' lists for the 2001 election. 6 While there has been a steady increase in women's representation in the Sejm, the representation of women in the Senate has been very poor and remained at a low level of around 12% because of the majoritarian electoral system and the lack of gender quotas (see Gwiazda, 2016). 7 The elections of 1989 were semi-free for the Sejm where 65% of seats were reserved for the communists, but they were freely contested for a re-established Senate.

Representation is inherent to democracy and truly representative institutions are vital for a good quality democracy. However, the argument that parliaments are not sufficiently representative because of female under-representation is widespread. A number of countries around the world have introduced gender quotas in order to enhance the descriptive representation of women. This paper analyses women's representation and the adoption of gender quotas in Poland. After several unsuccessful attempts, the law was finally approved in 2011. Veto players analysis is used to explain this policy change.

This paper examines the evolution and characteristics of the Polish party system in the period 1991-2007, using the framework of institutionalization. Key moments in the development of the party system are identified by analyzing the results of six consecutive parliamentary elections. At the onset of the development of democratic politics, the party system was characterized by instability and under-institutionalization. By the end of the second decade, it displayed strong signs of structural stabilization and some evidence of the stability of inter-party competition and party institutionalization, implying that the Polish party system is quasi-institutionalized. Moreover, the paper attempts to explain the results by focusing on elite behaviour and institutions.