‘The Open Church’ and ‘the Closed Church’ and the discourse on Jews in Poland between 1989 and 2000

This paper analyzes the attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland towards the Jews and anti-Semitism during the first decade since the political transformation of 1989–1990. After discussing briefly the main patterns of the development of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland in the modern era I examine two opposing positions within the institutionalized Roman Catholic Church — the ‘Open Church’ and the ‘Closed Church’ — that emerged in the aftermath of Poland's regaining full sovereignty in 1989. The ‘Open Church’ and the ‘Closed Church’ represent opposite views on the role of the church in society and on the dialogue with Jews and Judaism and on anti-Semitism.The ‘Open Church’ is a relatively recent phenomenon that originated in the circles of the layman progressive Catholic intelligentsia in the post-1945 period. It is the first visible formation within Roman Catholic Church in Poland, which advocates dialogue with Jews and Judaism and is engaged in the eradication of anti-Semitic attitudes. The ‘Closed Church,’ which represents the formation of the ‘besieged fortress’ was historically strongly intertwined with the exclusivist ethno-nationalistic political movement of the National Democracy. The remnants of this fusion were still visible in the statements of high rank clergy in the 1990s and early 2000. This formation ignores the concept of the dialogue with Jews and Judaism advocated by Pope John Paul II and among its supporters there are still many holders of anti-Semitic views. The paper provides various examples of anti-Semitic occurrences and pronouncements of the 1990s and it discusses various initiatives aimed at the facilitating dialogue between Christians and Jews introduced by the members of the ‘Open Church’ in the 1990s. It assess the importance of the ‘Open Church’ in the eradication of anti-Semitic views and the extent of the influence of the ‘Closed Church’ on both the clergy and Catholic community at large.     

Crucial relationship between the privatized sector and the generic private sector in post-communist privatization: Determinants of economic performance

This article looks at the issue — largely neglected in the transition literature — of the relative weights of the privatized sector and the generic private sector (of de novo private firms) in the emerging private sector of post-communist economies in transition. The present writer posits that the relative weight of each in the aggregate share of a private sector (generally expanding over time as transition progresses) strongly influences economic performance, both during correctional recession and during recovery and expansion period. Another, interrelated issue considered here is the interaction between the evolving institutional framework and the expansion of the generic private sector, that is the most dynamic one in the transition economy. It is true that the interaction between institutions and performance has been a staple of a very large number of books, articles, and papers.However, this article concentrates on one component of a private sector only, that is the generic private sector. But at the same time it looks beyond the ‘Holy Trinity’ of transition (stabilization, liberalization, and privatization) towards a wider institutional framework of political liberty, law and order. The foregoing wider framework, and the emerging general trust, matters as much — if not more — for the present writer as the standard transition program.It is the relative dynamics of both components of the private sector, affected by both standard transition programs and the above-mentioned wider institutional framework, that is of primary importance for the economic performance in post-communist transition. In the last part of the article I will try also to answer, tentatively, the question under which circumstances the wider institutional framework may emerge in the transition process.     

The middle class in the Czech reforms: the interplay between policies and social stratification

Following the assumption that the middle class is important in the transition from communism to a democratic market society as its leading actor and guarantor of social integration, this paper presents evidence of the benefits it has gained from economic and social reforms. As these have turned out to be rather modest, it is likely that the middle class will be more reserved in its political support for a rigorous transformation. Special attention is given to the distribution and redistribution of income in which the middle seems to have been neglected, in comparison to the lowest and upper strata which have become better off. Evidence based on official statistics is complemented by a survey of attitudes which document both the still strong endorsement of the middle class with regard to the implemented changes and a certain split between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ component of this important social category.     

The unbearable lightness of membership: Bulgaria and Romania after the 2007 EU accession

This paper focuses on the current political and socio-economic situation in the two most recent EU member states, Bulgaria and Romania. Overall, the post-accession period in both countries has been comparable to that in the East-Central European members that had joined the Union on 1 May 2004. However, there have been some significant differences in the post-accession path of Bulgaria and Romania, which set them apart from the rest of the EU-10, as well as among themselves. For instance, the problem of corruption has been a particularly salient theme for the political elites of both countries and it led to the paralysis of the cabinet in Romania during the first year of its membership and to the rise of powerful populist alternatives in Bulgaria. What has probably been even more distinguishing in the cases of Bulgaria and Romania is their apparent inability to swiftly deal with the political and social challenges emerging after accession, as well as to adequately respond to the process of Europeanization. The main reason for this has been the unfinished political and socio-economic transformation of both countries, accompanied by the consolidation of certain ‘reserve domains’, occupied by the former secret services and semi-mafia structures.     

The ghosts of the past, the dreamlands of the future … or why fantasies are bound to fail in socialism and the market: The case of public health policy development in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia

The transition ‘from planned to market economy’ in the former Soviet Union and in several countries in post-communist Europe is one of the most sweeping social transformations of the second half of the 20th century. It is widely accepted that this transformation was driven by a shared belief in the market's superior ability to deliver economic growth, to create wealth and contribute to the well-being of the populations after the demise of the defunct socialist ideology. However, the element of utopian fantasy undergirding the grand projects of socialism and the market is usually ignored, often with detrimental results. The study draws on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to propose an alternative reading of the process of transition, as an exchange of one powerful fantasy for another. My key contention is that as long as the common utopian dream of social harmony underlying both projects will not be recognised for what it is, which is in itself an unattainable desire of the human psyche, the illusory dreamlands will continue to exist and so will their violent political consequences. The study uses the example of public health policy development in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia to illustrate how unacknowledged fantasy leads to violent utilitarianism as it was manifested in socialism, and is now repeated differently but no less tyrannically in the market. In conclusion, I argue for integrating fantasy as a constitutive element of political projects and explore the possibility of the autonomous (self-determined) mode of governance that Cornelius Castoriadis (1987/2005) theorised on and juxtaposed to the heteronomous ways of organising ruled by master signifiers present in various ideologies.     

Hybridisation of business norms as intercultural dialogue: The case of two post-Soviet countries

This article provides an in-depth exploration of the nature of the cultural shift in business norms in two former Soviet Union republics: Estonia and Belarus. While questioning the linearity of existing models describing social–cultural change and, drawing on Lotman's model (1990), the paper points to a complex interplay of past and present, Western and local traditions in the transformational context of the post-Soviet countries. The analysis is based on a set of semi-structured in-depth interviews with Belarusian and Estonian entrepreneurs, who conveyed their attitudes towards transition and current management practices in the region. Exploring the issue on both a temporal (pre-Soviet and post-Soviet) and a spatial (Western/non-Western) axis the paper discusses the relationship between the ‘importing’ and ‘exporting’ of values, which take place across each of them, and concludes with what the analysis can tell us about cultural transformation more generally.     

Business Power and Protest: Argentina’s Agricultural Producers Protest in Comparative Context

The rare but important phenomenon of business protest has not been adequately addressed in either literature on contentious politics or literature on business politics. Using Argentina’s 2008 agricultural producers’ protests as an illustration, this paper develops the concept of business protest and situates it within the classic framework of business’ instrumental power, exercised through political actions, and structural power, arising from individual profit-maximizing behavior. Business protest entails public and/or disruptive collective action in either the economic arena or the societal arena. Business actors are most likely to consider protest in order to defend their core interests when their structural power is weak and when they lack sources of instrumental power that enhance the effectiveness of ordinary political actions like lobbying. I apply the business power and protest framework to explain the Argentine producers’ failure to influence export tax policy from 2002 through early 2008 and the emergence of protest against a 2008 tax increase. I then examine how the producers’ protests contributed to the reform’s repeal. The producers’ protests are an exceptional example of business protest in which the participants lacked key organizational resources that facilitate collective action.     

In the Gap the State Left: Policy Feedback,Collective Behavior,and Political Participation in Zambia

In advanced industrial democracies, evidence suggests a positive relationship between inclusive public policy, collective behavior, and political participation. Yet Africa, which generally exhibits high levels of collective behavior, often has exclusionary policies and variable rates of political participation. Using Afrobarometer data and qualitative case analysis in Zambia, this paper argues that the links between collective behavior and political participation differ in African countries due to lower government capacity and weaker structures of accountability linking politicians to policy outcomes. Employing a policy feedback framework, it demonstrates that the policy context in which collective behavior emerges determines the extent to which it influences political participation. Specifically, low levels of service provision generate higher levels of collective behavior, indicating that communities organize in response to need. The extent to which this collective behavior results in political participation, however, depends in part on citizens’ political efficacy.     

Crime, organised crime and corruption in post-communist Europe and the CIS

This article examines the incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence on the crime, organised crime and corruption situations in post-communist states, and then seeks to explain the apparent increase in all three in early post-communism. Among the factors considered are the impact of weak states and economies, neo-liberalism, globalisation, Schengen and Fortress Europe, the Communist legacy (the ‘ghost from the past’), and collusion. The article then examines the dynamics of criminality and malfeasance in the region, and provides evidence to suggest that the crime and corruption situation has stabilised or even improved in most post-communist countries in recent times. The factors considered for explaining this apparent improvement are the role of external agents (notably the EU), the move from transition to consolidation, and the role of political will.     

Enter the dragon: China's courtship of Hong Kong, 1982–1999

From 1982, when the Chinese government first signalled its intention to take back Hong Kong, to the actual transfer of sovereignty in 1997, the PRC engaged in a long-term campaign to “win friends and influence people” in the British colony. Hoping to prevent a large-scale flight of capital and manpower, and wishing to cultivate a core group of sympathetic local notables as future political leaders, Beijing issued frequent pledges of non-interference in Hong Kong's affairs and adopted classic “united front” tactics — flattering, cajoling, and otherwise wooing potential supporters while snubbing (and sometimes smearing) outspoken critics. Despite intensely negative local reaction to the 1989 “Tiananmen Massacre”, over the long haul Beijing largely succeeded in disarming public fears of a heavyhanded Chinese takeover. Consequently, the handover itself was an extremely calm, tranquil affair. And in the first 2 years of Hong Kong's new status as a “Special Administrative Region” of China, the PRC earned generally high marks for honoring its pledge to uphold the principle of “one country, two systems”.     

Taiwan and the Soviet Union during the Cold War

Taking into account recently published evidence on Taiwan's relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, this article examines the official and secret contacts between Moscow and Taipei from 1949 to 1988. It argues that despite some consideration given to a possible cooperation, Cold War hostility suited Taiwan and the Soviet Union more than collaboration. Taipei resorted to the ‘Soviet card’ in the 1970s to hinder Sino–American rapprochement, but never abandoned anti-Sovietism as the foundation of its diplomacy. The Soviet Union, for its part, prioritized normalization of relations with China and avoided rapprochement with the ROC, which could have only further strained ties with the PRC and accelerated the formation of the Sino–US united front against Moscow.     

Putin as a flexible politician. Does he imitate Stalin?

The article is about Putin's ‘Jewish anomaly’. Against all expectations, Putin during his tenure as president of the Russian Federation showed in various ways his concern about the life of Jews in his country.     

The micro-politics of norm contestation between the OSCE and Kazakhstan: square pegs in round holes

Norm contestation by local actors has emerged in recent years as an explanation for the failure of norm diffusion. This article contributes to the literature on norm contestation by analysing how norms diffused by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) pertaining to election observation and free and fair voting are re-constituted and contested by domestic actors in Kazakhstan. The study contributes to the idea of ‘constitutive localisation’ by emphasising a more fundamental level of disagreement beyond just congruence between the diffused norm and local beliefs; by demonstrating contestation can occur in the later stages in the norm diffusion cycle; by focusing on the micro-politics of contestation by local actors involved in the implementation of diffused norms; and by revealing how norm contestation is not necessarily a process of emancipatory politics, but a strategic act to serve authoritarian consolidation. Utilising a four-fold framework, the analysis illustrates how norms, while initially accepted by Kazakhstani authorities, are reconstituted through political discourse and/or practice, creating the moment of contestation. While this contestation is instrumentalised by political elites for their own advantage, it also remains an important element of agency within a normative order which they had little previous control over.     

ONLY GOOD FENCES KEEP GOOD NEIGHBOURS! THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF MINISTRY–AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS AT THE SCIENCE–POLICY NEXUS IN GERMAN FOOD SAFETY POLICY

This article makes a further contribution to opening the ‘black box’ of micropractices in ministry–agency relationships. We argue that the mechanisms that come into play in the course of institutionalizing agencification reforms – such as renegotiating mutual roles and rules in ministry–agency interactions – are only poorly covered in the existing literature. To adequately address the negotiated and contingent nature of de facto agency autonomy and political control, we develop an interpretive approach based on the concept of ‘boundary work’. The empirical focus is on ministry–agency interactions at the science–policy nexus in the contested policy field of food safety. By studying actors' stories about the institutionalization processes following the fundamental reorganization of the German food safety administration in the wake of the BSE crisis from a longitudinal perspective, we show how actors manage boundary conflicts via increasingly differentiated backstage coordination.     

Is the East European “underclass” feminized?

Results of national surveys carried out in East-European countries convincingly showed that after the fall of communism the gender gap in earnings remained substantial. Following the same analytical framework here I explore a range of issues concerning the gender gap in membership in what I define as the “underclass” in 6 post-communist societies. The basic question is to determine whether or not such a gap exits. I find considerable cross-national variation in the odds of female/male membership in the underclass: women in Poland, Russia and Hungary appear to be most heavily over-represented in this category, while in Bulgaria and Slovakia, the effect of gender does not exist. In addition, the explanation for this gap cannot be found in the intergenerational transmission of poverty, in differences in marital status, and other social–demographic attributes commonly employed in quantitative studies. It is only the lower educational status of women, living in rural areas, and older age, which significantly interact with relatively higher representation of women in the underclass. After controlling for several characteristics of a person’s socio–economic position I found that in four countries, namely in Poland, Russia, Romania and Hungary, a statistically significant net effect of gender remains which provides solid evidence for the feminization of the underclass in these societies.     

Globalization: From domination to resistance

Recent political reforms in the Gulf Arab countries have been variously understood as regime survival strategies, correlates of economic globalisation, and even the end result of US pressure to democratise. This paper examines the possible role played by the introduction of modern information and communication technologies (icts) in stimulating political liberalisation in the Gulf Arab states. Rather than attempting to quantify their democratising impact, this paper utilises the concept of agency, examining how the range of agents of ict production and diffusion in the region have sought to influence the actual impact upon political space. It concludes that modern icts have demonstrated the potential to expand the existing public sphere, and to create new opportunities for liberal political activity. However, the particular configuration of agency in the countries in question has meant that the state and its allies have retained a significant degree of control over the extent and nature of the political space, a process in which local society may have in some instances collaborated. Thus, while the introduction and diffusion of new icts may have contributed to the pressures which led to some of the political reforms in evidence in the Gulf Arab states, one cannot argue that they amount, at least as yet, to a sustained and effective attack on illiberal political structures. The first part of this paper surveys the existing body of literature in an effort to devise a framework for the subsequent study of two principal contemporary icts (satellite television and the internet) in the Gulf Arab states.     

Regionalism and African agency: negotiating an Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and SADC-Minus

This article investigates the regional dynamics of African agency in the case of negotiations on an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and a group of Southern African countries, known as SADC-Minus. I argue that these negotiations were shaped by a pattern of differentiated responses to the choice set on offer under the EPAs by SADC-Minus policy makers and by a series of strategic interactions and power plays between them. I offer two contributions to an emerging literature on the role of African agency in international politics. First, I argue for a clear separation between ontological claims about the structure–agency relationship and empirical questions about the preferences, strategies and influence of African actors. Second, I suggest that, in order to understand the regional dynamics of African agency, it is important to pay close attention to the diversity and contingency of African preferences and to the role of both power politics and rhetorical contestation in regional political processes.     

Constrained, pragmatic pro-democratic appraising constitutional review courts in post-Soviet politics

This paper conceptualizes the behavior of higher courts in the politics of former Soviet republics and attempts to set up a framework for the study of democratic contributions by post-Soviet constitutional courts. Although political expediency is noted to be the central driving force behind the judges’ decisions in politically sensitive cases, as courts are subject to different constraints from quasi-autocratic executives, it is argued that constitutional review tribunals are generally pro-democratic in their political orientation and that they can become the allies of pro-democratic parties in transitional periods of elite change. To support this proposition, this paper proceeds from a series of theoretical arguments to empirical observation of judicial behavior in times of political uncertainty, the latter being a perfect test for probing the political orientation of the courts.     

The Politics of Subversion in Development Practice: An Exploration of Microfinance in Nepal and Vietnam

This paper considers the ways in which beneficiaries of microfinance programmes in two Asian countries routinely transgress programme protocols and regulations, and fail to conform to the entrepreneurial subjectivities the programmes seek to promote. It aims to develop an interpretive framework for these practices. Specifically, we take up Abu-Lughod's injunction to ‘use resistance as a diagnostic of power’ in order to explore the political rationalities and governmental technologies of microfinance, as well as the cultural ideologies and material conditions in particular locales. We then consider the difficult question of political agency by drawing on prevailing theories of resistance to develop a typology that distinguishes among three overlapping kinds of transgressive practices. The objective ultimately is to explore how this interpretive framework might contribute to imagining more politically engaged and responsive models of development, as well as to critiquing the market-oriented foundation of existing models.     

Return to Europe – A double-edged sword for notaries? The case of Poland and Hungary

Using Poland as a case study, the Polish sociologist Piotr Sztompka has demonstrated most persuasively the significance of trust (and distrust) as a key to the analysis and understanding of socio-political and socio-cultural developments in Central Europe in the transition to democracy. Sztompka's study ends upbeat with a brief glance at the situation in the late 1990s. Had the book been written a decade later, it would have revealed that the path ahead has remained rocky. Public trust in governments, politicians and public institutions generally has remained a scarce commodity.It is against this background that the restoration of an independent civil law notariat, as an integral part of the ‘return to Europe’ project, has occurred in Poland, and, mutatis mutandis, in other Central European countries. However, following a first decade of successful transformation from state employment to liberal profession, notaries in Central Europe now find that it is precisely because they have embraced the status of Western-style liberal professionals that they are coming under attack by both the European Commission and their own national governments. As a result, they have had to embark on a process of reconsideration of their position in order to ensure the profession's survival. This paper traces and compares developments in Poland and Hungary. As can be expected there is a strong common denominator between them. But equally and more interestingly, there are distinctive national features which now, as ‘bloc history’ recedes, are coming increasingly to the fore.