Is Law and Justice left wing or right wing?

On economic organisation Law and Justice scores −02 on a scale from −10 (common ownership) to +10 (private property and markets). On social and cultural order it scores +08. A single left–right figure combines these and four further measurements that move independently, which is why the atlas reports six.

Is Law and Justice authoritarian?

On the organisation of power, which measures whether authority is dispersed among institutions that can stop each other or concentrated in a single centre, Law and Justice scores +06. Judicial appointments and public media restructured under government control; lost office at the 2023 election and left.

Atlas / Organisations / Law and Justice

Law and Justice

PiS · 2005– · Poland · National Conservative · Electoral party · coding confidence high

−02ECcollective

+08CUtraditional

+06AUmonist

+05SCcentral

+05IDascriptive

00CHbalanced

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

Catholic national identity, sovereignty against Brussels, and a claim that the post-1989 elite settlement was illegitimate.

Economic model

Large universal child benefit, lower retirement age, higher minimum wage, state ownership in energy and banking.

Organisation of powers

Judicial appointments and public media restructured under government control; lost office at the 2023 election and left.

Reading note

Economically to the left of most European social democracies on transfers, culturally traditionalist, contested on judicial independence.

Check a claim about Law and Justice. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored −02

Coded −2: among the most generous transfer programmes in Europe alongside low flat taxation.

Documented act or statuteThe 500+ child benefit introduced in 2016 was universal from the second child and raised to 800 in 2024.
Documented act or statuteThe retirement age raised by the previous government was reversed in 2017.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored +08

Coded +8: Catholic national identity in law and education.

Documented act or statuteThe constitutional tribunal removed the foetal-abnormality ground for abortion in 2020, producing the largest protests since 1989.

AU · Organisation of power · scored +06

Coded +6: elections remained genuinely competitive and lost, which holds this below the Hungarian score.

Documented act or statuteThe 2015–19 judicial reforms drew infringement proceedings and a finding of breach of EU law on judicial independence.
Documented act or statuteThe party left office after losing its majority in the 2023 election.

SC · Scale of decision · scored +05

Coded +5: recentralisation of education and prosecution alongside EU sovereignty conflicts.

Documented act or statuteThe offices of justice minister and prosecutor general were merged in 2016.

ID · Rule of membership · scored +05

Coded +6: refusal of relocation quotas and a national-Catholic definition of belonging.

Documented act or statutePoland declined EU refugee relocation from 2015 and declared LGBT-free zones in dozens of municipalities.

CH · Method and tempo · scored 00

Coded at zero: change pursued entirely through parliamentary majority and judicial appointment.

Documented act or statuteConstitutional change was achieved by statute rather than amendment because the party lacked a two-thirds majority.

Where it came from, and what came after

succeededOrbánism
Parallel projects that have publicly cited each other since 2015.
takes its doctrine fromSolidarność
Both major post-communist Polish traditions emerged from the same union movement.

Scores that have been revised

ID +06 → +05Polish membership is civic with a descent-based diaspora card. The score reflects the card and the refusal of relocation, not a closure of citizenship.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Poland

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). Law and Justice. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/pis/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.