Suchergebnisse

"The paper concentrates on the endogenous factors involved in both the 'unexpected collapse' of soviet type regimes and the trajectories of their transformations. The author focuses on 'ideologically designed' types of social structures which, quite unintentionally, created favourable conditions for the emergence of group interests' consciousness in basic social classes. In some countries, and in Poland in particular, these class interests proved to be successful in challenging the efficiency and legitimacy of the socialist system. In spite of changes and adaptations in the course of their evolution, these inherited interests and, associated with them, systemic preferences, are still powerful challenges to the strategies and outcomes of liberal market society and democracy. In the first chapter this thesis is critically confronted with the relevant sociological and politological theories of post-socialist 'transitions' and 'transformations'. What follows further are empirical analyses aimed at the verification and interpretation of the principal hypothesis. Thus chapter 2 describes structural demographic peculiarities of the East European Societies as a background of system-challenging interest formation; chapter 3 shows the birth, social composition and evolution (through the 1980's) of conflicting interest between the Polish Solidarity movement and the 'people of power', chapter 4 presents the further stages of the Polish political conflict after the 1989 breakthrough; chapter 5 reveals the empirical indicators of interest articulation in the period of transition to market economy; the three remaining chapters deal with (a) the social groups preferences toward privatization of the Polish economy; (b) the differentiation of 'acquisitive' and threatened group interests as measured by approval or disapproval of privatization; (c) the evolution of basic social groups preferences toward the state versus private form of ownership in the economy." (author's abstract)