Since its electoral triumph in 2015, Poland's Law and Justice Party has made headlines around the world for, among other things, its advocacy of policies favored by the Catholic Church and its antagonistic stance toward the European Union (EU). For this reason, the volume under review is especially timely. Author Bartosz Napieralski does not address Poland's current government in much detail—it was just getting started as he was in the thick of writing—but his insightful analysis provides an invaluable framework for understanding affairs in contemporary Poland, not to mention political Catholicism and Euroscepticism more generally.
Napieralski introduces his argument by noting the widely-observed affinity between political Catholicism (the effort to bring Catholic teaching and moral values to bear on public life) and European integration. Many of the leading architects of integration have been Catholic politicians whose actions have been motivated to a significant degree by their religious commitments. Napieralski proposes to complicate this connection by examining the “deviant case” of Poland, where political Catholicism and Euroscepticism have proven quite compatible.
Bookended by an introduction and conclusion, Napieralski's argument unfolds over six chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 flesh out the phenomena of Euroscepticism and political Catholicism, respectively. He reviews the history of Euroscepticism from its early stirrings in the 1950s to the Brexit vote in 2016, presenting leading theories concerning its causes. His account of the history of political Catholicism ranges from its origins in the late nineteenth century, interwar alignments with corporatism and authoritarianism, and its postwar affinity for democracy, free-market economies softened by generous welfare provisions, and transnational cooperative agreements—including those that led to the EU—that could lessen the likelihood of a future war. Both chapters are models of clarity and demonstrate a solid command of the relevant literature.
His fourth chapter offers a very fine treatment of political Catholicism in Poland. He begins with a historical overview of church-state relations, focusing on the challenges of the partition and communist eras, which helped forge a tight bond between religious and national identity. He turns next to Catholicism's place in Polish politics after 1989, charting the agendas of the welter of political parties that vied for power. He illustrates the ubiquity of Catholic discourse in the political sphere and argues that Catholicism remains more central to public life and national identity in Poland than in other European countries.
Napieralski focuses on Polish Euroscepticism in Chapters 5 and 6. The phenomenon first emerged in the late 1990s and has grown into a significant feature of the political landscape. While its practical impact has been limited to date, Polish Euroscepticism has deep ideological roots. Napieralski convincingly links the Eurosceptic tenor of political Catholicism in Poland to two concerns: the desire to protect national sovereignty, and the perception that the values of an increasingly liberal west are antithetical to traditional Catholic values. Many Poles “perceive the EU as an entity based on the concepts of ‘secularism,’ ‘individualism,’ and ‘materialism,’ which in turn endanger the core values of Polish national identity” (153).
To measure the distinctiveness of Polish political Catholicism, Napieralski devotes his seventh chapter to case studies of fifteen European countries where Catholics have formed a preponderance of the total population and where political Catholicism has been something of a force. These case studies are enlightening despite their brevity. He concludes that Poland and Slovakia are the only two contexts where political Catholicism has dovetailed with Euroscepticism in a notable way. I was surprised that his survey did not include Hungary, a country that seems to meet his criteria and offers a noteworthy expression of Euroscepticism.
There is a chronological disparity at the heart of Napieralski's work that distorts his comparative analysis. He sets relatively recent manifestations of Euroscepticism in Polish political Catholicism against Europhile political Catholicism in other countries that, in many cases, found its strongest expression in the 1950s and 1960s, a period in which Europe had a more explicitly Christian character than it does today. If history had allowed Poland to negotiate its entry into the EU in this earlier era, I suspect that there would be no grounds to view it as a “deviant case.”
This criticism aside, Political Catholicism and Euroscepticism is an outstanding book that makes a laudable contribution to our understanding of modern European politics and Poland's significance therein. It should be considered essential reading for scholars interested in political Catholicism, Euroscepticism, and Catholicism's place in contemporary Polish politics.
