Description
This paper investigates how changes of Polish national government have influenced official German narratives about Poland. While the return of Donald Tusk in 2023 was welcomed by the German government as a chance to rebuild relations with one of its most significant partners, reflection on what lessons should be drawn from recent turbulence in Polish-German relations has been minimal in both political and academic circles.
Drawing on theories of special relationships in international relations and constructivist literature on narratives and speech, this paper analyses official German discourse, drawing on over 100 speeches and press conferences.
The paper starts by building a framework of official German narratives about Poland, revealing five key trends in how Poland is rhetorically constructed. The framework draws on existing literature, but is also supported by a corpus analysis of 21st century German political speeches. This constitutes an important methodological contribution towards a more linguistics-oriented approach to discourse analysis in political science. This framework is then used to structure a more detailed analysis of German political speeches and press conferences, which compares the narratives across three time periods (2007-2015, 2015-2023, 2023-2024). While recognising the importance of other factors (e.g. the party affiliation of the speaker and geopolitical events, not least the war in Ukraine since February 2022), the paper distinguishes between 'essential' and 'non-essential' narratives of special relationships, and argues that in both cases there were varying degrees of adjustment which were linked to the changes of government in Poland in 2015 and 2023 respectively.
In addition to its novel methodological approach, this paper makes an empirical contribution to our understanding of German-Polish relations, as well as offering theoretical insights into the shifting nature of domestic politics and narratives in special relationships between states.
