More than thirty years of Poland’s multi-dimensional, sweeping, and radical transformation provided a wealth of information related to the specifics of transition from an economically centralized and politically restrictive society to a modern market economy and open, competitive political system. However, the very complexity of this transition makes its study a daunting endeavor. This new book, co-edited by Polish and American scholars, provides guidance to all researchers who approach social, economic, and political transitions in post-communist Poland.
The eleven chapters of the edited volume are similar methodologically and theoretically. All are based on data taken from POLPAN, a panel survey of Polish social trends, which traces its first stage back to 1987 and is now entering the eighth stage. The data collected over three decades provide a wealth of information on how Poles coped with unexpected changes to their lives brought about by the much needed yet unpredictable reforms. The data are analyzed within well-structured frames of reference provided by Sociology and, to a lesser extent, other social sciences. The combination of a strong empirical foundation and solid theoretical structure endows each chapter with considerable explanatory and predictive potential, making the book useful for the study of socio-economic transitions not only in Poland but also other post-communist countries of eastern Europe.
The book is divided in three parts. Part One deals with individual psychological adjustment to transformation; Part Two looks into changing patterns of social inequality; the third part analyzes the impact of changing social values on voters’ behavior. Uncertainty, perhaps the predominant feature of Poland’s post-communist transition, is studied in the first chapter of Part One. The author concentrates on the psychological ways to cope with uncertainty, a condition which was new and unfamiliar to those who grew up in a highly regimented and stationary social structure associated with the communist political regime. The author studies four distinctive patterns of individuals’ coping with uncertainty: Cosmopolitanism, Traditionalism, Modernism, and Fatalism. Of the four, Cosmopolitanism, which regards transnational institutions as the main factor of uncertainty reduction, and Traditionalism, which puts its trust in traditional social structures, particularly religious institutions as saviors from the growing risk and uncertainty, create a dichotomy that lends itself well to the analysis of Poland’s political debates, which exhibit polarization along the Cosmopolitan/Traditionalist lines. The second chapter deals with the subjective perception of individual well-being in a changing society. The author specifically looks at the impact of market transition and Poland’s accession into the EU on subjective well-being. An interesting aspect of this study is the distribution of subjective well-being across social groups.
As Poland departed the rigid, centralized, yet relatively egalitarian economic model of late socialism, social inequality had become an important aspect of the market transition that followed. In fact, even before the new market economy started to demonstrate its ability to produce prosperity, the rapidly growing social inequality produced popular discontent with the new market institutions. Five chapters of Part Two analyze specific patterns and social outcomes of socio-economic inequality. Age patterns of social inequality and the specific situation of the older adults as they face loneliness in the increasingly atomized, individualistic society shaped by the market are discussed in detail in two chapters. Another chapter deals with the increasingly precarious, uncertain nature of employment in the new, market-driven economy. The author points out that not all labor force participants face the same level of employment uncertainty and that the labor market may be increasingly divided into two strata, those who manage to enter a select group of “insiders” with potential for career advancement and higher earnings and those who remain at the lower tier of the job market, switching from one dead-end, low-paid position to another. As this division is present in variously-shaped employment environments, both market and non-market, the chapter provides valuable insight, useful for those who engage in more general aspects of labor relations research. One chapter investigates connection between vocational education and earnings and makes a comparison between the impact of vocational education on earnings in a centrally planned and a market economy. The impact of home ownership as a form of wealth accumulation on changing patterns of socio-economic stratification and inequality is analyzed in yet another chapter of Part Two.
Part Three, which investigates connections between value patterns and voters’ behavior, contains four chapters. Perhaps the most relevant of them in the context of Poland’s enduring polarization between the pro-European and nationalist political forces deals with Poland’s turn to authoritarianism in 2013–18. In a conceptually subtle research agenda, the authors distinguish between the moral, or personal, authoritarian attitudes (often associated with religious affiliation), and political authoritarianism, which relates directly to participation in political processes and voting for a potentially authoritarian political force. This helps to explain the apparent discrepancy between the decline in political authoritarianism and the simultaneous change of voting patterns in favor of authoritarian, populist parties.
By combining a strong empirical foundation with suitable statistical methods and a well-established conceptual and theoretical framework of social sciences, the authors produced a volume that contributed a great deal to our understanding of complex and multidimensional post-communist transformation in Poland and, indirectly, other east European societies.
