Political Debate about Economic Issues: Some Insights from the Polish Parliament, 1991–2019

Political decisions on economic policies are often at the centre of academic and media attention. There has, however, been much less focus on the political debates that form the context in which these decisions are made. This paper examines the presence of economic issues in the Polish parliamentary debates in 1991–2019. First, the main economic topics that attracted political attention are identified, and the way(s) in which they changed, during this period is examined. Text mining reveals that economic issues have featured prominently in Polish parliamentary debates. However, when examined individually, most economy-related terms exhibit relatively low frequencies. Second, economic topics in the speeches of MPs from the two major political camps, viz. Law and Justice (PiS) and Civic Platform (PO), which have since come to dominate the Polish political scene, are compared and contrasted for the post-2005 period. As is documented, the relative presence of words pertaining to economic topics uttered by MPs from these two camps have been similar in recent years. Ditto for the frequencies of the keywords they have used.