The Polish Crisis and Myrdal's Model of Circular Causation

After analysing the structural nature of the Polish crisis, Myrdal's model of economic underdevelopment as due to a self-reinforcing rather than self-correcting social process is applied to Poland. Poland's cumulative backwardness is a permanent rather than a transient feature of her economic, administrative and political life and affects the mass public as well as the leaders and middle-rank officials. Many of those who seek reforms do not support the political system, while many who support the political system do not favour reform. The predicament of how to break the vicious circle of self-perpetuating backwardness poses intractable problems for the reformers.