Suchergebnisse

Democracy has never been a simple topic nor is there any "one size fits all" model. Instead, democracy (government by the people), like its antithesis, "autocracy" (government by one), has come in many forms since it first appeared in ancient Greece. At its simplest, democracy is exactly what its Greek roots mean: "The people govern". But, there, the simplicity ends. Polities from those earliest Greek city states to the most complex modern societies all call themselves "democracies" even though they differ in what their limits and electoral processes are and how they work. What is consistent in most definitions of democracies is that they have regular ways for citizens to have a voice in their interests and expectations; clear freedoms such as freedom of speech, press, and association; and the "rule of law" which guarantees that their constitutional principles and rights are maintained and laws that are legitimately passed are enforced. This, ultimately, ensures that there are clear limits on what governmental authorities can do. That said, democracy is also a regularly misused term. Some of the least open and most repressive countries in the world have called themselves democracies or People's Democracies. And, there is no "one size fits all" definition of democracy beyond the requirements that "the people," not simply the leaders, control. How and to what degree they can control what is done varies from system to system, as does the process by which they control. ; https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1517/thumbnail.jpg

Poland was the first and one of the most successful transitions from a centralized communist state to a liberal, more Western-style democracy. During the European economic crisis, Poland's economy maintained one of the highest growth rates in the European Union (EU). Its political system stabilized. It has been both an active member of the EU and a strong advocate for liberalization of its eastern neighbors as well as for their inclusion in European initiatives. Its prime minister, Donald Tusk, was the first East European elected head of the Council of Europe in 2014. His successor, Ewa Karpacz, signaled a shift to more social welfare programs aimed at the middle and lower classes. But getting there was not easy. Its early and fast start on democratization and economic reform, as well as reformers' fear of opposition from the Soviet Union or even from the police and military in Poland, created complications that impact Polish politics even today. Since Poland was the first state to begin a transformation out of communism, its new leaders went only as far as they thought the Soviet Union and the rest of the bloc would tolerate. But within months, communism had collapsed everywhere except the Soviet Union, which was clearly too weak to hold back change. So the other former Soviet bloc states went much further much faster. As a result, the Polish political system was a "work in progress" for years, changing its constitution and laws in response to what did and did not work. In the process, Poland went from an uneasy coalition of former communist leaders, Solidarity activists, and experts in 1989, to a system in which the right and then the former communists battled for power, and finally, by the end of its first two decades of democracy, to a stable system with two dominant parties close to the center and a number of smaller parties.

The Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza [PZPR]) suffered what seemed to be a terminal blow in 1989. In elections rigged so that the communists and their old allies were guaranteed 65 percent of the seats in the main house of parliament, the communists did so badly that their old allies deserted them. After what appeared to be a total defeat, all the communist reformers could do was turn the government over to the men and women of Solidarity they had interned and harassed for more than a decade. Then they had to disband themselves and form a new party to inherit the tattered remains of their mantle and resources. Less than four years after what looked like a complete rejection, in the 1993 free parliamentary elections, the successor party to the PZPR, the Social Democrats of Poland (Socjaldemokracja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej [SdRP]), and its coalition, the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej [SLD]), did well enough to dominate the parliament and form a government. Two years later, in 1995, the leader of the SdRP and its coalition's presidential candidate, Aleksander Kwasniewski (a junior member of that last communist government), soundly defeated the Solidarity leader and incumbent president, Lech Wałesa. By 1999, when the coalition turned itself into a party, the SLD was, by far, both the most popular and the most stable party in democratic Poland. As a result, it dominated the parliamentary elections of 2001, leaving Solidarity's old parties so fragmented that they did not get enough of the votes to get seats. In the process, it raised the population's hopes that it could solve Poland's economic problems and bring the same economic boom Poles remembered from 1993 to 1997.

"LEFT, Right, But Always Forward" was this year's election slogan for the Freedom Union, whose leaders went from anti-communist opposition to head the first noncommunist government in Poland in 1989. Today's Polish party leaders show the same lack of concern with traditional political definitions. Back when the Communist Party was voted out, the meaning of the election seemed clear to most voters: the choice was for or against continued communist control. Now, left and right have blurred and compromised. Parties focus on political theory rather than on voters' legitimate concerns about the economy. As a result, last month's elections in Poland presented no clear options for voters.

The Solidarity trade union formed in the shipyards of Gdansk after a summer of strikes called by factory workers in response to price increases on food. At the end of August 1980, the men who had replaced Edward Gierek's elite signed an accord with the striking representatives of what came to be called Solidarity to provide increased benefits, and the right to have a free and independent trade union, to strike, and to have media that reported information more freely. It rapidly became a national movement that forced the Communist government to make many concessions. In the next fifteen months, while the government treated this first independent trade union in a communist country as legal, other citizens' organizations formed, the media discussed political and economic ideas that had long been censored, and the government gave in on more and more political issues. Then, on December 13, 1981, in response to increasing pressure from the rest of the Communist Bloc to stop the transformation and a failing economy, the Communist regime declared martial law, "a state of war," and interned hundreds of Solidarity and intellectual leaders as well as the leaders of the former Communist government. For the next three years, the government struggled to find a balance between repression and co-optation that would allow them to reclaim real power. Once they declared the state of war over, they were never in a position to really manage popular demands again.

The political history of Poland since World War II and the Communist takeover has been one in which crisis followed crisis. Even when there was more than a decade before the next crisis, "normalcy" was never fully "normal." Instead, the institutions and their responses were structured by the previous crisis and constantly shaded by storm clouds for the next. In 1956, 1970, and 1980, Poles successfully "voted with their feet" and ousted their leaders. In 1968 and 1976, the crises were less systemic: specific groups revolted over specific policies. As a result, even though Wladyslaw Gomulka in 1968 and Edward Gierek in 1976 retained their leadership for a while, the system was weakened and put on the defensive, so that it fell quickly when Poles returned to the streets in 1970 and 1980. By 1989, when traditional Communist rule in Poland collapsed, the lessons and legacies of Poland's past crises had made the turnover of power both unbelievable and unavoidable. There was no need for mass upheaval to bring down these Communist Party leaders: mere rumblings signaled to Poland's leaders that they could not hang on any longer. Instead, they tried to preserve some of their power by offering to share the burden of Poland's problems with the men and women they had jailed in 1980 and earlier. When the masses failed to go along with concessions and voted them out, this final set of Communist leaders accepted the inevitable and resigned. This, then, was the final surge in a rush of change that left no traditional Soviet-style communist regime in power by 199 l. It was, for the Polish system, just the final crisis in a nearly forty-year series that had worn away Communist power.