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This paper discusses three research perspectives on political culture, civic culture and citizenship: the classic approach of Almond and Verba; contemporary analyses of citizenship referring to the book Civic Culture by Almond and Verba and oriented to the empirical description of social reality; and theoretical analyses of new relational sociology, oriented to the ontology and epistemology of social reality. The authors' analysis leads to two conclusions. Firstly, it is necessary to combine these three approaches – relational social theory with empirical analyses departing from methodological individualism. This requires conducting an empirical analysis, where the basic 'analytical units' – of collection, interpretation and generalization of data – are not separate but combined by relations and networks within which people act. Secondly, Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński's statements are the best starting point for conducting such a new research programme. What is decisive is his systematic, theoretical interest in contemporary agency theories and relationality of citizenship, combined with innovative application of quantitative methods.

The paper presents selected results of the 1996 study of top Polish politicians-members of the 1993-97 Parliament and leaders of those important political parties which failed to get into this Parliament. Presented results pertain to five aspects of politicians' attitudes: (1) opinions on qualities of persons who should be vs. actually are involved in politics, (2) normatively accepted definitions of politics, (3) visions of the good state, (4) visions of democracy, and (5) opinions on what defines political views as being either on the left or on the right. As a result, consistently found across all five domains, there is a strong attitudinal similarity among politicians of differing political parties and of divergent political orientations. This finding is interpreted as reflection of a fundamental track similarity in the way in which Polish politicians perceive the most important tasks confronting the whole political class in times of systemic transformation. Transformational correctness - believing that in such times politicians should have (or at least should display) certain views - might be a strong force behind this similarity.

Die Autoren stellen ihre Untersuchung in die weitere soziologische Perspektive sozialen Wandels. Sie untersuchen strukturelle Veränderungen und Mobilität in Polen und Österreich. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit wird der Art und Weise gewidmet, in der die Berufe in den beiden Studien, die herangezogen werden, klassifiziert worden sind, um die Anforderungen eines so präzise wie möglichen Vergleichs zu erfüllen. Auf der Basis verschiedener offizieller Statistiken und Publikationen und der beiden nationalen Stichproben werden die Veränderungen detailliert dargestellt, die in Österreich und Polen zwischen 1945 und 1971 stattfanden. Im zweiten Teil des Beitrags werden dann die Veränderungen in der Beziehung zwischen Beruf des Vaters, Ausbildung des Sohnes und erstem Beruf des Sohnes mit Hilfe log-linearer Modelle analysiert. (UH)

AbstractLongitudinal data from interviews with Poles of working age conducted in 1988, 1993 and 1998 combined with longitudinal firm‐level data present a detailed view of the transition from a state‐dominated to a market economy. Job losses in state firms and job creation in new private firms are the dominant employment changes, other than retirements from the labour force. In the Polish case, a significant proportion of this movement over the 1988–1998 period involves a spell of unemployment or exit from the labour force before obtaining a private sector job. This results in considerable job competition between workers leaving the state sector and those who are out of the labour force or unemployed. Income differences between the state sector and the de novo sector appear to have little association with mobility. These results suggest that movement to the new private sector is more likely to be the result of job loss than the result of people looking for better, higher paying jobs. Self‐employment plays an important role in the development of the private sector. People working on their own account have higher incomes than wageworkers and are likely to become owners employing additional workers. Incomes are higher in regions with high rates of job creation and depressed in regions with job destruction.

"Data from a longitudinal study of Polish workers interviewed in 1988, 1993 and 1998 are used to test propositions about the connections between employment, attitude, and voting changes during the transition to a market economy. The results show that changes in attitudes about the reforms are associated with changes in voting, with those coming to favor reforms and their consequences voting for liberal parties, and vice versa for those coming to oppose the reforms and/or their consequences. Individuals making a successful transition and residents in areas with more employment in new firms are more likely to switch their attitudes to favor the reforms and vice versa for those who lose their jobs or who live in areas without new firms. " (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

AbstractObjectiveWe investigate the influence of social contexts on democratic attitudes.MethodsWe use a novel survey data set with data from a nationally representative sample of Polish residents (egos) and their friends and acquaintances (alters).ResultsControlling for several factors defined on the ego‐ and alter‐levels, we find a positive relationship between alters' and ego's endorsement of democracy over nondemocratic alternatives. This effect is stronger the higher the number of close friends and acquaintances and when all friends know each other.ConclusionWe find a positive relationship between the average preference of democracy in the social context and an individual endorsement of democracy. Confirmed moderators of this relationship may be cautiously interpreted as measuring the degree to which the context structures political communication between egos and alters.

Poland's major post-Communist party, the SLD, was an electorally successful legacy party during the 1990's. An analysis of Polish National Election Studies data and data from a separate study of new firm creation in Poland indicates their success was built on two important and related factors. One is the growth of new firms, which stimulated the growth of a centrist constituency who voted for parties supporting economic reforms. Second, the SLD adapted to this constituency by themselves becoming more economically liberal, as documented by Grzymala-Busse (2002). A conditional logit model of voter choice in the 1997 and 2001 elections relates votes to the distance between voters' preferences on economic policies and the positions of the competing parties. From this analysis we estimate that if the SLD had remained an ideological non-reformist party as did the KSCM in the Czech Republic and the CPRF in Russia it would have been a far weaker party as measured by vote and seat shares. Without the new firm creation, an ideological SLD cum KSCM could have been electorally successful as was the CPRF. The paper concludes by contrasting the Polish, Czech and Russian post-Communist parties and extending the implications of the results to other developing and industrial economies faced with the need for structural change. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]