Already in the XVIth century Poland were ideas also fundamental to contemporary political theory, according to Norman Davies of Oxford University:

During the First Polish Republic, or around the year 1600, one million free citizens lived in Poland, a record in the world history of representative government. These citizens had the right to run for the office of King in a free general election. Men and women had the same property and inheritance rights. The Polish indigenous legislative process shaped the national culture. While in Western and Eastern Europe monarchs became more and more authoritarian, Poland elected its kings and passed its laws in the Sejm (Parliament). The predatory powers that conquered Poland in the late 18th century made sure that the knowledge of Polish liberty faded away from European memory.
Slavic tradition of elective system in tribal democracies was strengthened in Poland by Europe's unique Polish national defense system, based on an alliance of the king with landowners. In the rest of Europe national defense was based on the king's alliance with fortified towns as it happened within all of western Christianity. In Poland there was a unique alliance between the king and the masses of landowners. This happened because foreign immigrants flooded Polish towns after the devastation by Mongol invasions starting in 1241 and it took generations for the immigrants to acquire Polish national identity - Jewish immigrants, with a few exceptions, never did assimilate because of the clear mandate of the Talmudic laws.
These ideas were introduced in Poland, the middle ground of Europe, by the development of the indigenous Polish democratic process, which matured in the sixteenth century. It was created by citizens of the First Polish Republic, using ideas that were modern even by today's standards. These ideas are also fundamental to contemporary political theory, according to Norman Davies of Oxford University:
*general elections by all citizens (called viritim)
*a social contract between government and citizens
*the principle of government by consent
* personal freedom
*civil rights of the individual
*freedom of religion
*the value of self-reliance
* prevention of the growth of authoritarian power of the state
*the prevention of rule by any form of oligarchy
These ideas were spread when the first printing press was set up in Kraków in 1473. It is estimated that between 1561 and 1600 seventeen printing houses in Poland published over 120 titles per year, with 500 copies as the average edition size. The first complete translation of the Bible into Polish was produced in 1561 by Jan Leopolita. Around that time the first Polish orthography dictionary was published (by Stanislaw Murzynowski in 1551); grammar books and dictionaries also proliferated. The Polish Renaissance was bilingual, with the masses of noble citizens speaking a mixture of Polish and Latin, and various authors oscillating between Polish, Latin, and a mixture of those two languages. Latin was the language of science and diplomacy in all of Western Christianity.

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