Postsocialist Poland Research Articles

Negotiating democracy's gender between Europe and the nation

Soon after the collapse of communism, women's rights and gender equality became hotly debated issues in Poland, particularly as they were linked to different interpretations of what the transition to democracy ought to mean. In the context of conservative arguments linking Poland's “return to normalcy” with a return to traditional gender roles and relating feminism to the “foreign” socialist order, women's NGOs and networks in Warsaw started to creatively re-frame their arguments within the terms of Polish tradition. At the same time EUropeanization of gender discourses provided another contested register in which women's rights activists had to negotiate their claims. This article explores how concepts of gender and feminism in Poland have become objects, as much as effects, of powerful political debates, describing a discursive field where national self-understandings and values are negotiated in the context of transition and EU accession. It provides an ethnographic account of the central role played by notions of gender and feminism in imaging democratic citizenship and in producing new subject positions in postsocialist Poland.

A cultural trauma: Outcomes of the system change in post-socialist Poland

This paper discusses the outcomes of the system change in post-socialist Poland. The author discusses various important and inter-related issues in the Polish societal sphere: shock therapy accompanied by the changes since the 1990's, unemployment, uncontrolled privatization, cultural trauma and cultural plaint. Theoretically, the paper belongs to anthropology of transformation, and it is based on sociological literature for the most part. The paper also discusses 'societal diagnosis', its creators, crisis in confidence as a consequence of social and cultural traumas, the weakness of political elite and criteria used to measure poverty levels. Lately, there has been a change in mythical representation about easy life in Poland related to the state' affiliation with EU. The change includes a lack of global crisis influence, resistance of the Polish society toward media influence, a rise in optimism and decrease of cultural plaint. Is this change in attitude due to cyclical alteration between phases of depression and euphoria? What will happen if depression returns? Did the Polish handle the trauma of transformation exceptionally well? Possible answers to these and other relevant questions are sought by the author in this paper, who uses, as additional sources for research, a world of local communities and individual accounts.

Back to the Future: The Resurgence of Poland's Conservative Right

Conservatism has enjoyed a political renaissance in Central Eastern Europe after European Union expansion in 2004. This has been most profound in Poland, where a coalition of conservative-nationalist parties has formed a government. These political developments have been underpinned by an intellectual movement, which has created a new synthesis of conservative thought. Contemporary conservative thinking in Poland reaches back to the work of European and Polish conservatism during the inter-war period. It combines a criticism of both communism and liberalism, believing that both possess similar atheistic, nihilistic and immoral characteristics. Polish conservatism proposes the instigation of a new process of de-communisation and seeks to break from the supposed neutralism of liberalism. It proposes a politicisation of the public sphere and supports closing the gap between the Church and the State. Conservatism in Poland has grown as liberalism has suffered an inexorable decline due to its fusion of cultural and political liberalism with economic neo-liberalism. The Polish left has become assimilated into this liberal framework, leaving conservatism as the main alternative mode of thought to the neo-liberal paradigm in post-socialist Poland.

Being Góral: Identity Politics and Globalization in Postsocialist Poland

Being Góral: Identity Politics and Globalization in Postsocialist Poland. Deborah Cahalen Schneider. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 212 pp.

Corporate governance in post-socialist Poland

In this paper, I focus specifically on how changes in the legal framework shape the ownership and control structure of new and recently privatized companies in the emerging market economy of post-socialist Poland. I discuss the market for capital, which also depends on the legal system, as investors’ decision to invest is bound up with the sort of protection they are likely to receive against those who appropriate their money for the operations of the firm. I argue that governmental actions aimed at stimulating investment and economic development in post-socialist Poland and the emergent model of corporate governance is conditioned both by internal dynamics - such as previous corporate arrangements and the origins of the commercial law - and by external factors - such as EU accession, directives and policies regarding investment obligations and shareholder rights.

Captains or Pirates? State-Business Relations in Post-Socialist Poland

In the 1990s, post-socialist states faced a critical dilemma: how to privatize and transform thousands of firms in the absence of domestic entrepreneurs with enough capital to assume control of the state's industrial patrimony. In the fifteen years of post-socialism, the elites created by the processes of transformation have been a decisive force in the economic and political development of Eastern Europe. Yet few studies focus on these early winners of reform. This article explores the interactions between the new economic elite, their firms, and the Polish state to construct a multilayered framework of state-society relations in post-communism. It concludes that the structure of state-firm relations and heightened political pluralism was crucial in limiting the predatory behavior of the new economic elite during the period of restructuring and privatization despite. This was critical in avoiding the rampant corruption present in other post-socialist countries and placed Poland on a markedly different path.

Europe, the Pope and the Holy Left Alliance in Poland

This article describes why the Polish government has pushed for an invocation to Christian traditions in the European Union Constitution. It is argued that this is a rather 'unfortunate' outcome of the political alliance between the Catholic Church and the Polish left, especially between President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). This alliance allowed the SLD to legitimize their rule in the post-socialist Poland, and it was a result of a political competition between them and the post-Solidarność elites. As a result, John Paul II became the central integrative metaphor for the Polish society at large, which brought back in the marginalized as well as allowed the transition establishment to win the EU accession referendum in 2003. The article (which was written when Leszek Miller was still Prime Minister) demonstrates how this alliance crystallized and presents various elements of the cult of the Pope in Poland that followed. Finally, it argues that the worship of the Pope is not an example of nationalism, but of populism, understood not as a peripheral but as a central political force, and advocates for more research on the 'politics of emotions' at work in the centers and not in peripheries.

Workers after Workers’ States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe. Edited by Stephen Crowley and David Ost. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. Pp. ix+241. $75.00 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewWorkers after Workers’ States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe. Edited by Stephen Crowley and David Ost. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. Pp. ix+241. $75.00 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).József BöröczJózsef BöröczRutgers University Search for more articles by this author Rutgers UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 108, Number 4January 2003 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/378475 Views: 28Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Maria Dziembowska Corporate governance in post-socialist Poland, Corporate Ownership and Control 3, no.44 (Jan 2006): 44–51.https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv3i4p13

Book Reviews

Contents: A.P. Brief, J.P. Walsh, D. Denison, Managing Organizational Change in Transition Economies. Part I: Rethinking the Organizational Environment. L.A. Keister, Insider Lending and Economic Transition: The Structure, Function, and Performance Impact of Finance Companies in Chinese Business Groups. D. Guthrie, The Emergence of Market Practices in China's Economic Transition: Price Setting Practices by Shanghai's Industrial Firms. P.W. Beamish, A. Delios, Japanese Investment in Transitional Economies: Characteristics and Performance. D. Candea, R.M. Candea, Understanding and Managing Challenges to the Romanian Companies During Transition. L.P. King, Strategic Restructuring: Making Capitalism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. C. Vlachoutsicos, Russian Communitarianism: An Invisible Fist in the Transformation Process of Russia. Part II: Creating New Organizational Systems and Structures. A. Yeung, K. DeWoskin, From Survival to Success: The Journey of Corporate Transformation at Haier. M. Dierkes, X. Zhang, Corporate Transformation and Organizational Learning--The People's Republic of China. K.L. Newman, Radical Versus Incremental Change: The Role of Capabilities, Competition, and Leaders. M. Weinstein, Emergent Compensation Strategies in Post-Socialist Poland: Understanding the Cognitive Underpinnings of Management Practices in a Transition Economy. I.L. Zinovieva, Why Do People Work If They Are Not Paid? An Example From Eastern Europe. J. Feher, M. Szigeti, The Application of Change Management Methods at Business Organizations Operating in Hungary: Challenges in the Business and Cultural Environment and First Practical Experiences. I.B. Gurkov, Organizational Changes in Russian Industrial Enterprises: Mutation of Decision-Making Structures and Transformations of Ownership. Part III: Integrating Organizational Cultures. N. Lynton, Human Resource Management in the Restructuring of Chinese Joint Ventures. M.D. Kennedy, A Cultural Analysis of Homosocial Reproduction and Contesting Claims to Competence in Transitional Firms. S. Ferencikova, Foreign Direct Investment as a Factor of Change: The Case of Slovakia. I. Perlaki, Building Successful Companies in Transition Economies. R.A. Roe, I.L. Zinovieva, E. Dienes, L.A. ten Horn, Firm Ownership and Work Motivation in Bulgaria and Hungary: An Empirical Study of the Transition in the Mid-1990s. Part IV: Conclusion. D. Denison, Summary: Building an Agenda for Research and Practice.

Strategic and environmental determinants of HRM innovations in post-socialist Poland

In the last two decades, research in human resource management has increasingly focused on the strategic linkage between the activities of the human resource function and the business goals of enterprises. Most of the theoretical and empirical work in this area has focused on the US context. This paper extends this research to a non-US business environment. Specifically, we examine data from 303 state-owned, domestic private and foreign-owned Polish firms to test how strategic and environmental variables are related to the adoption of human resource innovations. This analysis suggests that business strategies, local labour markets and the presence of foreign competition are related to the complexity and extensiveness of firm-level human resource practices.

Downsizing goes east? Employment re-structuring in post-socialist Poland

This article reports case study research on the practices of employment restructuring in four Polish organizations in the post-socialist period. It finds that Polish managers have generally adopted less harsh practices than their western counterparts. Key influences in this respect are the values and beliefs of managers, the role of trade unions and the nature of Polish labour law. The article concludes by suggesting that increasing pressures on Polish managers may well see more convergence with western practice and that the implications of this are not favourable for Poland's developing market economy.

A tale of two economies: Economic restructuring in post-socialist Poland

This paper examines Poland's post-socialist economic transformation at the industry level. Cluster analysis is used to group sectors which have experienced similar patterns of transformation. The analysis identifies two distinct patterns. In one group, sector restructuring has been accomplished largely through firm turnover. The economic incentives established with the 1990 “Big Bang” reforms have been sufficient to promote restructuring in this group. In a second group, restructuring has lagged. Industry restructuring has been held back by slow progress in restructuring large state-owned enterprises. Several explanations for this dichotomy, and the implications for reform are discussed.

Pilfering identity: Górale culture in post–socialist Poland

Pilfering identity: Górale culture in post–socialist Poland

City Government in Plock an Emerging Urban Regime in Poland?

: While most academic inquiry has focused on the new national government in postsocialist Poland, much of the responsibility for establishing democratic institutions and practices and a market economy has been delegated by Parliament (Sejm) to the local level. This has placed extreme stress on the local government arrangement. This study does two things: It examines Sejm's 1990 local government system as implemented in the city of Block and reveals a fractionated structure devoid of important executive authority. It also demonstrates how, in pursuing the city council's growth mandate, the mayor landed a Western clothing manufacturing plant in Plock and, in so doing, established business community linkages which contain key elements of an emerging urban regime.

The Constructive Power of Slogans in Post-Socialist Poland

Slogans can tell us a great deal about the ways states attempt to legitimate their neoliberal reform policies, and how the contradictions of the neoliberal project are concealed. Civic Platform, the political force in charge of such reforms that governed Poland from 2007 until 2015, deployed the slogan “We are building Poland” to convey ideas of solidarity and positive change in the face of widespread inequalities. I argue that because slogans have a temporal dimension, understanding their appeal (or lack thereof) entails understanding the ideas about historical time that they mobilise among the people who are exposed to them.

The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland by Joanna Mishtal

The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland by Joanna Mishtal