Transition In Poland Research Articles

Marketization and Poland's transfer payments

This study will examine the effects of Poland's transition on structural and policy changes in the primary categories of central government transfer payments, family assistance programs, pensions, and unemployment benefits. In this paper, changes in the structure of transfer payments for 1990 through 1997 will be quantified, and the relevant programs are described. This paper also examines the regulatory and policy framework of transfer payments. The welfare effects of transfer payment changes on Poland's different societal groups will be calculated, and certain policy recommendations are presented.

The Polish economic transition: outcome and lessons

This article provides an overview of, and draws conclusions about, Poland's economic transition during the 1990s. Special attention is paid to macroeconomic and external developments, privatization, and the lessons of the Polish experience for other transition economies.

Inequality, Transfers and Growth: New Evidence from the Economic Transition in Poland

This paper analyzes the evolution of inequality in Poland during the economic transition that began in 1989-90. Using micro data from the Household Budget Surveys, we find that, after a brief spike in 1989, income and consumption inequality actually declined to below pre-transition levels during 1990-92 and then increased gradually, rising only moderately above pre-transition levels by 1997. In sharp contrast, inequality in labor earnings increased markedly and consistently throughout the 1990-97 period. We find that social transfer mechanisms, including pensions, played an important role in mitigating increases in both overall inequality and poverty. We argue that, from a political economy perspective, transfer mechanisms were well-designed to reduce political resistance to market-oriented reforms in the early years of transition, paving the way for rapid growth. Finally, we provide cross-country evidence from the transition economies that is consistent with our interpretation of the Polish experience and is also consistent with recent work in growth theory which suggests that redistribution that reduces inequality can enhance growth.

Inequality, Transfers and Growth: New Evidence From the Economic Transition in Poland

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that inequality in Poland increased markedly during the economic transition. Income and consumption inequality actually declined in 1990-92 and rose only moderately above pre-transition levels by 1997. However, inequality in labor earnings increased markedly and consistently during 1990-97. Social transfer mechanisms, including pensions, helped mitigate increases in overall inequality and poverty. More importantly, these transfer mechanisms were well-designed to reduce political resistance to market-oriented reforms in the early years of transition, paving the way for rapid growth. Cross-country evidence from transition economies is consistent with this interpretation and with recent literature suggesting that inequality-reducing redistribution can enhance growth.

Dynamics of the economic transition in Poland: An attempt at interpretation

The objective of this analysis is to describe, interpret, and assess the socioeconomic changes that took place in Poland during 1989 to 1997. This is a dynamic approach that considers the relationships that exist between successive phases of transformation and is characterized by both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The study is in three sections. The first section sets forth analytical tools and methods to study systemic transformation at large. It searches for the promising manner of a transition appraisal. The second section discusses division of the economy into sphere of regulation and real sphere. In turn, the third section includes a dynamic analysis of interrelationships between those spheres that are subject to changes in the course of transformation and, in various ways, shape the economic performance in Poland. Finally, this paper draws conclusions concerning the failures and successes of the economic transition.

Poland's transition from the perspective of performance in EU markets

Poland's transition from the perspective of performance in EU markets

The implementation of Agenda 21 in Poland

This paper discusses the implementation of Local Agenda 21 in a number of Polish cities and towns. It analyses the way that Agenda 21 initiatives have been adopted and implemented in a period of transition in Poland. It also assesses the role of public participation and community involvement in the Agenda 21 process and stresses the importance of public access to information on the environment and development. After considering the problems and obstacles that are preventing the wider adoption of Agenda 21 initiatives in Poland, it makes a number of recommendations to strengthen the position and performance of local environmental initiatives in Polish municipalities. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Household Responses to Major Economic Change in Poland: A Theoretical Framework

This paper presents the outlines of a model for cross-sectional examination of household responses to major societal events developed in the context of the economic transition in Poland and other Eastern European countries. Assumed in the model is the idea that households have relatively stable norms and values that are used to evaluate conditions in various life domains. When major economic changes produce imbalances between (a) norms and values, and (b) domains conditions, the household engages in predictable, understandable responses in the form of adjustment, adaptation, or regeneration.

Unemployment matters: Voting patterns during the economic transition in Poland, 1990–1995

AFTER THE VICTORY of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) in Poland's 1993 parliamentary elections, the general consensus was that the increase in support for the reformed communist party was linked to the course of economic performance during the transition. What was less certain, however, was the precise nature of the relation between the economy and the election. One explanation was that the election resulted from mass disillusionment with the 'social costs' of reform. In this view, the voters, disappointed with 'unduly cruel market reforms' and the 'rapid enrichment of the few and impoverishment of many', '...led the post-communist parties to victory'.' The SLD and Polish Peasant Party (PSL) benefited from protest votes which expressed a uniform disapproval of the course of market reform. A weakness of this type of analysis is that it relies on imprecise language. For instance, Kabaj & Kowalik cite the existence of mass impoverishment without reference to any of the exhaustive research on the scale and distribution of poverty during transition.2 In contrast, this article argues that there are identifiable patterns of interest-based voting in Poland. These patterns are not only present in the more stable economy of 1992-95 but are observable and consistent across each of Poland's four elections. Unlike other studies of voting using regional demographic and socioeconomic data,3 conclusive results can be obtained through the use of only two economic variables. Distributional issues play a central role in economic voting. Despite a highly fragmented party system, the development of interest-based voting is discernible through the ongoing consolidation of political parties. Of the conclusions reached in this article, the most significant is the strong relation between unemployment rates and voting. The rise in support for the SLD is closely related to the rise in joblessness across time and its variation across regions. While this article concentrates on economic voting, it is acknowledged that non-economic issues also influence voters' decisions. For example, internal rifts and infighting in Solidarity, revealed by the 1990 'war at the top' between Walesa and Mazowiecki, damaged the organisation's public image. The much-discussed problem of the lack of parliamentary representation of the anti-communist centre-right is mostly a reflection of fragmentation at this end of the spectrum. The large number of small rightist parties have been reluctant to trade their separate identities and

The present state of occupational medicine in Poland.

Occupational medicine in Poland has a long tradition, dating back to the establishment of the first health-care institutions for industrial workers at an early stage of Poland's industrialization. Legal foundations of the industrial health-care system, based on the Soviet model, were enacted in 1953. During its most dynamic period of development (1970s and 1980s) the industrial health-care system provided medical services to about 6 million workers. The process of the political and economic transition in Poland began in 1989, and since 1991 there have been numerous transformations in the structure and function of industrial health services. The present article describes the main stages of the transformation process, occupational health training, research, advisory bodies, and the system for setting of hygienic standards.

The origin and evolution of charts of accounts in Poland

Charts of accounts have played a vital role in the development of accountancy in Poland since the Second World War. In the period of the centrally-run economy the accounting of enterprises was based on uniform requirements. They included, among other things, the obligation to conduct accounting according to uniform or standard charts of accounts, which were frequently changed or modified temporarily. The radical political and economic transition in Poland after 1990 brought about changes to legal rules regulating accountancy. The changes aimed to reduce their number and complexity. Under the new legislation, business entities (apart from those in the budgetary sector and banks) develop individually their own plans of accounts which are best suited to financial reporting and management accounting purposes. This paper aims to give a synthetic presentation of the causes and effects of successive reforms of Polish plans of accounts as well as current practice concerning individual enterprise accounting plans.

Ethical Reasoning in a Time of Revolution: A Study of Local Officials in Poland

Poland's transition from communism to democracy was marked by rhetoric that expressed democratic principles as the basis for organizing political life. Given the fundamentally moral message of the radical transformation throughout Eastern Europe, we would expect officials assuming office in these times to be strongly motivated by ethical principles as a basis for decision making. Arguably, office seekers would be idealists who believed that the principled rhetoric of the revolution could come to fruition in governmental actions. And this might be particularly true for elected officials who were obliged to organize beliefs based on principle into a political platform. Furthermore, we would expect the new decision makers in the initial stages to shun mindless deference to established rules, since their entire political context was marked by a rejection of established rules and the absence of a recent tradition that would provide a cultural framework for obedience to the law. In this context one might assume that only the former Communist Party officials who survived the transition in government would hold fast to the protection of the law as the basis for decision making in ambiguous moral situations. A focus group held with public administrators in Warsaw in the fall of 1990 reinforced these inferences. When we asked these officials to reflect on how they would handle an ethical dilemma in the workplace, we found that principled reasoning strongly outranked deference to law or rules as their preferred basis for decision making. This reinforced our assumption that if principled reasoning could ever guide public decision making, it would emerge strongly to guide those who assumed the mantle of public office in the new regime in Poland. With this set of expectations we undertook a study of the systems of moral reasoning which public officials in newly democratic Poland employed as they resolved ethical dilemmas in their work lives. Since most of our studies in the United States had focused on local officials, we held that focus in Poland. However, though our U.S. studies (Stewart and Sprinthall, 1994) included only appointed public administrators, the fluid political situation in Poland warranted including a comparison group of elected Polish local officials as well. The Background Though public administration literature is rich with analyses of codes (Chandler, 1983; Plant, 1994), climates (Bonczek, 1992; Bonczek and Menzel, 1994), and criminal sanctions (Doig, 1983; Doig, Phillips and Mason, 1984) as they relate to ethical decision making, research on individuals and their ethical choices in public office settings is not extensive. We do know much about how people generally reason in moral situations (Kohlberg, 1981; Rest, 1979, 1986) and that these reasoning patterns hold across cultures (Snarey, 1985). Working with Lawrence Kohlberg's stage model of moral maturity, we also know that there is a substantial degree of consistency between individual behavior and the moral judgment stage particularly at the more advanced levels (Blasi, 1980). Further, we know that the moral development research carried out in Poland since 1984 has confirmed the universal developmental trend toward principled reasoning determined by level of education and cognitive ability (Jasinska-Kania, 1988, 1989). In addition the research of Lind, Grocholweska, and Langer (1987) in Austria, West Germany, and Poland has further supported the cross-cultural validity of Kohlberg's moral development theory. However, only two empirical studies were relevant to a focus on public officials and their traits, beliefs, personal choices, and actions in relation to their ethical choices. Bowman (1990) has studied perceptions regarding ethics in society and government as well as overall organizational approaches to moral standards in a sample of 750 federal, state, and local officials who were members of ASPA in 1989. Stewart and Sprinthall have conducted studies of moral reasoning among North Carolina (1994) and Florida (1992) public administrators using an instrument built on the moral development theory of Lawrence Kohlberg. …

Poland's protracted transition: institutional change and economic growth, 1970-1994

In this book, first published in 1997, Kazimierz Z. Poznanski offers an integrated study of institutional change in the Polish economy since 1971. He examines the economic peak of the communist phase, the decline of the system, and the post-communist transition since 1989. Taking his analytical framework from evolutionary economics, he provides a complete re-evaluation of conventional views of communist economies and the post-communist transition. The book presents the communist economy as subject to major changes, particularly due to political pressures, and interprets its economic difficulties as related to underlying political decay. The economic 'shock therapy' of 1990 is seen as very much a continuation of earlier trends and pressures, which has led to probably an even deeper, though brief, economic collapse. This book will be of interest to economists and political scientists concerned with institutional transitions, as well as to students of East European and post-Soviet studies.

Gender, the state, and constructing the old as dependent: lessons from the economic transition in Poland.

To critically examine the notion of the old as a "burden" to society, we use a political economic and gender-sensitive approach to explore the impact of the economic transition in Poland on retirement. Poland is an especially useful case for analyzing ways that divergent political economies shape the aging experiences of men and women, as differences between the two systems cannot be attributed to cultural variations. Overall, we find that old-age dependence in Poland is not inevitable; it is not created in a uniform manner for men and women; and it is not passively accepted by the old. Further, by examining economic activities in general, we show that retired men and women have been and are critical to the viability of both economic systems, albeit in different ways.

Personal Performatives: Collecting Poetical Definitions of Management

In this paper I present several personal performative definitions of management which I collected from a group of students at the Warsaw University's School of Management. The definitions are in the form of short poems. They are rooted in the students' everyday lives and observations as the students take part in management education in Poland, encounter alternative (non-mainstream) ways of looking at organization and management, and experience Poland's transition to a market economy. The poems are ironic and express the author's need for a creative reconstruction of reality.

FAMILY SAFETY NETS AND ECONOMIC TRANSITION: A STUDY OF WORKER HOUSEHOLDS IN POLAND

Can Eastern European families most severely impoverished during the transition to capitalism rely on private family safety nets? This question is likely critical for the transition's success, but little is known about family networks in Eastern Europe. We analyze newly available Polish household surveys, conducted both before and after Poland's economic transition, which measure private inter‐household transfers. Such transfers are large and widespread in Poland, and in many ways appear to function like means‐tested public transfers. They flow from high to low‐income households and are targeted to young couples, families with many children and those experiencing illness. Private transfer patterns also suggest that they are responsive to liquidity constraints. Our results from 1987 data indicate that private transfers could fill a non‐trivial portion of the income gap left by unemployment. However, we also find evidence from 1992 data suggesting that family networks weakened somewhat after the transition.

Unemployment and state sector insiders during the economic transition in Poland

Unemployment and state sector insiders during the economic transition in Poland

The eclipse of Walesa's political career

ALTHOUGH EASTERN EUROPE'S 1989 'REVOLUTION' was largely bloodless, it devoured most of its heroes and the leaders of the Polish Solidarity movement were not exempt from this fate. Not long after Solidarity's grand coalition came to power, it suffered a series of debilitating political defeats. In the 1980s Solidarity leaders like Michnik, Kuron, Mazowiecki and Geremek, who championed fundamental democratic values in a decadent communist system, were heralded as eminent leaders in difficult times. By the 1990s most Poles viewed these same individuals as just another group of shifty politicians, undeserving of their trust. This decline from exalted leader to untrustworthy politician was also shared by Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement. Next to Gorbachev, Walesa was the most important leader of the revolution which brought down the Iron Curtain. Idolised in the 1980s for his idealistic fervour, Walesa began to be viewed in the 1990s as just another individualistic, ruthless and controversial politician, responsible for political chaos in Poland. Walesa's decline tells a great deal about the diverse and contradictory groups formerly united by anti-communist fervour who brought down the government, only to splinter into many factions when the revolution was over. It also demonstrates the role the media played in Central Europe in the 1990s. Such development of Walesa's political persona was accompanied by a steady fall in his popular support.1 Clearly, larger and larger portions of the population had begun to conclude that there were no other reasons for this behaviour but his own egotistical political interests.2 Walesa's behaviour was commonly perceived as destabilising for the precarious post-Solidarity rule, as clearly detrimental to the ongoing socio-economic reforms, and finally, as an important factor helping to pave the way for the rebounding post-communists. The collapse of Walesa's popular political image was only one key reason for the fading of his political career. He had also became both a very active perpetrator as well as indeed a victim of the intricate and often arcane political games that were one of the key features of Poland's transition. Without an examination of that political manoeuvring, the development of his political career in the 1990s cannot be fully comprehended.

Distributional Effects of Poland's Transition: The Status of Pensioners

Distributional Effects of Poland's Transition: The Status of Pensioners

Civil society after the first transition: Dilemmas of post-communist democratization in Poland and beyond

This article unravels the seeming paradox of how civil societies like that of Poland, which were strong enough to play a critical role in the collapse of communist regimes, could now have become weak. It argues that four factors explain civil society's enfeeblement after the end of the old regime. Two of these are attributable to the logic of Poland's first transition (demobilization of insurgent civil society by pact and decapitation through success). The other two are generic to post-communist democratization (the residual effects of post-totalitarianism and the social consequences of economic transformation). It concludes with a discussion of whether these factors are transitory or long-term and what the ramifications of a weak civil society are for a fledgling democracy.