THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARCH TITLE VIII PROGRAM

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1 TITLE: REBELLIOUS CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE CONSOLIDATION OF DEMOCRACY IN POLAND, AUTHOR: GRZEGORZ EKIERT, Harvard University JAN KUBIK, Rutgers University THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARCH TITLE VIII PROGRAM 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C

2 NCSEER NOTE This Report analyzes patterns of public participation (including protest) in Poland which preceded the electoral return of former communists to power. To a degree the patterns are being replicated in Russia, and this analysis of conditions and causes may be pertinent there. PROJECT INFORMATION: 1 CONTRACTOR: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Harvard University Grzegorz Ekiert COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER: DATE: February 21, 1996 COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Individual researchers retain the copyright on work products derived from research funded by Council Contract. The Council and the U.S. Government have the right to duplicate written reports and other materials submitted under Council Contract and to distribute such copies within the Council and U.S. Government for their own use, and to draw upon such reports and materials for their own studies; but the Council and U.S. Government do not have the right to distribute, or make such reports and materials available, outside the Council or U.S. Government without the written consent of the authors, except as may be required under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 5 U.S.C. 552, or other applicable law. 1 The work leading to this report was supported in pan by contract funds provided by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, made available by the U. S. Department of State under Title VIII (the Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act of 1983, as amended). The analysis and interpretations contained in the report are those of the author(s).

3 Dr. Grzegorz Ekiert Dr. Jan Kubik Department of Government Department of Political Science Center for European Studies Rutgers University Harvard University Hickman Hall 27 Kirkland Street New Brunswick, NJ Cambridge, MA PROJECT TITLE: "STRATEGIES OF COLLECTIVE PROTEST IN DEMOCRATIZING SOCIETIES: HUNGARY AND SLOVAKIA SINCE 1989." This report contains a summary of the project entitled "Rebellious Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy in Poland, ," which constitutes an integral part of the larger project, partially sponsored by the Council. The project summarized here allowed us to formulate specific hypotheses, which will be tested in Hungary, Slovakia and the Former East Germany. 1 SUMMARY While working on the Polish part of our project we have collected data on several dimensions of public participation in post-communist Poland, including formal political participation, protest and repression potentials of Polish society after 1989, and cycles of collective protest between 1989 and We discovered that the first five years of consolidation in Poland produced: (a) a state that was bigger but weaker than the Party-state of communism: (b) a political society that was disorganized though arguably increasingly more consolidated (structured); and (c) a civil society that was increasingly more active and politicized. This last finding confirms a generalization (to be tested), that during a regime transition, when the boundaries between the institutional realms of polity are unclear and contested, organizations of civil society penetrate political arenas with greater frequency than in more stable polities. Contentious collective action was the common if not predominant mode of participation in civil society. Thus we conclude that many Poles who were uncomfortable with routine parliamentary democracy and dissatisfied with party politics, turned to contentious collective action as a mode of public participation. The growing politization of collective protest did not, however, acquire an "oversymbolized" form, but rather a more pragmatic one; demands remained primarily economic throughout the whole period. Nor did the politization manifest itself through the intensification of protest-sponsorship by political parties. It occurred, first of all, through the generalization of protestors' identities and through the growing "seriousness" of the addressees (or targets) of their actions. In brief, as the years went by, the protestors acted more often on behalf of "the whole society" and targeted with 1 Funding by the National Council does not include support for study of the Former East Germany. i

4 increasing frequency the country's highest authorities. This tendency may be interpreted as a growing dissatisfaction with political parties as channels of interest articulation and representation. The postcommunist party system in Poland might have become more consolidated and structured, but its ability to articulate and represent people's interests - in light of our research - did not increase. The second important set of conclusions concerns the relationship between civil and political societies as well as the specific, institutionalization of collective action in the former. In most cases, Poles' civic activities (such as collective protests) were organized by already established organizations (mostly trade unions). But very often such civic activities occurred as contentious collective action rather than inter-organizational negotiation and mediation: instead of engaging in well-institutionalized interorganizational games (negotiations, lobbying, etc.), such organizations as trade unions were very quick to organize or sponsor contentious collective actions (strikes, demonstrations). In a sense, then, civil society (at least its significant segment) was poorly institutionalized, i.e. the rules of routine interest representation and conflict resolution were not established and/or legitimized. This weak institutionalization was not however the result of organizations' passivity, but rather of their tendency to employ non-institutional forms of participation in public life i.e., protest. In brief, their politics were a-institutional. The analysis of this "a-institutionalism" can be facilitated by introducing Jepperson's important distinction between two modes of society's reproduction: through institutionalization and through action. He writes: "Here I wish to concentrate on just one contrast: between institutionalization and 'action,'...as two different reproduction forms. A social pattern is reproduced through action if persons repeatedly (re)mobilize and (re)intervene in historical process to secure its persistence. /.../ 'Action' is a much weaker form of reproduction than institutionalization, because it faces all the 'logic of collective action' problems well established in the literature (e.g., Olson 1965)." 2 Following Jepperson's suggestions we posed two questions: What was the mix of "institutionalization" and "action" in the reproduction of the Polish post-communist reality? How was the regime's consolidation influenced by this particular "mix"? Our data suggest that in Poland, post-communist society reproduced itself through action more often than in any other society of East Central Europe (a major hypothesis to be tested by the Councilsponsored project). This action however was not spontaneous; it was organized mostly by existing organizations, mainly trade unions. What we found in Poland, therefore, was a "hybrid" form (unspecified by Jepperson) of contentious action by well-established and institutionalized organizations. Moreover, protest activities became a routine mode of conflict resolution thereby the emerging set of norms and rule should be referred to as contentious institutionalization. It seems, additionally, that this high involvement of well-established "protest" organizations (such as Solidarity) in organizing society's activism accounts for relaxation of the Olsonian collective action dilemma. The reasons for the high ratio of "action" to "institutionalization" may be predominantly historical. If there was a place in Eastern Europe where state-socialism failed due to "action" rather than "inter-organizational deals," it was Poland. Polish society's repertoire of contentious action was extensive and well rehearsed; the "tradition of action" was developed and transmitted (also unreflectively) as a "natural" mode of participation in public life to a degree unknown in other East European countries. 2 Ronald Jepperson, "Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism," in Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 148.

5 The comparative part of our project (sponsored by the Council) will allow us to assess the impact of this reproduction through action, occurring predominantly in the domain of civil society, on the consolidation of the new regime. We will attempt to test Samuel Huntington's classical warning, that: Political stability... depends upon the ratio of institutionalization to participation. As political participation increases, the complexity, autonomy, adaptability, and coherence 3 of the society's political institutions must also increase if political stability is to be maintained. 4 According to our research, in the case of Poland the ratio of institutionalization to participation was high, but both had uncommon features: (1) the organizations which institutionalized participation were not political parties or state institutions but trade unions and other associations of civil society and (2) participation, though institutionalized, tended to take the form of contentious collective action. We suspect that this pattern of: (a) increasingly politicized, (b) gradually intensifying contentious collective action, occurring mostly (c) within civil society, may have contributed to the destabilization of the Polish polity and, in particular, slowed down the development of political society, limiting its scope of support and possibly delaying its institutionalization. 5 But, paradoxically, the very same pattern may have contributed to the constancy of the radical economic reforms. Opposition to the reforms was ineffective for it was either channelled through the medium of inconclusive (as our data indicate) contentious collective action (civil society) or it was articulated by several small parties in an uncoordinated, thus impotent, fashion. Finally, we set out to discover whether popular protest, which developed on such a massive scale, became a crucial component of the state building and re-building in post-1989 Poland? It is not easy to answer this question because the direct effects of social protest are not easily measurable. It is very striking, though, that very few contentious collective actions stated as one of their objectives the revolutionary overthrow of the post-1989 socio-political order. As our data base demonstrates, a demand to "modify/reform existing state or public institutions" was voiced only in.6% of protests in 1989, 4.6% ; 4.1% ; 1.3% ; 2.0% A more radical demand to "abolish/replace the post political order" was practically never voiced. As we pointed out earlier the tenor of the postcommunist protest in Poland was decisively reformist. Protestors did not intend to engage in statebuilding; instead they wanted to influence reformist policies. Furthermore, our data base does not provide much evidence for our initial hypothesis that through protest actions people would forge new identities and set up new organizations. The decisive majority of protest actions were organized by existing organizations, mobilizing people in the name of existing identities. The only exception were youth protests, whose politics, rhetorics, and imagery indicate that the generation gap in Poland is so huge that the reproduction of the polity and society may be endangered. 3 For the definitions of these terms see Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press 1968, pp Huntington, Political Order. 1968, p For a complex definition of the level of institutionalization see Huntington, Political Order, 1968, p. 12ff. "Scope refers simply to the extent to which the political organizations and procedures encompass activity in the society," Huntington, Political Order,1968, p. 12. iii

6 1 Rebellious Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy in Poland, As a result of the "round table" negotiations which began in Warsaw on February 6, 1989, Poland became the first country in the Soviet bloc to initiate a peaceful transfer of political power. 1 The semi-democratic elections in June 1989 led to the political triumph of the re-legalized Solidarity movement, the first non-communist government was in office by the end of the summer, and the communist party dismantled itself by January This rapid surrender was the result of a negotiated pact, made possible by the prior massive mobilization of large segments of the populace and a dramatic change in the geo-political situation. The transfer of power was followed by comprehensive transformations of the national political institutions, local administration, and the radical economic reform (Balcerowicz's "shock therapy"). The new political elites which emerged from the Solidarity movement set Poland on the course toward liberal democracy and a market economy. The transformation policies, however, had to be forged and implemented amidst a deepening economic crisis, regional political chaos, as well as disintegrating regional economic and political institutions. These external adversities combined with the need to institute radical macro-stabilization measures 2 contributed to the sharp decline in real incomes, the beginnings and rapid growth of unemployment, new social inequalities, and rising insecurity. The populace responded to this largely unanticipated situation with strikes and protests, whose intensity increased from 1989 through On the other hand, the political consensus which initially united the new elites, collapsed. Consequently, during the period, Poland experienced a turbulent political evolution. It had three parliamentary, two local and two presidential elections, as well as six prime ministers and five 1 The empirical evidence for this paper comes primarily from the research project which involves systematic data collection on collective protest during the first years of democratic transition in four countries: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the former East Germany. The project is funded by the Program for the Study of Germany and Europe administered by the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, the National Council for Soviet and East European Research and the American Council of Learned Societies. It is directed by Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik. Our conceptualizations and definitions are influenced by Professor Sidney Tarrow, who generously shared with us his private research materials, including a questionnaire and instructions prepared for his research project "Social protest and Policy Innovations: Italy " For their indispensable assistance, our special gratitude goes to Jason Wittenberg, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Kazimierz Kloc, and Krzysztof Gorlach. 2 For a brief description of the Balcerowicz Plan see Adam Przeworski, "Economic reforms, public opinion, and political institutions: Poland in the Eastern European perspective," in Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Jose Maria Maravall, Adam Przeworski, Economic Reforms in New Democracies. A Social- Democratic Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp ; for a more comprehensive analysis consult Ben Slay 1994.

7 governments. After its political triumph in 1989, the Solidarity-based political movement disintegrated and in 1993 elections the ex-communist parties were returned to power. In brief, during its first five years, Poland's fledgling democratic system faced rising popular pressure and experienced political instability: all symptoms of the serious problems of consolidation. Poland's problems strike at the heart of what Philippe Schmitter identified as "the most significant issue for contemporary political science: How can democracy be consolidated in the aftermath of the transition from authoritarian rule." 3 The issue of consolidation of new democracies emerged as an explicit object of systematic scholarly investigations in the early 1990s. 4 Until then, most research in the dynamically growing field of transitions to democracy had concentrated either on the structural preconditions and processes of the old regime's decomposition or on the transfer of power and its immediate aftermath. The most influential earlier works in the field, including O'Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead (1986), Di Palma (1990), Przeworski (1991) largely avoided a systematic analysis of consolidation. 5 Di Palma argued that "the most decisive role in establishing democracy belongs to the agreement phase, not to consolidation." 6 This reluctance to study consolidation has had two sources. First, as O'Donnell and Schmitter noted: The Wilson Center working group paid little attention to processes of consolidation and 'advanced democratization' for the obvious reason that the cases and countries which 3 Philippe Schmitter, Interest Systems and the Consolidation of Democracies, in: Reexamining Democracy. Essays in Honor of Seymour Martin Lipset, edited by Gary Marks and Larry Diamond, Newbury Park: Sage 1992, p See, for example, Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992 (in particular Chapter 5, "How Long? Consolidation and its Problems"); Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O'Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992; John Higley, Richard Gunther, eds.. Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992; Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions, Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming (in particular. "Part Two: The Political Economy of Adjustment in New Democracies"); Bresser Pereira, Maravall, Przeworski, Economic Reforms in New Democracies... 5 See Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1986: Giuseppe Di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay in Democratic Transitions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market. Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, DiPalma, op. cit., pp

8 preoccupied us were involved in the much more proximate and hazardous business of extricating themselves from various versions of authoritarian rule." 7 Second, as Huntington suggested, the consolidation process is shaped by "contextual problems endemic to individual countries" 8 as well as "systemic problems stemming from workings of a democratic system." Thus, in the view of many students of democratization, a combination of historically contingent factors makes comparative analyses of consolidation difficult and cross-national generalizations uncertain. In this chapter we propose to analyze the consolidation of democracy as a complex process taking place simultaneously on several levels (or within several institutional domains) of the sociopolitical organization of society. The interactions between individual and collective actors at these different levels, their capacity to influence public life, their choices and strategies may foster the stabilization of the polity and consolidation of a democratic system or reinforce the political instability leading to the erosion of newly funded democratic institutions and liberties. 9 Schmitter defines consolidation as "the process of transforming the accidental arrangements, prudential norms, and contingent solutions that have emerged during the transition into relations of cooperation and competition that are reliably known, regularly practiced, and voluntarily accepted by those persons or collectivities (i.e. politicians and citizens) that participate in democratic governance." 10 Whether such relations of cooperation and competition develop or not depends on the ability of collective actors to reach a consensus on three levels. First, consolidation of the democratic polity requires the establishment of the consensus concerning the boundaries of political community; this is the "stateness problem," faced by many newly democratized societies. 11 Second, the basic institutional set-up of the polity must be considered legitimate by all significant social and political 7 Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, p Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave, p It should be emphasized that highly divergent types of democracy may be established and/or consolidated which have in common only a very basic set generalized procedures. As Schmitter argues "no single format or set of institutions embodies modern democracy" (Interest Systems, p. 162). See also Philippe Schmitter and Terry L. Karl, What Democracy Is... and Is Not, Journal of Democracy, 1991, 2, 3, pp and Terry L. Karl and Philippe Schmitter, Modes of Transition in Latin America. Southern and Eastern Europe, International Social Science Journal, 1991, 128, pp Philippe Schmitter. Interest Systems, p Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan offer a seminal analysis of this problem. See Linz and Stepan, "Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia." Daedalus. Spring 1992, pp

9 forces. 12 To put it differently, the absence of sizable antisystemic parties and movements which act as a disloyal opposition fosters consolidation. 13 In brief, the consolidation of a newly established democratic polity is very unlikely if the newly democratized society lacks the consensus on what constitutes the state and if there are influential political forces opposed to democracy. Third, successful consolidation requires transparency and predictability at the institutional level. The institutional consolidation is completed when the following elements are in place: (1) the institutional coherence and stability of the political system is assured by the constitution; 14 (2) the state possesses stability, autonomy, and capacity to implement its policies; 15 (3) the party system has autonomy, stability and capacity to compete for power and to influence policy-formation by the state; and (4) public participation by citizens, groups and organizations within the civil society is unconstrained and institutionalized Mainwaring observes: "Legitimacy is every bit as much the root of democratic stability as objective payoffs, and it is less dependent on economic payoffs than Przeworski or Lipset (1959) indicate." See Mainwaring, "Transitions to Democracy and Democratic Consolidation: Theoretical and Comparative Issues," in Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective. S. Mainwaring, G. O'Donnell and J. S. Valenzuela, eds., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992, p See J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis. Breakdown, and Reequilibration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1978, pp As Schmitter observed "the core of consolidation dilemma lies in coming up with a set of institutions that politicians can agree upon and citizens are willing to support" (Interest Systems, p. 159). 15 We assume with Huntington that "the stability of any given polity depends upon the relationship between the level of political participation and the level of political institutionalization" (Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968, p.79). For example, high political participation in a society with a low level of institutionalization of politics is strongly destabilizing. We define autonomy, following M. Shafer, as "the extent to which the state is not merely an arena for conflict but is distinct from nonstate actors" (Winners and Losers. How Sectors Shape the Developmental Prospects of States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, p.6). State capacity is defined, following K. Barkey and S. Parikh, "as the state's ability to implement strategies to achieve its economic, political, or social goals in society." They argue that "the state may acquire capacity through institutions such as the bureaucracy, or through resources such as external ties to entrepreneurs and finance capital [but it is also] determined by the state's relations to society" (Comparative Perspectives on the State, (Annual Review of Sociology, p.526). See Shafer (1994:7-8) for a useful distinction between absolute and relative capacity. 16 On the distinction between organizations and institutions see Douglass C. North, Institutions. Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990, pp. 4-5.

10 Our primary focus in this chapter will be the role of protest actions in the institutional consolidation. We begin with an assumption that democratization processes often entail disharmonious and a-synchronous development of institutional domains of the polity. For example, the deconstruction of authoritarian or (post)totalitarian regimes involves the weakening of the state power and mobilization (by necessity often poorly institutionalized) of civil society. This combination tends to "spill over" to the consolidation phase, which is facilitated by a different condition: the simultaneous strengthening of the state, political society, and civil society. 17 We will try to determine whether during Polish post-communist consolidation such a simultaneous strengthening of the three domains did indeed occur. We will also test a hypothesis that when institutional orders of societies undergo redefinition, protest actions may become principal tools of identity formation and institution building as well as important mechanisms through which the public sphere and the domain of political are being reconstituted and new boundaries between the state and society established. In brief, we suspect that popular protest is a crucial element of the post-communist state making and remaking We accept Stepan's conclusion that the relationship between institutional domains of society is not a zero-sum game. The power and capacity of the state and other collective actors may simultaneously increase or decrease. A successful consolidation of democracy involves parallel strengthening of the state and civil society (Alfred Stepan, State Power and Civil Society in the Southern Cone of Latin America. in: Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, New York: Cambridge University Press 1985, pp In the similar vain, Stephen Fish notes that in the post-communist Russia "the fragmentation and decay of old structures of power and authority may actually inhibit (original emphasis) the rapid emergence of a genuine civil society.. A state that lacks effective economic and administrative functions, structures permitting the intermediation of interests, and capacity for the universalization of law, can actually impede the emergence of a 'modern' civil society" (The Emergence of Independent Associations and the Transformation of Russian Political Society, in: The Soviet System. From Crisis to Collapse, edited by A. Dallin and G.W Lapidus. Boulder: Westview 1995: As Ch. Bright and S. Harding emphasize: "As contests over state activities, boundaries, and structures, popular protests, social movements, and ultimately revolutions must be included as statemaking processes. [...] They are all mechanisms through which politicians and state managers, social and economic elites, and popular groups contest - and in contesting, alter - what the state is, what it shall do, and who shall have access to its resources" (Processes of Statemaking and Popular Protest: An Introduction, in: Statemaking and Social Movements, edited by Ch. Bright and S. Harding, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1984, p.310).

11 1. The three public realms and the regime transition There are three realms within which public actions are generated, shaped and structured. 19 For the sake of convenience we call these realms the state, political society and civil society. 20 In each realm politics are structured by different sets of institutions, social networks, identities, principles of authority, and specific modes of collective action. Each realm tends to have its specific public discourses, collective action frames, and modes of public participation. In a stable democracy the three realms have relative autonomy, although the boundaries between them are constantly renegotiated and changed. As Theda Skocpol noted, "politics in all its dimensions is grounded not only in 'society'[...] The meanings of public life and the collective forms through which groups become aware of political goals and work to attain them arise, not from society alone, but at the meeting points of states and societies." 21 During the rapid political change or regime transition, the boundaries between the three realms become porous and highly contested. Old and new individual and collective actors engage in intense political struggles, which often transgress from one realm to another, thereby re-defining their boundaries. Civil society, as M. Walzer put it, "is the home ground of 'difference,' a realm of fragmentation made up of churches, ethnic groups, social movements, unions, professional associations, organizations for mutual aid and defence." 22 Public activity within the realm of civil society is institutionally structured by work-related organizations (unions, professional associations. "We understand politics broadly as various forms of collective action taking place within the established or emerging structures of authority and aimed at maintaining or changing the distribution of power and resources among individual or collective actors (groups, organizations and institutions). Politics is also about the (re)construction of actors' identities. For the useful discussion of difficulties in delineating boundaries of the political and politics see Ch.S. Maier, "Introduction," in: Changing Boundaries of the Political, edited by Ch. S. Maier, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987, pp Politics of identity is well defined in Dirks 1994: These are three terms which have long history and are the subject of intense debates (see, for example, J. Keane, Civil Society and the State. Verso 1988; J. Cohen and A. Arato. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge: MIT Press 1992; A. Seligman. The Idea of Civil Society, New York: Free Press 1992). In this project we follow Stepan who argues that "it is conceptually and politically useful to distinguish three important arenas of the polity: civil society, political society, and the state. Obviously, in any given polity these three arenas expand and shrink at different rates, interpenetrate or even dominate each other, and constantly change" (Rethinking Military Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988, p.3). 21 T. Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research, in: Bringing the State Back In. edited by P.B. Evans, D. Ruschemeyer, and T. Skocpol, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985, p M. Walzer, The New Political Ideologies. The Economist. September p. 50.

12 cooperatives), recreational associations, ethnic and religious organizations, and community and neighborhood organizations. 23 These institutions form complex horizontal networks, often based on close social ties as well as active and personal participation. Those who do not want to participate may be punished by a variety of social and moral sanctions applied by their group or community. Refusal to join a strike in one's work place or a charity event in the local church may result in rejection and marginalization. There are many routine modes of public participation within the realm of civil society which include taking part in neighborhood and local projects, membership and participation in neighborhood and local organizations meetings, affiliation with local churches etc. These can be described as cooperative forms of public participation. We suggest, however, that within the realm of civil society public participation often acquires a competitive and political dimension that manifests itself as resistance and protest. 24 These two forms of participation correspond to Charles Tilly's distinction between reactive and proactive collective action. 25 In short, in all societies a multitude of fragmented interests and identities produced by individuals, groups and organizations within civil society are defended and advanced through various forms of resistance and protest. In conditions of political oppression diverse forms of resistance play the dominant role. 26 By contrast, in open political systems protest becomes a primary mode of civil society's politics. Political society is an intermediate realm within which the double process of translation and mediation takes place. It provides channels through which various societal interests and claims are aggregated and translated into generalized policy recommendations. According to Stepan. through political society "civil society can constitute itself politically to select and monitor democratic government." 27 For the state, however, political society is also an indispensable mediation 23 S. Verba, N. Nie and J. Kim describe these organizations as "private organizations," rightly emphasizing that membership is not always strictly voluntary (Participation and Political Equality, p. 100). 24 Ch. Tilly in his studies of collective action in France and Britain convincingly demonstrates that over the last two centuries organizations of civil society were the typical vehicle of protest behavior (see Ch. Tilly, L. Tilly, and R. Tilly, Rebellious Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Ch. Tilly, Repertoires of Contention in America and Britain, , in: The Dynamics of Social Movements, edited by M. Zald and J.D. McCarthy, Cambridge: Winthrop 1979; Ch. Tilly, The Contentious French. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1986). 25 According to Tilly, reactive collective action "consist of group efforts to reassert established claims when someone else challenges or violates them." Proactive collective action "asserts group claims which have not previously been exercised" (From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: Random House pp ). Tilly gives here an example of strikes for higher wages or better working conditions. 26 See J.C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press A. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, p. 4.

13 8 instrument. Claus Offe points out that "contemporary political parties often act as organs of communication for governments (when the party is in office) or for party elites aspiring to the office of government." 28 Thus through political society state actions and policies are disaggregated, legitimized and transmitted to localities, groups, and organizations within civil society. Political society is the realm in which complex political alternatives and choices compete and are deliberated by political actors. A structured negotiation of competitive claims and actions is a fundamental modus operandi of political society during which coalitions of political actors are built and competition for political power takes place. As Stepan argues, political society "arranges itself for political contestation to gain control over public power and state apparatus." 29 In democratic polities, it comprises universal suffrage, elections, competing political parties and legislative bodies. According to Herbert Kitschelt, "elections, parties and legislatures are generalized institutions of political choice; they are not specialized arenas for representing a specific set of citizens or deciding any particular subject matter. They are involved in an uncertain and in principle, unlimited set of citizens' demands for collective decisions." 30 Public participation in the realm of political society rests on the assumption of equal and universal rights of all adults to participate in its restructuring through a periodical election process. This type of participation is formalized and usually desocialized: in the act of voting a citizen is alone and the secrecy of his/her choice is guarantied. Additionally, the election process involves another form of political participation which requires cooperation and social involvement - campaigning. In representative democracies political society plays two seemingly contradictory roles. "On the one hand, [it] opens the political process to an indeterminate and, in principle, all encompassing set of issues. [...] On the other hand, the resulting complexity of decisions making and the corresponding risk of volatility in collective choices is reduced by closing the political process and restraining the alternatives that can be practically considered by a sophisticated array of institutional rules." C. Offe, Disorganized Capitalism. Cambridge: MIT Press 1985, p. 7. According to Offe, while this two-way communication" is a proper role of political society, the problem of welfare state democracies is "the fusion of these channels of mediation through which actors within civil society act upon political authority, with those channels of communication through which, inversely the state acts upon civil society." 29 A. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, p H. Kitschelt. The Formation of Party Systems in East Central Europe, in Politics and Society. 1992, Vol. 20, No. 1, p Ibid., p. 8.

14 The state is the realm of authoritative and bureaucratic politics. It must be considered, following Stepan, "as something more than the 'government.' It is continuous administrative, legal, bureaucratic and coercive system that attempt not only to manage the state apparatus but to structure relationship between civil and public power and to structure many crucial relationships within civil and political society." 32 Imperative and bureaucratic-hierarchical decision-making lies at the heart of state activities. Public participation in state actions is significantly limited with the exception of polities where the institution of national referendum was incorporated into the decision making process, such as Switzerland. Thus conventional assumptions about the impact of elections and party politics on state activities are at least partially misleading. 33 Moreover, the reverse process is increasingly more prevalent - "the usurping of 'representative' function by the executive agencies of the state (...] for actors within civil society." 34 The main political actors within the state are "organizationally coherent collectivities of state officials [...] relatively insulated from ties to currently dominant socioeconomic interests." 35 The most distinct characteristic of the state, however, is its control of coercive resources and capability to implement its decisions within a defined territory, despite public opposition or resistance. In different political systems the center of political gravity can be found in civil society, political society, or the state. In authoritarian and statist regimes the state is the most important arena of politics and it has an almost exclusive capacity to structure political outcomes. Autonomy, political resources, and freedom of action in the other two realms are seriously restricted if not abolished altogether. The state often attempts to substitute a network of corporatist arrangements for autonomous activities of civil and political society. In corporatist institutions, however, the variety of interests and claims that are allowed to be articulated and represented is limited. In some types of non-democratic regimes political and civil societies are almost completely destroyed or incapacitated. This is the case with communist and neo-patrimonial regimes A. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, p According to R. Alford and R. Friedland, "the presumably most responsive sections of the state are not significantly influenced by variations in voting turnout and party competition. Unfortunately, electoral participation is not highly correlated with power as measured by public expenditures and other measures of state responsiveness" (Political Participation and Public Policy, Annual Review of Sociology. 1975, p. 432). 34 C. Offe, Disorganized Capitalism, p Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In, p. 9. the distinction between authoritarian, totalitarian and neo-patrimonial regimes see Juan Linz, Authoritarian and Totalitarian Regimes, in Handbook of Political Science, edited by F.I. Greenstein and N.W. Polsby, Vol 3, pp The concept of incapacitation is developed by Jan Gross, Revolution

15 10 In contemporary representative democracies political society with its party system, legislative assemblies and elections plays a dominant role. It selectively structures and channels claims advanced by the actors in civil society as well as controls the expansion of bureaucratic politics and the coercive capacity of the state. This point, however, must be qualified. Many students of modern democracies argue that the decline of political society and the expansion of the state functions is undermining the stability and vitality of the democratic state. Offe points out that both the neo-liberal critics of the welfare-state and representatives of new social movements share common concern about the erosion of non-state underpinnings of the political system. They argue that "the conflicts and contradictions of advanced industrial society can no longer be meaningfully resolved through etatism, political regulation, and the inclusion of ever more issues on the agendas of bureaucratic authorities." 37 While such views offer important insights into contemporary democratic politics, the institutions of political choice still retain their centrality in the public life of democratic societies. The importance and effectiveness of political society can be attributed to the fact that modern democratic polities emerged as a result of a long evolutionary process, during which rich and transparent links between the three realms were gradually established. Situations in which civil society becomes the locus of political power are rare. They are usually the result of the collapse of national level political institutions during revolutions, civil wars or foreign invasions. Such cases are usually short-lived and the power of civil society is always drastically curtailed with the re-establishment of national level state institutions and the recovery of the coercive capacity by the state. The autonomous action of civil society is often romanticized by social theorists who believe in the virtues of cooperation and direct participation. The disintegration of the state and political society accompanied by the politization of civil society, however, often produces aggressive mobilization and seems to delay the consolidation of the institutions of representative democracy. The disintegration of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia provide some examples of the possible consequences of what happens when the bulk of political power shifts to the realm of the amorphous and poorly institutionalized civil society. 38 During rapid democratization taking place in former non-democratic regimes the locus of political power shifts among the three realms. The first phase of democratization, that is the from Abroad. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991, pp C. Offe, Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics: Social Movements Since the 1960s, in: Changing Boundaries of the Political, edited by Ch.S. Maier, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987, pp In regard to Gorbachev's Soviet Union, this phenomenon is noted by Mark Bessinger and Lubomyr Hajda, Nationalism and Reform in Soviet Politics, in: The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society, edited by L. Hajda and M. Bessinger, Boulder: Westview 1990, p. 316 and Stanley Fish, op., cit., pp

16 11 deconstruction of the old regime entails the weakening of state power and political mobilization of the civil society. When such a disharmonius situation continues during the consolidation phase, an anarchic "transitory" polity may result. Conflicts and disjunctions between the three realms emerge, as each of them experiences autonomous and rapid changes. In some cases the very survival of a unified polity is at stake. Linz and Stepan noted that "in many countries the crisis of the nondemocratic regime is also intermixed with profound differences about what should actually constitute the 'state'. Some political activists simultaneously challenge the old nondemocratic regime and the existing territorial state itself." 39 Thus, one of the greatest challenges in crafting democracy is to define the three public realms, institutionalize (make predictable and stable) links among them and reduce the level of their mutual antagonism. While in the periods of regime transition all three realms undergo important transformations, their character, scope and speed depends on legacies left by the preceding non-democratic system. The distribution of power between the realms and their institutional strength and coherence under non-democratic rule has important consequences for the democratization process. As Frances Hagopian emphasized in her analysis of Latin American experiences, "to the extent that military regimes altered the societal bases for political association and participation, the relationship of political parties to their constituents, the networks of mediation through which states organize the consent of their societies, and in some cases even the institutional framework for political competition, their political legacies influence heavily the prospects for democratic consolidation and hence need to be brought into sharper focus." 40 During the post-communist consolidation, the rebuilding of civil and political societies as well as the re-definition of the state and its power must proceed simultaneously. A conventional wisdom among the observers of East Central European transformations used to be that building new democratic state institutions could be accomplished with a relative ease. Also, the introduction of competitive elections and the formation of party-systems was seen as an uncomplicated task. The re-creation of civil society, however, was to be a lengthy and difficult process, spanning a generation or two. 41 As far as Poland is concerned, these claims should be revised: during the first five years of consolidation, the rebirth of civil society took place with unexpected speed and intensity. The state, however, was not so much reformed, as greatly weakened. The development of political society was slow, tedious, and often unpredictable. 39 J. Linz and A. Stepan. Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, Daedalus. Spring 1992, p F. Hagopian, After Regime Change, p I See R. Dahrendorf, Reflection on the Revolution in Europe. New York: Random House 1990.

17 12 We believe that many observers attributed weakness to East Central European civil societies as a result of two assumptions inherited from classical theories of communism. First, they explicitly or implicitly accepted the vision of a powerful totalitarian state, dominating politics and penetrating all spheres of social life. It seems, however, that while communist states were huge bureaucratic machines, controlling many aspects of their subjects' lives, at the same time they were organizationally weak and highly ineffective. The transitory process exposed and amplified these weaknesses, producing an extremely vulnerable new states, unable to secure order, police their borders, collect taxes, maintain coherent policies, and effectively respond to various economic and political pressures. Second, many observers accepted a vision of atomized and vulnerable societies in which the institutional infrastructure of civil society was completely destroyed by decades of communist rule. Civil society, however, proved to be highly resilient. In Poland at least, it survived communist assault, developed specific modes of invisible "infrapolitcs," 42 challenged the regime through the massive "Solidarity" movement, and emerged in a multitude of forms when public space opened after Moreover, the former communist controlled mass organizations swiftly regained autonomy, replaced their leaders, and re-established themselves as powerful representatives of group interests. 2. The relative strength of the three realms during the post-communist consolidation in Poland 2.1. The state Poland provides an excellent example of the disjointed and chaotic development of public realms during the transitory period. Democratization opened political space for the formation of a new political society, restoration of civil society, and a redefinition of the state's power and functions. Yet, despite a flurry of debates, reforms and changes, institutionalization of the new political system faced significant difficulties. As a result of the round-table agreements, the structure of central state institutions was modified. The Council of the State was abolished and the office of the President was established with important, though vaguely specified powers. Also the upper chamber was added to the Polish parliament. The Polish state retained its dominant position in the country's economy and politics and experienced relatively little change in its institutional dimension. The most important change in the state structure was the reform of local administration, introduced in J. Scott defines "infrapolitics" as "a wide variety of low-profile forms of resistance that dare not speak in their own name." He argues that "so long as we confine our conception of the political to activity that is openly declared we are driven to conclude that subordinate groups essentially lack a political life or that what political life they do have is restricted to those exceptional moments of popular explosion. To do this is to miss the immense political terrain that lies between quiescence and revolt and that, for better or worse, is the political environment of subject classes" Domination and the Arts of Resistance, pp. 19 and 199.

18 13 which led to the administrative decentralization of the state and partial autonomization of local politics. 43 On the national level, however, institutional changes were surprisingly few. While the Polish state has faced an unprecedented set of new challenges after 1989, the structure and functions of other central state institutions were not significantly altered. Also, in the internal organization, "the main emphasis has thus far been in streamlining and on limited, more or less ad hoc adjustments rather than a fundamental revision of structures and procedures." 44 It is paradoxical that during the period Polish state grew bigger while, at the same time, it got weaker and frequently was unable to perform its functions and fulfil people's expectations. 45 Robert Putnam observed that "a high-performance democratic institution must be both responsive and effective: sensitive to the demands of its constituents and effective in using limited resources to address those demands." 46 The difficulties of the Polish post-communist state may be seen as a serious deficit of performance which produced a potentially destabilizing legitimization crisis. The first cause of weakness in the new Polish state was its institutional design. The relationships between the branches of the government and their prerogatives were vaguely defined. Poland failed to enact a new constitution within the first five years of consolidation, thus many fundamental systemic issues remained unresolved or were dealt with merely in a provisional fashion by the limited constitutional act introduced in As a result Poland was plagued by the escalating political conflict between the Presidency, government and parliament over their prerogatives and responsibilities. Moreover, there was a significant legal chaos, since many old laws and legal regulations inherited from the communist regime were still in force and coexisted with new regulations introduced in response to emerging needs and pressures. 43 Kubik stresses that "Polish administrative reform, initiated by a law adopted by Parliament on March 8, 1990, was the most extensive among the East European countries, at least until the end of 1992." As a result, local communities were burdened/blessed with a number of administrative prerogatives and responsibilities. Kubik argues that the extent of this reform had a significant impact on the course of regime consolidation in Poland. See "The Role of Decentralization and Cultural Revival in Post-Communist Transformations. The Case of Cieszyn Silesia, Poland, Communist and Postcomrnunist Studies. 1994, Vol 27 (4): Joachim J. Hesse, From Transformation to Modernization: Administrative Chnage in Central and Eastern Europe, Public Administration 1993, 71, p See J. Kurczewska, K. Staszynska and H. Bojar, Blokady spoleczenstwa obywatelskiego: slabe spoleczenstwo i slabe panstwo, in: Spoleczenstwo w transformacii. edited by A. Rychard and M. Fedorowicz, Warszawa: IFiS PAN, pp ; J. Kochanowicz, The Disappearing State: Poland's Three Years of Transition, Social Research 1993, 60, 4, pp ; Wojciech Taras. Changes in Polish Public Administration , Public Administration 1993, 71, R. D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work. Civic Tradition in Modern Italy, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993, p. 9.

19 14 Despite fundamental changes in the domestic and international political and economic environments, the structure of the Polish government during the first five years of consolidation was almost exactly the same as the one inherited from the old regime. After 1989, two more ministries (Ministry of the Ownership Transformation and Ministry of Communication) were added to the 19 which remained after the 1987 reform and the overall number of central state's agencies grew from 32 in 1988 to 41 in Also, the number of professional employees in the central administration and overall employment in the central administration increased notably between 1989 and There were also similar increases in local state administration. (See Table 1: Employment in State Administration and Local Self-government, , page 31.) The growing number of state employees can be attributed to the fact that during this time the Polish state faced challenges of reorganizing old and building new spheres of state administration, including the banking and tax systems, capital, labor and insurance markets, a new social security system, new police and legal system, new regulatory institutions, etc. However, the new administrative apparatus clearly did not come at the expense of the old bureaucratic structures and often the reorganized institutions were bigger than their predecessors. 49 Second, in comparison with state-socialism, the state's autonomy and relative capacity were seriously limited by the introduction of the rule of law. External controls over administration by the Constitutional and Administrative Courts and the Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection were expanded and become more effective. 50 "Real" parliamentarism and competitive elections imposed additional constraints on state's freedom of action. Also, the newly independent media scrutinized the state's policies in an increasingly effective way. Moreover, as a result of the reforms, the Party-state Leviathan relinquished some of its power both "upwards" to the international regimes and "downwards" to local self-governments. The constraints imposed by international lending institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were especially effective in reducing the 47 See T. Moldawa, Ludzie wladzy Warszawa: PWN 1991, pp and Rocznik Statystyczny Warszawa: GUS 1993, pp Rocznik Statystyczny Warszawa: GUS 1991, p and Rocznik Statystyczny 1992, Warszawa: GUS 1992, pp For example, the Office for the Protection of the State funded in 1990 employs 6,073 functionaries, while the Security Police abolished at the beginning of this year had 3,524 full time functionaries. See Wprost. July 11, 1993, pp Poland was the only country in the Soviet bloc that established a set of institutions for external administrative control befor The Supreme Control Chamber (NIK) controlled by the Parliament was supplemented in the 1980s by the Administrative Court, the Constitutional Court, the State Tribunal and the Office of the Ombudsman.

20 15 state's capacity to freely implement policy changes which could increase the budget deficit and inflation. The third reason for the weakness of the state apparatus was the lack of governmental stability, resulting from the frequent cabinet changes and subsequent efforts to replace both the nomenclature inherited from the old regime and the appointees of the prior "post-communist" governments. During the period, the state administration experienced a substantial turnover of personnel, especially at the top positions. According to Jacek Wasilewski's and Michal Pohoski's study, only 42.4% of state administration officials, who were deputy ministers, directors and deputy directors of departments in ministries in 1986, were still employed in state administration in Old state functionaries who survived post-1989 changes could not feel secure, while the newcomers brought into the administration by each governmental change had little professional and organizational experience. Moreover, adding to their insecurity, government officials were targeted in various political struggles; their ostensible privileges were criticized and they were frequently accused of corruption and mismanagement. All attempts to introduce the institution of civil service failed. The fourth source of the state's weakness was the declining popular trust in its institutions. This decline was clearly reflected by public opinion polls conducted periodically since Table 2: Net Confidence in Institutions and Organizations: (page 32), demonstrates vividly the declining confidence in selected state institutions and organizations. After the initial surge of public trust following the 1989 elections and the formation of Solidarity-led government, the polls registered a gradual drop in public confidence of over 50 points for most state institutions. Also the Church and Solidarity trade union suffered significant decline in confidence. Interestingly, the two exceptions from this trend were coercive institutions of the state - the military and the police Political society The formation of the party system in Poland was one of the most turbulent elements of the early consolidation. At the beginning of 1993 Poland had 222 registered political parties. 52 Although the majority of these parties were not serious contenders for power, many did actually enter the political process. The choice of the electoral system reinforced the initial fragmentation of political forces. In its first fully democratic elections in 1991 Poland adopted a strictly proportional electoral law and 111 parties participated in the electoral contest. Among these parties, 69 registered their lists 51 See "Communist Nomenclatura in the Postcomrnunist Poland," unpublished paper presented at the First European Conference of Sociology, Vienna. August 26-29, The number of parties reflects a very liberal party registration procedure. In order to register a political party 15 signatures have to be collected under the registration form, three people have to appear in the District Court in Warsaw and the process is free of any charge.

21 16 in only one electoral district, 42 were present in at least two districts, and 27 registered their national lists. 53 As a result, the winner (Democratic Union) received only 12.3% of the votes and a fragmented parliament was elected with 29 parties holding seats. Among these parties, 11 had enough seats to be considered a partner in a potential ruling coalition. The electoral reforms prior to the 1993 elections reduced the number of parties entering the electoral process and forced many to join in electoral coalitions. Still, there were 35 parties and coalitions represented in the national elections, with 15 registering national lists. Only 7 parties and coalitions won seats in the lower chamber of parliament but as a result of the existing electoral law, 35% of the votes went to parties which did not win any seats. Given that only 52.1% of the eligible voters cast their ballots, the groups that did not make it to the parliament can easily question the representativeness of this institution. Polish electoral politics reflected the weakness of Polish political society. First, the political spectrum was remarkably fragmented with larger political parties plagued by internal conflicts, divisions, and frequent splits. 54 Moreover, the majority of existing parties, including those influential in shaping the country's politics during the first years of consolidation, had a surprisingly low membership. Most parties had only a few hundred to a few thousand members. 55 As a result, party activities came to be monopolized by a narrow, newly formed political class organized into a myriad of small political parties, which concentrated heavily on national level politics, creating a political vacuum underneath. Political activities on the local level were often divorced from national politics. As Kubik observed, "what is truly revolutionary about the ongoing changes is the fact that national (central) level politics can be (and often is) irrelevant to local politics [and] the political grouping that dominate national politics [...] are often absent from the local political scene." 56 The second problem plaguing Polish political society was the absence of clear and stable political cleavages. Multiple cleavage lines within the Polish political society were not clearly 53 See K. Jasiewicz, Poland, European Journal of Political Research. 1992, 22, p V. Zubek, The Fragmentation of Poland's Political Party System, Communist and Postcomrnunist Studies , 1, For example, the Liberal Democratic Congress one of the most influential parties whose leader K. Bielecki served as the Prime Minister has approximately 3,000 members. The Christian National Union, the most important representative of Catholic views which had several ministers in the last three governments and a Deputy Prime Minister in Suchocka's government has approximately 6,000 members. Seven hundred members were in Warsaw and one in every one hundred members hold a parliamentary seat.(see M. Janicki, Czysto i ubogo, Polityka, Feb, 27, 1993 and Polityka, October , p. 15). 56 J. Kubik, "Culture, Administrative Reform, and Local Politics: Overlooked Dimension of the Postcomrnunist Transformation." The Anthropology of East Europe Review Vol. 10 ( 2):

22 17 delineated and often shifted, although the process of their articulation was underway. 57 For example, the politically active cleavage between post-solidarity and post-communist forces cut across other divisions, engendered by various visions of the pace and content of economic reforms, the relationship between the state and the Roman Catholic Church, the definition of national interests, or the basic foundations of democratic politics. 58 These cleavages blurred other typical political divisions based on ideology (Right-Left), regional diversity (center-periphery), or class interests. In the period, the unclear cleavages were additionally complicated by frequent changes in positions and programs presented by specific parties. Many observers of the Polish political scene attributed the low electoral participation to the vague and confused positions advocated by major parties. One of the most interesting puzzles of the Polish post-communist politics was the low level of participation in consecutive elections. Despite of the drama of regime change, the rise of political parties, highly charged political and ideological conflicts, fundamental political and economic reforms and frequent government changes and elections, many Polish voters withdrew from the official political process. This gradual withdrawal from political participation predates the 1989 transition. During the last decade, electoral participation in Poland gradually declined. As Ekiert argued elsewhere, the low voters turnout in elections which followed the imposition of martial law in 1981 can be attributed to active resistance which took a form of confrontational non-participation in elections organized by the state. 59 Approximately 25-30% of the electorate responded to appeals to boycott the elections issued by clandestine Solidarity organizations. The opening of the political system and the introduction of a genuine democratic mechanism in 1989 did not, however, reverse the decline in electoral participation. Even the 1989 "funding" elections did not produce high "Herbert Kitschelt "Emerging Structures of Political Representation in Eastern Europe," paper presented at the conference on the Social and Political Bases of Economic Liberalization, organized by the SSRC and funded by the Pew Charitable Foundation, Warsaw, September 23-26, For a brief analysis of these cleavage lines see Kubik's chapter. 58 See Ekiert, "Peculiarities of Post-Communist Politics in Poland," Studies in Comparative Communism. 1992, 25, 4, pp See also T. Szawiel, Partie polityczne w Polsce: stan obecny szanse i zagrozenia, in: Polska Fragmenty peizazu, Warszawa: IFiS PAN 1993, pp and M. Grabowska and T. Szawiel, Anatomia elit politycznych. Partie polityczne w postkomunistycznej Polsce Warszawa: Instytut Socjologii UW For an overview of various conceptualizations of the Polish post-communist field see Kubik 1994; Kitschelt 1992 and w See, G. Ekiert, "Recent Elections in Poland and Hungary: The Coming Crisis of Ritualized Politics," Center for Research on Politics and Social Organization Working Paper Series, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, No

23 18 electoral turnout. 60 Table 3: Voters Participation in Elections in Poland: (page 33), illustrates the decline of electoral participation. Shortly before the 1993 parliamentary elections, in the poll conducted by Pentor, 91% of respondents declared their lack of interest in the electoral campaign. Moreover, despite a multitude of political parties, the poll conducted by Demoskop in 1994 revealed that 67% Poles declared that non of the existing parties represented their interests. The decline of formal political participation was also illustrated by the strikingly low membership in political parties. This lack of interest in the formal political process went hand in hand with the rising pessimism and frustration, registered by the public opinion polls. There is no space here to present more systematic analysis of the available data; a few examples will have to serve as an illustration. In the CBOS' poll conducted in August 1993, only 17% of respondents declared that things in Poland were moving in the right direction while 65% claimed that things had taken a wrong turn. Corresponding numbers in December 1992 were 16% and 65%. 6l In a similar poll conducted in July 1993, 44% of respondents declared that for the people it does not matter whether the government is democratic or not. In 1992 only 21% of Poles believed that local authorities represent their interests. Public opinion polls also indicated a massive decline of trust in public institutions. Among all state institutions and organizations rated, the approval rate for both chambers of the parliament has been the lowest - almost three times lower than the approval rate for the police and military. 62 Also, the general population's knowledge and interest in politics is very low. A surprisingly high number of people were unaware that the former Polish Prime Minister, Hanna Suchocka, was a member of the Democratic Union. The majority of Poles were unable to match the names of well known politicians with the parties they belonged to. Such results are surprising given the importance of national level politics in shaping transitional policies; it is an indication that political participation at the level of situation departs from experiences of other democratizing countries where, according to G. O'Donnell and P. Schmitter, "founding elections are [...] moments of great drama. Turnout is very high. Parties advocating cancellation, postponement, or abstention are swept aside by the civic enthusiasm that attends such moments" (Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, p. 62). In fact, voter turnout in founding elections in Spain in 1977, for example, was 79.1% and decreased in 1979 elections to 68.3% (see M. Caciagli, Spain: Parties and the Party System in the Transition, West European Politics. 7, pp ). 61 CBOS. Nastroje Spoleczne w Sierpniu '93. Stosunek do Strajkow. Komunikat z badan. Warszawa. Sierpien Other results quoted in this paragraph come from opinion polls conducted by the CBOS. OBOP and Pentor which were reported in Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, and Wprost. 62 The approval rate for the parliament declined from almost 90 percent in November 1989 to 22 percent in the spring of Moreover, in November 1992 only 1 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that democracy in Poland works well, while 43 percent agreed that it works badly and may soon collapse.

24 political society was very weak. Although there existed significant regional and social differences in levels of formal political involvement and participation, the overall picture was bleak Civil society Given the relative weakness of the state and political society, civil society became the strongest and most rapidly developing realm of the polity. It was characterized by the clear organizational continuity. Organizations which existed under the communist rule swiftly regain their independence, changed their leaders and adopted successfully to a new democratic environment. These included professional associations, trade unions, and voluntary associations. For example, in 1985, Polish artists were represented by 14 associations with combined membership of 16.9 thousand. In 1992, the same 14 organizations represented the artistic community and their membership stood at 19.3 thousand. Similarly, 105 other professional associations survived the regime transition with no significant membership loses. There is also continuity in recreational associations. For example, the number of sport clubs increased from 1866 in 1985 to 1997 in While the majority of old organizations survived, since 1989 thousands of new organizations and movements were formed locally and nationally. A comprehensive data base "Jawor" listed 4515 associations in Supported by variety of international organizations and foundations the NGO sector expanded rapidly. It includes, for example, about 400 environmental organizations. There were 58 churches and some 150 registered religious denominations 64 with hundreds of organizations and charities. According to another source, by the end of 1992, there were more than 2,000 nation wide voluntary associations registered in the Warsaw District Court." This number did not include associations whose activities were limited to the regional or local level and were registered by provincial courts. Moreover, there were hundreds of youth organizations, social and cultural movements, business associations, ethnic minorities organizations, and other self-help societies. The number of registered foundations increased from 200 in 1989 to over 3,500 in Trade unions form a powerful sector of Polish civil society. The development of the trade union movement represented very well this distinctive merger of old and new organizations. In contrast to other post-communist societies, Poland has a highly pluralistic, competitive, and politically divided trade union sector. There are 1,500 trade unions among which 200 formed nation wide organizations. It was not unusual that the employees of one factory or firm were represented by more 63 "Jawor 1993," Civic Dialogue NGOs. Warsaw Rocznik Statystyczny 1991, pp Polska '93, Warszawa: Polska Agencja Informacyjna 1992, p. 148.

25 20 than 10 different union organizations. 66 Poland has two dominant trade union federations: Solidarity (with the membership around 1,7 million) and the post-communist All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (with the membership around 4 million). There is a number of smaller and usually more radical federations, such as Solidarity 80 with approximately half a million members. Moreover, the organizational structure of the trade union movement is mixed, for it combines the regional structure of Solidarity with the sectoral organization of other major unions. These numbers illustrate that civil society was able to recover from the four decades of communist rule with an astonishing speed and intensity. Its organizations and actors played an increasingly visible and vocal role in the country's politics, often confronting both the parliament and the government. 3. Collective Protest in Poland, Declining trust in state institutions and their effectiveness and low participation in the formal political process were paralleled by a growing acceptance of various forms of protest: the "protest potential" of Polish society was on the rise. "Protest potential," as defined in the influential study of political participation, "is the individual propensity to engage in unconventional forms of political behavior as a means of political redress." 67 Polish sociologists included questions designed to test the "protest potential" similar to those used in Political Action in several studies of political attitudes conducted since The results are presented in Table 4: Net Approval of Specific Forms of Protest (page 33). It is clear that most forms of protest were gradually gaining more legitimacy as appropriate ways of expressing collective grievances, especially after Strikes, demonstrations, and boycott of state decisions have gained the highest degree of acceptance since The high level of acceptance of disruptive protest, and especially strikes, can be linked to legacies of the Solidarity movement, which symbolically elevated a strike to the most noble form of resistance against the unjust authorities and made it a part of a routinized repertoire of political action. 68 These results example, Polish miners are represented by 19 union and the employees of the Polish State Railroad (PKP) by 26 unions. The competition between unions for new members and influence often leads to higher militancy and escalation of protest actions because, as S. Tarrow points out, organizations in competition for the same constituency "try to outbid their competitors for support with more radical tactics" (Struggle. Politics, and Reform, p. 20). 67 Samuel Barnes, Max Kaase, et al. Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies. Beverly Hills: SAGE 1979, p This fact supports Tilly's argument about the repertoires of collective action. He argues that "a population's repertoire of collective action generally includes only a handful of alternatives. It generally changes slowly, seems obvious and natural to the people involved." The repertoire of collective action

26 21 make Poland one of the most contentious nations in the world. Comparative data on acceptance of unconventional political action is presented in Table 6: Acceptance of Unconventional Political Action in Selected Countries (page 34). Another dimension of the Polish public's attitudes toward protest was the "repression potential," defined as "the tendency to grant authorities increasingly severe instruments of control to contain correspondingly severe challenges by protesters, strikers, or other unorthodox activists." 69 It was tested by the authors of Political Action and used by Polish sociologists in their research on political attitudes. The results of Polish surveys are presented in Table 5: Net Approval of State Actions Against Different Forms of Protest (page 34). The results reported in Table 5 demonstrate a gradual and consistent decline in the "repression potential" of the Polish authorities. Only a small minority of Poles approved of the use of force against protesters and strikers. This very limited acceptance of repressions was a clear legacy of the four decades of repressive rule. Tellingly, the new Polish state did not have popular "permission" to employ harsh measures against protestors. Quite to the contrary, it had even less public consent to intervene against disruptive political action than did the old communist state. Such a situation has important consequences for the post-communist governments, for it restricts their range of legitimate responses to protest actions. According to the authors of Political Action, "three components of political action - protest potential, conventional participation, and repression potential - form the basic "parameters of license" for protest." 70 It is however obvious that public opinion surveys do not provide sufficient knowledge about actual protest actions. As Tarrow observes, "unless we trace the forms of activity people use, how these reflect their demands, and their interaction with opponents and elites, we cannot understand either the magnitude or the dynamics of change in politics and society." 71 The data presented in this section come from a systematic record of actual protest events which took place in Poland between 1989 and We will argue that during this period, collective protest emerged as the most important form of participation in public life. available to a population is limited by several factors including: the efficiency of a particular form in advancing a group's goals, acceptance of certain forms and repression of others by the authorities, familiarity of a particular form to a group which "has a heavy bias toward means it has previously used." and cultural acceptance of some forms of collective action by the population (From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: Random House 1978, pp. 154 and 156). 69 Samuel Barnes, Max Kaase, et al. Political Action, p S. Barnes, M. Kaase, at al. Political Action, p S. Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder. Protest and Politics in Italy , Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989, pp. 7-8.

27 22 During the period, collective protest in Poland was intense. Protest actions ranged from single isolated strikes to nation-wide protest campaigns involving hundreds of schools, hospitals. and enterprises as well as thousands of workers and public sector employees. They included onehour-long warning strikes as well as protracted and desperate strike campaigns that lasted for months. The repertoire of protest was very diverse. It consisted of both violent and non-violent street demonstrations, a variety of strikes, dramatic huger strikes, huge rallies, boycotts, occupation of public buildings, blockades of roads and public spaces, rent strikes, and various forms of symbolic protest. Protest activities spread to all regions of the country and involved all social groups and categories, with workers, public sector employees, peasants and the youth as the most active participants. Our research indicates that Poland had the highest incidence of protest among the East Central European countries we studied. 72 (See Table 7: Post-1989 Protest Events in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Former East Germany, page 35). There are two conventional views on collective protest and popular opposition in post-1989 Poland. According to the first, the transfer of political power to the coalition of Solidarity-led forces and the subsequent far-reaching reforms were carried out with nearly full support of the whole society. However, this support ebbed rapidly after the monetary and budgetary discipline imposed in 1990 began exacting growing social costs and dislocations. According to the second view, while the Solidarity trade union extended a protective umbrella over Mazowiecki's and Bielecki's governments, the strikes and demonstrations were provoked by the post-communist OPZZ union federation or emerged spontaneously. It has been further asserted that Solidarity's patience ran out only in 1992, when it also began actively opposing the government's policies through collective actions. The statistical data available in Poland and the data we collected put both views in doubt. The most striking discovery that emerges from our own and other studies is that during the period of the number of protest actions remained surprisingly constant. Moreover, the magnitude of protest (discussed below) increased. The data on strikes collected by the Main Statistical Bureau show that in 1990 there were 250 strikes in Poland. In 1991, the number of strikes increased to 305. Our database, which includes all protest actions reported by the six main Polish newspapers. 72 In order to support this contention systematic comparisons with other countries of the region must be completed. We have already finished the data collection process in Slovakia, Hungary, and the former East Germany. According to our knowledge the only systematic compilation of protest events so far was conducted by Jan Stena in Slovakia. This project was limited, however, to the period of June 1990 through May The result which shows 336 protest events may suggest that perhaps Poland's magnitude of protest is not so unique (see, Jan Stena, Anatomia protestu a jeho empiricke typy, Sociologia 1992, 24, 4, ).

28 23 presents a similar picture. (See Table 8: The Number of Protest Events in Poland , page 35.) While the number of protest events has been relatively constant during the five year period, the amount of large-scale, coordinated protest campaigns increased considerably. 74 Moreover, the number of protest actions whose scope was non-local went up too. (See Table 9: The Scope of Protest Actions, page 36.) Judging by the growing number of protests with large numbers of participants (above 2000), the amount of people who engaged in contentious collective actions also increased. 75 (See Table 10: Protest Actions According to Numbers of Participants, page 36.) Furthermore, available data on protest activities reveal that the duration of protest actions was expanding. According to GUS (Main Statistical Office), the number of workers on strike doubled between 1990 and 1991 (from 115,687 to 221,547) and the number of days lost due to strikes tripled (from 159,016 to 517,647). Both the number of workers on strikes and the number of days lost increased even further in 1992, although it declined in Our data also suggest that during the period, protest actions involved not only more participants, but there was a significant increase of protest actions lasting over one month. (See Table 11: Duration of Protest Events in Poland, page 37.) Even though we are not able to construct a precise index as yet, the method of calculating protest magitude proposed by Tilly, who multiplies the size, duration and frequency of collective protest, 76 allows a preliminary assessment of prtoest magnitude. The data presented here led us to conclude that during the first five years of the post-communist consolidation the magnitude of collective protest in Poland increased. We discovered to our surprise that protest actions were organized predominantly by the organizations belonging to civil society, such as trade unions (including peasant organizations). (See Table 12: Organizations Leading or Sponsoring Protest Actions, page 38.) 73 The number of protest events recorded in our database differs from figures found in other sources due to a specific definition of the protest event we accepted. For the purpose of our project we assume that a protest event may include the activities of several separate groups or organizations. The activities of different groups are considered to be a part of the same protest event if: (1) they relate to the same grievances and (2) take place at the same time without any considerable delays. Our conceptualizations and definitions are influenced by Sidney Tarrow. 74 If protests actions are officially (i.e. outwardly or publicly) directed or coordinated by one decisionmaking center, they constitute together a protest campaign. 75 These numbers include only those protest events for which we have exact information regarding the number of participants. 76 See Ch. Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, pp

29 24 During the period , of all civil society organizations, trade unions were the main driving force behind collective protest. Among trade union federations, Solidarity was most active. In 1991 and 1992 there was however a significant increase in protests organized by other trade unions. This can be explained by the competition among the growing number of union organizations, that emerged in Poland during that period. Post-communist collective protest in Poland was decidedly nonviolent - a startling contrast to Latin America, where the so-called "IMF riots" exacted a heavy toll in casualties ( dead) and property damage. 77 Striking (including strikes and strike alerts) was the most popular form of protest employed with the exception of Demonstrations, marches and rallies were the second dominant form. Protest letters and statements followed. The next most common form of protest were more disruptive actions such as occupation of public buildings and blockades of roads and public places. (See Graph 1: Protest Strategies, page 39.) As Table 13: Ultimate Targets of Protest (page 40) illustrates, the institutions of the state (the government, parliament and president) were targeted by the protesters increasingly more often than other targets. Given the predominance of the economic demands, this finding indicates that protest actions responded to the continuing substantial involvement of the state in the economy. Additionally, the protesters seem to have been driven by an expectation shaped by the old regime, that the state is responsible for all aspects of economic and social life and, therefore, should solve all problems. It may also signify that the "us-versus-them" conceptualization of politics, in which the "state" is seen as the main antagonist of the "society" was re-gaining its influence after a short decline in Table 13 illustrates also two trends: the growing number of protests targeted ultimately at all branches of the government, while the number of protests directed against the management fluctuated without any appreciable growth or decline. We suggest that this increasing universalization of protest targets may be also interpreted as a growing politization of protest. In order to find other indices of the increasing politization of protest, we looked at the number of economic and political grievances in every year. The numbers presented in Table 14: Types of Demands (page 40) illustrate another major finding of our study: during the period, protests had predominantly economic character; Poles protested mostly to battle for improvements in their living conditions. As a detailed examination of demands reveals, "wage increases/material demands" was by far the most frequently reported category. The number of 77 See J. Walton, "Debt, Protest and the State in Latin America, Power and Popular Protest in Latin American Social Movements, edited by Susan Eckstein, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991 and Bela Greskovits, "Is the East Becoming the South? Where Threats to Reforms May Come From?," paper presented at the XVIth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, August 21-25, 1994, Berlin.

30 25 political demands increased in an erratic manner; the increase was, however, significant enough to support the generalization concerning the growing politization of protest. We also searched for a confirmation of growing politization in the pattern of data collected in response to the question "On whose behalf were the demands made?" Table 15: Collectives on Whose Behalf Demands Were Made (page 41) contains selected result. Whereas the protesters' identity was predominantly and consistently "particularistic," the data presented in Table 15 indicate an increasing usage of the more general identities, such as "nation" and "society." This trend may also be interpreted as a growing politization of collective protest. This politization through generalization produced an identity which was mainly "civic" in character; the predominant general identity the protestors subscribed to was "society." Such identities as "nation," indicating subscription to some form of nationalism, or "social category," which could mean some form of class consciousness, were used far less frequently. The growing politization of collective protest in post-communist Poland ( ) is therefore well documented; it is, however, a peculiar politization. What was increasingly politicized was not political society, but civil society. In fact, the participation of political parties in collective protest was inconspicuous (see Table 12). During the four year period of , Poles had five different governments and were asked to participate in three parliamentary, one local and one presidential elections. The data we have already presented suggest that while the formal political participation was relatively low, political participation through protest and the involvement of civil society organizations in politics was growing. We will now see whether the cycles of electoral politics parallel the cycles of protest during this period. When the aggregate data on protest are compared with electoral cycles, they reveal a regularity. The number of collective protests decreases always before elections, and increases immediately afterwards. Graph 2: Ongoing Protest Event and Elections, (page 42) illustrates the correlations between cycles of electoral politics and cycles of protest. 4. Conclusions 4.1. Protest and the institutionalization of the three domains of the polity. In this chapter we have presented data on several dimensions of public participation in postcommunist Poland, including formal political participation, protest and repression potentials of Polish society after 1989, and cycles of collective protest between 1989 and We demonstrated that the first five years of consolidation in Poland produced: (a) a state that was bigger but weaker than the Party-state of communism; (b) a political society that was disorganized though arguably increasingly

31 26 more consolidated (structured); 78 and (c) a civil society that was increasingly more active and politicized. This last finding confirms a generalization, that during a regime transition, when the boundaries between the institutional realms of polity are unclear and contested, organizations of civil society penetrate political arenas with greater frequency than in more stable polities. 79 Contentious collective action was the common if not predominant mode of participation in civil society. Thus we conclude that many Poles who were uncomfortable with routine parliamentary democracy and dissatisfied with party politics, turned to contentious collective action as a mode of public participation. Some of them turned to militant populism, finding in its dichotomous master frames a guide for their actions, but most of them engaged in protest (strikes and demonstrations) to put forth demands related to their everyday (mostly "economic") concerns. For them, it seems, collective protest was a mode of civic action based on an acceptance of the existing order, intending only to correct the governmental - mostly economic - policies. The growing politization of collective protest did not, however, acquire an "oversymbolized" form, but rather a more pragmatic one; demands remained primarily economic throughout the whole period. Nor did the politization manifest itself through the intensification of protest-sponsorship by political parties. It occurred, first of all, through the generalization of protestors' identities and through the growing "seriousness" of the addressees (or targets) of their actions. In brief, as the years went by, the protestors acted more often on behalf of "the whole society" and targeted with increasing frequency the country's highest authorities. This tendency may be interpreted as a growing dissatisfaction with political parties as channels of interest articulation and representation. The postcommunist party system in Poland might have become more consolidated and structured, 80 but its ability to articulate and represent people's interests - in light of our research - did not increase. The second important set of conclusions concerns the relationship between civil and political societies as well as the specific, institutionalization of collective action in the former. In most cases. 78 See Herbert Kitschelt, "The Formation of Party Systems in East Central Europe," Politics and Society. Vol. 20(l):7-50, "Party Systems in East Central Europe. Consolidation or Fluidity?," paper presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the APSA and especially "Emerging Structures of Political Representation in Eastern Europe," paper presented at the conference on the Social and Political Bases of Economic Liberalization, organized by the SSRC and funded by the Pew Charitable Foundation. Warsaw, September 23-26, There were many examples of political actors crossing the boundaries between the realms. Polish trade unions ran candidates in elections and aspired to an independent parliamentary representation. In fact, it was Solidarity trade union's parliamentary representation which orchestrated the non-confidence vote in Suchocka's government and forced the new elections in Also some political parties acted as social movements by, for example, organizing demonstrations against the government in which they were the official partner. Herbert Kitschelt, 1994; Gabor Toka.

32 27 Poles' civic activities (such as collective protests) were organized by already established organizations (mostly trade unions). But very often such civic activities occurred as contentious collective action rather than inter-organizational negotiation and mediation: instead of engaging in well-instiutionalized inter-organizational games (negotiations, lobbying, etc.), such organizations as trade unions were very quick to organize or sponsor contentious collective actions (strikes, demonstrations). In a sense, then. civil society (at least its significant segment) was poorly institutionalized, i.e. the rules of routine conflict resolution were not established and/or legitimized. This weak institutionalization was not however the result of organizations' passivity, but rather of their tendency to employ non-institutional forms of participation in public life i.e., protest. In brief, their politics were a-institutional. The analysis of this "a-institutionalism" can be facilitated by introducing Jepperson's important distinction between two modes of society's reproduction: through institutionalization and through action. He writes: "Here I wish to concentrate on just one contrast: between institutionalization and 'action,'...as two different reproduction forms. A social pattern is reproduced through action if persons repeatedly (re)mobilize and (re)intervene in historical process to secure its persistence. /.../ 'Action' is a much weaker form of reproduction than institutionalization, because it faces all the 'logic of collective action' problems well established in the literature (e.g., Olson 1965). " 81 Following Jepperson's suggestions we posed two questions: What was the mix of "institutionalization" and "action" in the reproduction of the Polish post-communist reality? How was the regime's consolidation influenced by this particular "mix"? Our data indicate that in Poland, post-communist society reproduced itself through action more often than in any other society of East Central Europe. This action however was not spontaneous; it was organized mostly by existing organizations, mainly trade unions. What we found in Poland, therefore, was a "hybrid" form (unspecified by Jepperson) of contentious action by wellestablished and institutionalized organizations. Moreover, protest activities became a routine mode of conflict resolution thereby the emerging set of norms and rule should be referred to as contentious institutionalization. It seems, additionally, that this high involvement of well-established "protest" organizations (such as Solidarity) in organizing society's activism accounts for relaxation of the Olsonian collective action dilemma. The reasons for the high ratio of "action" to "institutionalization" may be predominantly historical. If there was a place in Eastern Europe where state-socialism failed due to "action" rather than "inter-organizational deals," it was Poland. Polish society's repertoire of contentious action was extensive and well rehearsed; the "tradition of action" was developed and transmitted (also 81 Ronald Jepperson, "Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism," in Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 148.

33 unreflectively) as a "natural" mode of participation in public life to a degree unknown in other East European countries. 28 Before the more systematic comparative studies are completed, it is difficult to assess the impact of this reproduction through action, occurring predominantly in the domain of civil society, on the consolidation of the new regime. Samuel Huntington's classical warning must be however carefully considered: Political stability... depends upon the ratio of institutionalization to participation. As political participation increases, the complexity, autonomy, adaptability, and coherence 82 of the society's political institutions must also increase if political stability is to be maintained. 83 According to our research, in the case of Poland the ratio of institutionalization to participation was high, but both had uncommon features: (1) the organizations which institutionalized participation were not political parties or state institutions but trade unions and other associations of civil society and (2) participation, though institutionalized, tended to take the form of contentious collective action. We suspect that this pattern of: (a) increasingly politicized, (b) gradually intensifying contentious collective action, occurring mostly (c) within civil society, may have contributed to the destabilization of the Polish polity and, in particular, slowed down the development of political society, limiting its scope of support and possibly delaying (pace Kitschelt) its institutionalization. 84 But, paradoxically, the very same pattern may have contributed to the constancy of the radical economic reforms. Opposition to the reforms was ineffective for it was either channelled through the medium of inconclusive (as our data indicate) 85 contentious collective action (civil society) or it was articulated be several small parties in an uncoordinated, thus impotent, fashion. Additionally, the protest vote proved to be ineffective because the parties that ran on the anti-balcerowicz platform, once in power did not modify the economic program associated with his name in any significant way. 82 For the definitions of these terms see Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press 1968, pp Huntington, Political Order p For a complex definition of the level of institutionalization see Huntington 1968: 12ff. "Scope refers simply to the extent to which the political organizations and procedures encompass activity in the society" (Huntington 1968:12). 85 The efficacy on the collective contentious action is notoriously difficult to gauge. Our data base shows a low efficacy of protest in Poland.

34 3.2. Identity re-construction and institutional building through collective protest actions. Charles Bright and Susan Harding, reminiscent of Charles Tilly, observed that: 29 "contests over state activities, boundaries, and structures, popular protests, social movements, and ultimately revolutions must be included as statemaking processes. [...] they are all mechanisms through which politicians and state managers, social and economic elites, and popular groups contest - and in contesting, alter - what the state is, what it shall do, and who shall have access to its resources." 86 Did popular protest, which developed on such a massive scale, became a crucial component of the state building and re-building in post-1989 Poland? It is not easy to answer this question because the direct effects of social protest are not easily measurable. It is very striking, though, that very few contentious collective actions stated as one of their objectives the revolutionary overthrow of the post-1989 socio-political order. As our data base demonstrates, a demand to "modify/reform existing state or public institutions" was voiced only in.6% of protests in 1989, 4.6% ; 4.1% ; 1.3% ; 2.0% A more radical demand to "abolish/replace the post-1989 political order" was practically never voiced. As we pointed out earlier the tenor of the post-communist protest in Poland was decisively reformist. Protesters did not intend to engage in state-building; instead they wanted to influence reformist policies. Furthermore, our data base does not provide much evidence for our initial hypothesis that through protest actions people would forge new identities and set up new organizations. The decisive majority of protest actions were organized by existing organizations, mobilizing people in the name of existing identities. The only exception (discussed in a separate chapter) were youth protests, whose politics, rhetorics, and imagery indicate that the generation gap in Poland is so huge that the reproduction of the polity and society may be endangered Structural (institutional) conditions of collective protest's efficacy In Spring 1993, the Solidarity trade union began a coordinated protest campaign designed to force die government, led by post-solidarity parties, to relax its economic policies. This campaign was successful beyond all expectations: the Suchocka government failed. But success came only when a massive protest campaign was combined with the vote of no-confidence in the Parliament, initiated by Solidarity's Parliamentary caucus. Summarizing the experiences of the Third World countries which attempted major economic adjustment programs, Joan Nelson argues that: Labor alone rarely can stall or drastically modify adjustment programs, although in may win limited concessions. Even in countries where unions are large and well-organized, governments have often faced down their opposition. But where union opposition combines 86 Charles Bright and Susan Harding, Processes of Statemaking and Popular Protest, p. 5.

35 30 with much broader protest, most commonly from the urban popular sector but sometimes also from business, programs have indeed been drastically modified or abandoned. 87 Solidarity's 1993 success suggests another combination of factors: to succeed, a wellcoordinated protest action must be supported by a political action carried out through institutional channels. In brief, (the organizations of) civil society must act together with (the organizations of) political society if they want to maximize their chances of influencing state politics and policymaking. 87 Joan M. Nelson, Conclusions, in: Economic Crisis and Policy Choices, The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World, edited by Joan M. Nelson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990, p. 350.

36 31 Grzegorz Ekiert Department of Government Harvard University Jan Kubik Department of Political Science Rutgers University REBELLIOUS CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE CONSOLIDATION OF DEMOCRACY IN POLAND Table 1: Employment in state administration and local self-government: ' central state's agencies total in central administration 45,463 42,525 42,934 46,062 60, local state administration(a) 29, ,385 29, local self-government 95,897 96, , ,333 total state employment 171, , , , , ,707 Sources: Rocznik Stacystyczny, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, Warszawa: GUS. (a) For local state administration include those employed in 49 provincial offices (urzedy wojewodzkie). Since it includes those employed in 49 provincial offices and in 254 newly created regional offices (urzedy rejonowe). Data do not include employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (employment rose from 145,014 in 1990 to in 1993), Ministry of National Defence (employment and the size of the armed forces decreased from 363,400 in 1990 to 314,400 in 1993) and Ministry of Justice (with employment of 39,739 in 1993) with the exception of employees ofthe Ministerial office (431 in 1991, 469 in and 474 in 1993).

37 Table 2: Net Confidence in Institutions and Organizations: All data are from CBOS' surveys on the representative sample of the Polish population. Net confidence is the difference between those who think that the activity of a particular institution or organization is consistent with well-being and interests of society and those who think it is not.

38 33 Table 3: Voters Participation in Elections in Poland: Elections 1984 local 1985 nation 1988 local 1989 nation 1990 local 1990 presid 1991 nation 1993 nation 1994 local I round 74.9 % 78.9 % 55.0 % 62.7 % 42.3% 60.6% 43.0% 52.1% 33.8% II round 25.0 % 52.4% Table 4: Net approval of specific forms of protest 4 Forms of protest Petitions, letters Posting posters Strikes Street demonstration Boycott of state decisions Occupying public buildings Actively resisting police Sources: J.P. Gieorgica.PolskalokalnawewiadzvPZPR, Warszawa: UniwersytetWarszawski 1991, Rocznik Statystyczny Warszawa: GUS Sources: W. Adamski. Afiliacje zwiazkowe. stosunek do protestow i wartosci obywateiskich iako przejaw konfliktu interesow. in: W. Adamski at all, Polacy 88. Dynamika konfliktu a szanse reform, Warszawa 1989, pp ; K. Jasiewicz. From Protest and Repression to the Free Elections, in: W. Adamski ed.. Societal Conflict and Systemic Change. The Case of Poland , Warszawa: IFIS PAN 1993, p. 131; CBOS. Opinia publiczna o roznych formach protestow spolecznych i skierowanych przeciw ni represjom. Warszawa, February Net approval is the difference between those who think that citizens should have the right to use a specific form of action and those who mink they should not.

39 Table 5: Met approval of state actions against different forms of protest' Types of Action Police action against street demonstrations Harsh penalties for resisting the police Ban on protests and demonstrations Using the military to break up strikes Table 6: Acceptance of unconventional political action in selected countries 5 country Demonstrations Boycotts Occupations POLAND 67% 56% 19% Britain 41% 35% 12% Finland 57% 41% 16% France 52% 43% 28% Germany 44% 34% 11% Italy 43% 30% 14% Switzerland 65% 44% 32% USA 68% 62% 24% 5 Sources the same as for table 2. Net approval of state action is the difference between those who support the state's right to employ a specific repressive measure and those who who do not. 6 Source: E. Hann Hastings and P.K. Hastings, eds.. Index to International Public Opinion Westport: Greenwood Press 1984 and S.H. Barness, M. Kaase, at al.. Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies. Beverly Hills: Sage 1979.

40 35 Table 7: Post-1989 protest events in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and former East Germany Poland Slovakia Hungary Former East Germany Table 8: The number of protest events in Poland (by category) 3 Year Single Protest Events % % % % % Series of Protest Events % % % % 6 2.4% Protest Campaigns % % % % % N = Total Number of Protest Events Data for Slovakia. Hungary, and the former GDR include only those protest actions held before the elections in each country. (Parliamentary elections were held on September 30-October in Slovakia, ana on May 8 and in Hungary. General elections -ere held on October 16, 1994 in Germany). 8 The number of protest events recorded in our database differs from figures found in other sources due to a specific definition of the protest event we accepted. For the purpose of our project we assume that a protest event may include the activities of several separate groups or organizations. The activities of different groups are considered to be a pan of the same protest event if: (1) they relate to the same grievances and (2) take place at the same time without any considerable delays.

41 36 Table 9: Scope ox protest Table 10: Numbers of participants

42 Table 11: Duration of protest events in Poland 37

43 Table 12: Organizations leading or sponsoring protest actions Sponsoring Organizations Political parties % % 5 1.7% % % Solidarity Trade Union % % % % % OPZZ (post communist federation) 1.3% 7 2.3% % % % Other labor unions % % % % % Solidarity % % % % % Peasant organizations 6 3.2% % % % ii 3.8% Interest groups/ Social movements % % % % % Radical political/ extra-parliamentary movements?2 7.0% % % % % data unavailable % % % % % N = all protest events

44 Graph 1 : Protest Strategies