Frances Millard - Polish Politics and Society

This book charts the Polish road to democracy and the market economy since the first non-communist prime minister took office in the summer of 1989. A comprehensive analysis examines the shared communist legacy, the common tasks of post-communist transformation and Polands own specific characteristics. Frances Millard addresses key issues of political, social and economic development including:

The primary focus is on democratization in Poland, but the postcommunist transition is treated as a multi-layered set of interdependent political, social and economic processes. Millard analyses the wider interplay of structural factors and external influences and shows how these limited the autonomy of political actors in Poland.

Polish Politics and Society will be an essential reference for those researching the politics of transition in Poland and beyond.

Frances Millard is Senior Lecturer in the Comparative Politics of the Visegrad States at the University of Essex. She has published widely on communist and post-communist political development.

1 THE ECONOMICS OF SOVIET BREAK-UP
Bert van Selm

2 INSTITUTIONAL BARRIERS TO ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
Polands incomplete transition
Edited by Jan Winiecki

3 THE POLISH SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
Revolution, democracy and natural rights
Arista Maria Cirtautas

4 SURVIVING POST-SOCIALISM
Local strategies and regional response in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union
Edited by Sue Bridger and Frances Pine

5 LAND REFORM IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION AND
EASTERN EUROPE
Edited by Stephen Wegren

6 FINANCIAL REFORMS IN EASTERN EUROPE
A policy model for Poland
Kanhaya L.Gupta and Robert Lensink

7 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TRANSITION
Opportunities and limits of transformation
Jozef van Brabant

8 PRIVATIZING THE LAND
Rural political economy in post-communist socialist societies
Edited by Ivan Szelenyi

9 UKRAINE
State and nation building
Taras Kuzio

10 GREEN POST-COMMUNISM?
Environmental aid, innovation and evolutionary political economics
Mikael Sandberg

11 ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE IN POST-COMMUNIST
EUROPE
Management and transformation in the Czech Republic
Ed Clark and Anna Soulsby

12 POLISH POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Frances Millard

London and New York

First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

l999 Frances Millard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or by other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Millard, F. (Frances)
Polish politics and society/Frances Millard.
p. cm.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-415-15903-2 (hard)
1. Political culturePoland. 2. Political participationPoland.
3. DemocracyPoland. 4. PolandEconomic policy1990 5. Post
-communismPoland. 6. PolandPolitics and government1989
7. PolandSocial conditions1980 I. Title.
JN6766.M55 1999
9912745
306.2 09438 09049dc21 CIP

ISBN 0-203-44467-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75291-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-15903-2 (Print Edition)
eISBN: 978-1-13472-446-8

At the end of 1998 Poland was completing the tenth year of the intense transformation inaugurated throughout Central and Eastern Europe during the annus mirabilis of 1989. For the second time in the twentieth century political lites had set out to remould the fundaments of the political, social and economic fabric into a new weave. The communist project had cast doubt on human capacities for such wholesale social engineering from above; indeed, its postulated egalitarian emancipation had often been dismissed as a Utopian violation of some basic features of human nature. In the new context, if the blueprint was torn and blurred, at least the neighbours had demonstrated its practical feasibility. Throughout Western Europe capitalist liberal democracy reigned supreme. For all their flaws and individual variations, these European states appeared to have generated the most prized goals of all: economic prosperity, individual freedom, social security and peaceful inter-state relations. Moreover, Western states, along with international organizations such as the Council of Europe and especially the European Community, declared themselves willing to assist the process of changing (to be like them) with aid, credits, advisers and training.

Still, there was considerable pessimism amongst scholars because of the unprecedented scope of the envisaged transformation. This was not just about the magnitude of the task but also the rapidity with which it was to be promoted and possible contradictions and tensions between the democratic and capitalism-building projects. To these broad factors were added a wariness about the possibilities of successfully transplanting institutions into different socio-cultural environments, the persistence of traditionalist authority patterns in late-industrializing societies, the perverse cultural shaping wreaked by the dead hand of Leninism, early manifestations of ethnic conflicts, the weak (or even desperate) state of the economies.

In some instances this pessimism proved well founded. The successor states of the Soviet Union floundered in conditions of turbulent protracted transition. Russia in particular remained in the throes of recurring political and economic crisis. Yet even here the picture was mixed, with the three Baltic states constituting a distinctive subset within the region. Distinctions also emerged among the former Soviet bloc states, with the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary singled out (along with Slovenia) as leaders in democratization, and Bulgaria and Romania lagging well behind. Arguments about the powerful impact of a common history weakened as countries which had shared the institutional features of statehood split and moved in different directions, with Slovakia diverging from the Czech Republic and Slovenia standing in marked contrast to other states of ex-Yugoslavia. These differences may or may not prove temporary perturbations or side excursions from a slower path along a common democratic trajectory.