Introduction: Three tales of local party systems

In the Danish municipality of Ringsted, the voters participating in the 2013 municipal elections were presented with a choice of eight different parties when they entered the polling booth. The number of parties listed on the ballot was neither special nor interesting, but the names of the parties were. The eight parties running for the 21 seats at the local council happened to be the exact same eight parties represented at the Danish parliament Folketinget at the time. And when the votes were counted, and the seats distributed, it turned out that all the eight parties obtained representation at the council which then – in terms of the party system – became a perfect microcosm of the national parliament. So, the council was made up of the same ingredients as the parliament, yet mixed in slightly different proportions, according to the preferences of the local electorate. However, this was the only one of the 98 Danish municipalities where this full nationalization of the local party system could be found (Baekgaard et al, 2017).

In the 2018 local elections held in Poland, the complete set of parliamentary parties competed for council seats in 13 municipalities, but only in the municipality of Głuchołazy did all major parliamentary parties receive at least one seat. Yet, they have been accompanied by the Association ‘Self-Government Forum 2002’ (Forum Samorządowe 2002), a typical local independent list, which despite its generic name ran only in this municipality and won two out of 21 seats. In fact, none of the local councils in Poland copied the structure of the Sejm. The first reason for this is the high volatility of the national party system – a constantly changing set of parties makes it difficult to compare choices available for voters in different elections and to trace changes over time. Despite some progress in the institutionalization of the party system, the set of main parties is far from being stable and their territorial structures remain underdeveloped. As the 2018 local elections took place almost three years after the regular parliamentary election, two out of five parties represented in the Sejm practically ceased to exist.