Why Hungary and Poland differed in 1989: The role of medium-term frames in explaining the outcomes of democratic transition

This article has two goals. First, it seeks to enhance our understanding of the factors underlying the divergent outcomes of the round-table negotiations that accompanied transition from communism in Hungary and Poland. It argues that existing explanations emphasizing aspects of the immediate negotiating context should be supplemented by a medium-term perspective focusing on the frames through which actors conceived the options available. The second goal is to argue for an understanding of democratization as the outcome of complex, contingent and prolonged processes of interaction among actors and between actors and context. This does not imply that parsimonious modelling is not useful in democratization studies. But to understand democratization processes fully, modelling approaches need to be combined with more configurative study of historical processes.     

Gender quotas,candidate background and the election of women: A paradox of gender quotas in open-list proportional representation systems

We study the effects of mandatory (legislated) gender quotas in Poland, a country utilising an open-list proportional representation electoral system. We use a unique data set comprising multiple characteristics of all candidates running in two consecutive elections to the lower chamber of the Polish parliament (the Sejm). The first of them (held in 2007) was the last pre-quota election and the second (held in 2011) the first post-quota one. We show that quotas have an inherently paradoxical nature: they cause a substantial increase in the number of female candidates but the increase is accompanied by a sharp decline in women's electoral performance. This regularity holds even if we account for multiple indicators of candidate background, including previous political experience.     

Application of Theil group logit methods to district-level vote shares: tests of prospective and retrospective voting in the 1991, 1993, and 1997 Polish elections

Political scientists often wish to test hypotheses in the context of district-level vote-share models of elections involving more than two parties. Although a group logit framework for estimating such models was developed many years ago by Henri Theil, the complexity of its variance–covariance structure has prevented it from being widely applied. The authors demonstrate how data can be transformed to take account of the Theil variance–covariance structure so that seemingly unrelated regression can be used to estimate vote-share equations on either an intra- or inter-election basis. This method offers a simpler and more accessible way to analyze multiparty elections than the method proposed recently by Katz and King [Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 97 (1999) 15]. The demonstration involves testing hypotheses about incumbency (retrospective) and policy (prospective) voting in the 1991, 1993, and 1997 Polish elections. The authors find that the estimations favor the policy voting hypothesis.     

Technocracy,Politicization, and Noninvolvement: Politics of Expertise in the European Regulation of Chemicals

This article addresses the relationship between scientific expertise and policy in European chemicals regulation. We argue that the role of scientific expertise in the European regulation of chemicals varies across decision‐making levels, countries, and stages of the policy process. Our case study of the role of scientific expertise in the regulation of brominated flame retardants illustrates considerably different manifestations of this interconnected process across regulatory arenas, even though this case concerns a single group of substances. On the European Union level, we find a mix of technocracy and politicization; in Sweden, a clear‐cut politicization; and in Poland, noninvolvement. Such differences can be explained by a combination of factors, in particular frame dominance, and mobilization of advocacy coalitions.     

From internationalism to the European Union: An ideological change in the Polish post-communist party?

The Polish post-communist party Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (Socjaldemokracja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, SDRP) which survived almost unchanged in the dynamic Polish political scene of the 1990s was one of the leading political parties after 1989. This paper will attempt to explain the ideological journey, which has been taken by the former high-ranking Polish United Workers' Party members after 1989. Their journey seems to start at the point of internationalism and socialism and ends in the victorious battle to join the European Union. Was this a simple modernized adjustment of the internationalist ideology or an opportunistic choice made in order to survive in the new political and social circumstances? Was choosing a pro-EU policy a choice or a necessity? This analysis will attempt to answer the above questions and describe this phenomenon of change or may be just an ideological continuity.     

The fragility of an independent judiciary: Lessons from Hungary and Poland–and the European Union

When the European Union was founded, it was assumed that all Member States admitted as consolidated democracies would maintain their constitutional commitments. In recent years, Hungary and Poland have challenged this premise as elected autocratic governments in those countries have captured independent institutions and threatened long-term democracy. The judiciaries of these countries have been hard hit. In this paper, we trace what has happened to the judiciaries in Hungary and Poland, showing how first the constitutional courts and then the ordinary judiciary have been brought under the control of political forces so that there is no longer a separation of law and politics. We also explore why the European Union has so far not been able to stop this process. In the end, the European judiciary, particularly the Court of Justice, is attempting a rescue of national judiciaries, but the results are so far unclear.     

‘The battlefield is in Brussels’: Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four in its global context

ABSTRACT

A common popular and scholarly opinion of Islamophobia in the so-called ‘Visegrád Four’ or ‘V4’ (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) sees it as caused by circumstances unique to Eastern Europe. Specifically to blame, it is alleged, is a distinctive local history of intolerance, especially antisemitism, and the fact that under socialism these countries were exempt from the post-war soul-searching that took place in Western Europe. Kalmar’s paper, instead, decentres Islamophobia in the V4 by considering it less as a limited regional phenomenon, and more in terms of how it is linked to Islamophobia in other European Union member states and the United States. As elsewhere, foremost among the conditions that encourage Islamophobia in the V4 is the alienation of certain publics on the periphery, which is an effect of global neoliberal policies. These have generated, along with Islamism and Islamophobia, a reinvented, essentializing discourse of difference between Eastern and Western Europe. In spite of that alleged difference, however, Islamophobic populism in the V4 is not just a regional threat to liberal democracy, but targets all of the European Union and the world.     

Semi-peripheral Islamophobias: the political diversity of anti-Muslim discourses in Poland

ABSTRACT

Bobako’s paper examines two genres of Polish Islamophobic discourse, a liberal and a nationalist one, and links their specificity to the semi-peripheral position of Poland. It argues that the liberal endorsement of Islamophobia is a way to confirm symbolically Poland’s belonging to ‘the West’ and its commitment to the normative project of European modernity, with its affirmation of individualism, human rights, sexual freedom and secularism. On the other hand, Bobako shows that the Islamophobia of the resurgent nationalist forces in Poland is, paradoxically, the outcome of a rejection of this very project, which is perceived as a threat to national political sovereignty and cultural autonomy. She connects this rejection to Poland’s post-Communist trajectory of economic marginalization and instability, providing a context for the widespread dissatisfaction with Poland’s place in the European Union.     

The Polish underground organization Wolność i Niezawisłość and anti-Jewish pogroms, 1945–6

Tokarska-Bakir’s paper considers the deep-rooted cognitive habits among informers and reporters belonging to the Polish post-war, anti-Communist underground organization Wolno?? i Niezawis?o?? (Freedom and Independence) with regard to their perception of Polish Jews. The organization's archive is preserved in the National Archives in Krakow in Poland, and it thoroughly documents its members' social beliefs and fears. A theory of pogroms formulated by Senechal de la Roche understands the pogrom as an act of social control. Using the archival documents with that theory in mind, Tokarska-Bakir analyses Wolno?? i Niezawis?o?? in relation to the anti-Jewish pogroms that took place in Rzeszów, Krakow and Kielce in the years immediately following the Second World War.     

Germans in Wrocław: “Ethnic minority” versus hybrid identity. Historical context and urban milieu

After 1945, German Breslau was transformed into Ur-Polish Wroc?aw at Stalin’s behest. Most of the remaining prewar population was expelled, and a stable population of a few hundred with German ethnic background is estimated to have lived in the city since then. This paper is based on qualitative analysis of 30 oral history interviews from among the self-defined German minority. It pays close attention to historical context, urban milieu, and salient narratives of identity as shaping forces, which include the suppression of German culture under Communism, prevalent intermarriage between Germans and Poles, and the city’s qualified reinvention as “multicultural” after Polish independence in 1989. Together with the group’s relatively small numbers, these narratives play out in their hybrid approach to ethnicity, often invoking blended cultural practices or the ambiguous geographical status of the Silesian region, to avoid choosing between “national” antipodes of “German” and “Polish.” The results follow Rogers Brubaker’s insight into ethnicity as an essentializing category used to construct groups where individual self-perception may differ; and the concept of “national indifference,” previously applied to rural populations. It also suggests we might better approach circumscribed “minority” identities such as these, by seeing them as a form of “sub-culture.”