Past is still present: Micro-level comparisons of conventional vs. transitional economic voting in three Polish elections

Using survey data from three Polish parliamentary elections, we provide the first systematic micro-level test contrasting a standard incumbency-based model of economic voting with a transitional economic voting model in the post-communist context. To do so, we introduce a novel temporal component to micro-level studies of economic voting that supplements standard short-term retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved in the past 12 months?”) with longer “transitional” retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved since the collapse of communism?”). Our analyses reveal a nuanced picture suggesting multiple paths for economic influences on voting in Poland. We find evidence consistent with the standard incumbency-based approach, but only for the specific set of evaluations to which the theory is most appropriately applied: short-term retrospective economic evaluations and the vote for incumbent parties. By contrast, the transitional model is strongly supported by evidence that evaluations of changes in economic conditions since the collapse of communism (“long-term economic evaluations”) have an effect on the vote for a range of parties. We demonstrate as well that these results are robust to model specification and generational effects.     

波兰参与中东欧区域合作机制的策略与挑战

波兰是世界上公认的典型的“中等强国”,是中东欧区域实力最强的国家。冷战结束以来,波兰利用自己特殊的地缘优势,积极加强与中欧、东部邻国和广大中东欧国家的合作,创建或参与了“维谢格拉德集团”“东部伙伴关系”“中欧倡议国”组织“三海倡议”等合作机制,力图成为这些合作机制中的核心和引领国家,并希望借助这些合作机制,加强波兰的影响力。波兰对中东欧区域合作的积极参与和倡导,极大地加强了“大海之间”国家的合作,但由于波兰综合实力有限,加上中东欧各国的国家利益具有较大差异,并普遍存在对俄罗斯的能源依赖,波兰在实现战略目标时面临巨大的限制和挑战。如果波兰试图在区域合作中四处出击,平均用力,反而不利于其发挥“中等强国”的影响力。     

波兰总统选举后俄波关系走向分析

2010年7月4日,科莫罗夫斯基当选波兰新一届总统,他将调整前任莱赫.卡钦斯基实行的内外政策。波兰和俄罗斯在历史上就积怨很深,冷战后,波兰加入北约和欧盟,实行疏远、抑制和防范俄罗斯的政策。卡钦斯基对俄的强硬态度以及美波之间在导弹防御系统上进行的合作,引起俄罗斯的强烈不满,两国关系进入冰冻期。科莫罗夫斯基上任后,两国关系有望回暖,但波兰依靠美国提高防御能力、压制俄罗斯的战略不会改变。表面友好、暗中对抗将是俄波两国关系的主旋律。     

Sectoral dimensions of Poland's investment development path revisited

The purpose of the present paper is to determine the changes of the sector and industry structure of FDI and to confront the observed patterns with the hypotheses or predictions derived from the IDP model. At the heart of the IDP model lies the concept of net outward investment (NOI). The NOI position (NOIP), broken down by the main sectors and component industries of the Polish economy, is analyzed for the period of 1996–2016. We develop a conceptual framework of the sectoral shifts in the composition of NOIP along its different stages. Subsequently, our panel regression analysis indicates that the relative share of a sector in inward and outward FDI stocks is positively related to its level of technological intensity and its level of service intensity.     

Think Tank Involvement in Foreign Policymaking in the Czech Republic and Poland

Studies on foreign policy think tanks have too often remained disconnected from the analysis of foreign policy outcomes. Yet, investigating the development, functions and influence of think tanks can provide valuable insights into the context in which foreign policy is formulated. The Czech Republic and Poland represent interesting comparative cases in this regard: while Polish think tanks are more numerous and tend to be better placed in international rankings, they are less involved in the policymaking process than their Czech counterparts. This contrast has mainly to do with the sociology of foreign policy elites and the role of political parties in both countries.     

The European ‘Other’ in Poland’s Conservative Identity Project

Since taking office in November 2015, Poland’s conservative government has pressed for a sweeping reinterpretation of the past, and a re-envisioning of the future, of the political community. This conservative identity project idealises the allegedly fully sovereign Poland of the interwar period and repudiates the normative commitments underpinning Poland’s accession to the European Union. The worldview of the conservative government’s liberal critics, by contrast, represents a fusion of the inclusive nationalism asserted in opposition to communist rule with the affirmation of a European identity. The reawakening of historically resonant debates about the nature of Poland’s European-ness, emphasizing the centrality of the (Western) European ‘other’ in Poland’s national idea, carries significant implications for its relations within the international environment.     

“An orgy of licence?” Democracy and property redistribution in Poland and the Baltics in their international context, 1918–1926

The article argues that property redistribution was a major tool of democratization and nationalization in Poland and the Baltics. It provided governments with a means to give peasants a stake in the new democratic states, thus empower the new titular nations and at the same time marginalize former elites, who became national minorities. The most significant acts of property redistribution were the land reforms passed between 1919 and 1925, which achieved the status of founding charters of the new states. Activists of the disenfranchised minorities conceptualized minority protection as the “Magna Carta” of the international order, which should contain the principle of national self-determination and thus safeguard private property, the protection of which was not clearly regulated by international law. By examining the contingencies of the aftermath of the war in East Central Europe as well as discussions about changing conceptions of property ownership in both East Central and Western Europe, the article shows that land reform was meant to counter Bolshevism, but, at the same time, created the impression abroad that the new states themselves displayed revolutionary tendencies and did not respect private property – an image that became a significant argument of interwar territorial revisionists.     

Repertoires of industrial conflict in a modern city. Łódź, Central Poland 1861-1921

ABSTRACT

This article examines the changing patterns of industrial conflict in a rapidly modernizing Eastern European city, focusing on a multi-ethnic industrial hub. I follow repertoires of contention in four crucial moments characterized by shifting scales of the geopolitical embeddedness of the city: (1) an early Luddite riot of 1861 in the Polish autonomous sub-state within the Russian Empire, (2) the first massive labor protest and the following pogrom of 1892 in the city already fully subsumed under the imperial governance, (3) a failed revolution of 1905 with a sophisticated feedback loop between party politics and street emotions, (4) mobilization practices during the German military occupation during the IWW culminating in the tram workers strike of 1917, (5) developing forms of industrial bargaining in the early Polish state after 1918. This broad picture spanning over 60 years (1861–1921) is grounded in the existing secondary literature, extensive queries of primary sources such as administration reports, court proceedings and petitions, and the analysis of political leaflets and biographical testimonies of the working class militants. Such a cross temporal comparison brings a broader outlook on the labor unrest in Russian Poland and beyond, which before was researched only in a fragmented manner.     

Residual history: memory and activism in modern Poland

This article examines the divide between national and local collective memory in Poland and investigates the role of “memory activists” in mediating and exploiting this divide. It narrows its focus to the ethnic cleansing of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) from 1943 to 1944 and the forced relocation of Ukrainians in Poland, Operation Vistula, in 1947. It surveys local and national newspapers to understand competing interpretations and analyzes what incidents (e.g. protests, disputes, commemorations, reenactments, etc.) related to these events take place in local communities. It highlights the many actors, “memory activists,” and associations involved in pushing specific, often ahistorical, interpretations of these events – motivated by political gain, careerism, or personal conviction. It uses the theoretical works of Maurice Halbwachs and Karl Mannheim to effectively distinguish between local and national phenomenon and to elucidate the various nuances of collective memory.     

The Limits of Tolerance: Nation–State Building and What It Means for Minority Groups

Abstract

When we think of the most egregious forms of intolerance directed against minority communities we tend to associate them with particularly despicable regimes, such as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where racism, ideology or some special route to development is often held to blame, or where ultra-nationalism swamps positive tendencies towards democracy and a civil society. In this essay Levene proposes a partial corrective to this view with reference to the supposedly ‘good’ nation–state derived from the western liberal model. He considers the behaviour of two such states at their inception, Poland and Israel, with regard to two minorities, Jews and Arabs, with the Jews providing linkage between the two state trajectories. Levene charts their respective rejections of bi-national or multinational development, and suggests that the fact that both states today maintain a modicum of tolerance towards their residual Jewish and Arab minorities is more the result of (paradoxical) good luck than of conscious, benevolent design. In conclusion Levene proposes that the very nature of the modern nation–state militates against genuine pluralistic tolerance, a goal that requires a massive structural re-ordering of contemporary society away from global economies to a sustainability of human scale.