Between parliamentarism and a presidential system model – reasons and consequences of the radical reorientation of assumptions underlying the polity of the polish state in the interwar period from the perspective of its security.

The paper represents an attempt to analyse the reasons and consequences of the radical refocusing of the Polish state’s system in the interwar period. The thesis was advanced that in the interwar period in Poland two fundamentally different models of polity and governance of the state were created, which had a material bearing on the state’s general domestic situation, including also the security and stability of the polity. The presented arguments suggest that in the years 1918-1939 the model of the Polish polity evolved from the strengthening of the executive authority, during the initial formation of the independent state entity, through the representative parliamentary democracy, and up to the presidential polity, in which the president clearly dominated over the legislative and judicial authorities. Such momentous changes introduced over a relatively short period of time could be the evidence of destabilisation of the political scene and could also indicate that the bases of the democratic polity of the state were not firmly established in the interwar period.