When the dominoes of communism began to fall with Poland’s first semi-free elections in 1989, something peculiar happened: leaders of Solidarność (henceforth Solidarity), who had long fought against the state, suddenly joined it. Some went into parliament, some took cabinet posts and others took seats in the highest courts. The puzzle was not so much that these leaders initiated what would be just the first of several migratory waves from social movement to state; social movement activists, after all, are naturally inclined to participate in the political process. The oddity was that within a very brief period, ex-members of Solidarity now in the state began to act in ways seemingly inconsistent with everything they had struggled for. And that, despite this, their ex-colleagues still in the movement continued to support them, at least for a spell.
Solidarity was neither the first nor the last pro-democracy organization to find itself in this situation (Clarke Reference Clarke1998; Constantino-David Reference Constantino-David1998; Gershman Reference Gershman2004; Grugel Reference Grugel2000; Loveman Reference Loveman1995; Silliman and Noble Reference Silliman and Noble1998). In this article I analyse the relationship between social movements and the state after social movements are victorious. More specifically, I look at the fate of pro-democracy organizations when democracy is won and some movement comrades take to the state. In Poland and elsewhere, movement members and leaders reasoned that close friends and colleagues, who for years had been held together by shared principles and common friendships, would realize their organization’s ideals at the state level. And in each case activists were quickly disappointed when, as they put it, their aspirations were devoured by ex-colleagues who revealed themselves to be power-hungry politicians-in-waiting. ‘Power changes people – and they changed,’ one former Georgian NGO leader summed up this sentiment following that country’s Rose Revolution (Zurabishvili Reference Zurabishvili2007).
The reality is, of course, more complicated. Certainly, institutions change the perspectives and goals of their new residents, but ex-activists also remain tied by ideas and personal bonds to colleagues remaining in their former organizations. The very human experience of activism creates both potential and constraints. Potential is rooted in these new human bridges between the organization and policymakers. Yet these bridges also create constraints in the form of high mutual expectations of support; former and ongoing activists expect former colleagues to rally behind their programmes, which almost invariably diverge in the new institutional environments. The result is that movement activists, I argue, do gain favours from ex-colleagues in the state, but only where such favours do not overtly clash with goals central to their new, institutionally structured missions and only insofar as they can maintain these bonds, which under the new conditions can be easily frayed.
I begin this article by using the social movement literature to explain the relationship between pro-democracy organization leaders and their former leaders who attain high-level political and state positions. I focus on two key arguments used to explain the strength of social movements during mobilization, identities and social networks, and extrapolate from the literature to create hypotheses for future implications. Next, I incorporate institutional understandings to create a new argument, introduced above. I then test these arguments using the case of Poland’s Solidarity, a massive social movement that took power in 1989.
IDENTITIES, NETWORKS AND EMPTY PROMISES
The social movement literature, focused more on mobilization than post-victory transformation, seems to suggest that activists’ expectations, highlighted above, were appropriate. Social movement actors would emerge from their struggle with a common identity, or worldview, and strong bonds with others who took part in the movement. This is particularly true for pro-democracy movements, where struggles were long term and involved a high degree of repression. These identity and network arguments follow two distinct processes that should lead to a similar outcome, empowering social movement organizations whose leaders transition to the state.
Identity can be defined as an emotional attachment based on one’s feelings towards a set of principles. In the social movement context, collective identities emerge from ‘an individual’s cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community’ (Polletta and Jasper Reference Polletta and Jasper2001: 285). Collective identities are based on internal commonalities, a function of similar norms and values, as well as differentiation with external groups (Lofland Reference Lofland2008: 225; Whittier Reference Whittier2002: 302). While movement identities may be pre-existing, they can be strengthened by group activities, traditions and patterns of behaviour institutionalized in the social movement organizations (Cohen Reference Cohen1985: 694; Evans and Boyte Reference Evans and Boyte1992: 188; Goodwin Reference Goodwin1997: 55; McAdam and Paulson Reference McAdam and Paulson1993: 659; Mische Reference Mische2001: 147; Polletta and Jasper Reference Polletta and Jasper2001: 288). The group identity eventually eclipses others, providing individuals with a sense of purpose and serving as a vehicle for collective action (Aminzade and McAdam Reference Aminzade and McAdam2001: 37; Andrews Reference Andrews1991: 154).
But social movements are frequently rooted in more than common understandings of the world (Snow et al. Reference Snow, Zurcher and Ekland-Olson1997: 130). They are also created thanks to personal networks that facilitate collective action through the notion of ‘mutual attraction’ (Eulau and Siegel Reference Eulau and Siegel1981: 501). Often, ties are generational in nature, formed around particular life experiences (Goldstone and McAdam Reference Goldstone and McAdam2001: 195). By recruiting through pre-existing social networks (friends, colleagues, kin, and so on), organizations spur intra-organizational loyalty and obligation (Chong Reference Chong1991: 35; Jenkins Reference Jenkins1983: 530; Polletta and Jasper Reference Polletta and Jasper2001: 289–90). Activists participate in movements even despite a diversity of prior beliefs, motivated especially by personal ties in (informal) pre-existing social networks (Barker et al. Reference Barker, Johnson and Lavalette2001: 13; Munson Reference Munson2008: 195).
Constant linkages between activists’ various life spheres (such as family or work), themselves shaped by the movement, can further strengthen commitment and reinforce group boundaries (Aminzade and McAdam Reference Aminzade and McAdam2001: 40; Gould Reference Gould1991: 719; Klatch Reference Klatch2004: 495; Mizruchi Reference Mizruchi1990: 22; Polletta and Jasper Reference Polletta and Jasper2001: 290). Personal networks might even eclipse identities described earlier, as activists’ motivations for participation shift from simply their affinity to movement ideals to their affective ties for fellow movement colleagues (Goodwin et al. Reference Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta2001: 8). Activism is transformed from being a means to an end, to a goal in itself (Goodwin et al. Reference Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta2001: 18), and the personal bonds created lead to a sense of collectivity that can outlast the movement itself (Eyerman Reference Eyerman2005: 45).
Given what we know about identities and networks during the struggle, it is possible to project how these variables might affect relations after victory. Evidence suggests that these ideas and friendships can affect individuals’ political sympathies, occupational trajectories and future activism long after the social movement has achieved its goals (Banaszak Reference Banaszak2009: 27; Giugni Reference Giugni2004: 494; McAdam Reference McAdam1988: 216). As Hunt and Benford (Reference Hunt and Benford2004: 449) explain, social movements change participants, in ‘the way they view the world, the occupations they pursue, their consumption patterns, and the friends they make’. Identities and networks work through different mechanisms – conscience versus trust, for example (Chong Reference Chong1991: 69). But in both cases, actors are bound by their collective memory of the previous period and expect loyalty to long-standing ideals or friends.
Hypothesis 1: Based on the collective identity work, we should find that former and ongoing movement actors remain bound by movement-era identities, which should result in broad agreement between state and social movement organization actors over policy direction. Newly empowered leaders from pro-democracy organizations should carry their missions to the state, and relations between ex- and current activists should be generally positive.
Hypothesis 2: According to the network hypothesis, former and ongoing movement actors should remain bound by movement-era networks, which should result in broad agreement between state and social movement organization actors over policy direction.
FROM ACTIVIST TO POWER BROKER: THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
While identities and personal networks might provide an ‘in’ to the new state, institutions pose potential barriers. They can, I argue, lead to a realignment of both identities and networks that under certain conditions derail the hypotheses proposed above. Actors departing for the state, like those remaining in the social movement now operating under fundamentally new conditions, invariably face changes in their institutional goals and membership. Loyalty to old colleagues becomes a luxury that each side often sees as too costly.
There are two basic ways to understand how institutions, including their formal rules and standard modes of operation, might affect activists who take power: former activists could actively construct the institutions in ways that maximize their goals (agency-centred approach), or they could be dropped into organizations that function as constraints rather than opportunities (structure-centred approach). In either case, endogenization of preferences, according to historical institutionalists, occurs as institutionally defined rules become virtually taken for granted and gradually alter definitions of self-interest, with actors operating under the logic of appropriateness, their actions (or output) based largely on ‘roles, routines, rights, obligations, standard operating procedures and practices’(March and Olsen Reference March and Olsen1996: 249). This process can be indirect, where institutions create new perspectives by shaping the degree to which internal and external actors have access to state elites. Activists remain rational actors, but what, precisely, is in their best interest begins to change.
While new state leaders may seek to build fundamentally new institutions, the reality is that they must do so through yesterday’s apparatus. New actors with a democratic mandate may be able to do some moulding of the institution but are constrained by their new institution’s previously existing mission, composition and procedures. For instance, the new head of a security apparatus that historically targeted domestic dissent might alter the mission (for example, by targeting foreign rather than domestic threats), but the organization remains responsible for monitoring the population. The new head might replace some personnel, but will need the expertise (hinging on old modes of operation) of most. The new head makes a dent in the organization, but the organization also makes a dent in its new leader, who must in large part rely on information and judgements of those lower down. In the process, the leader’s perceptions of what can and should be done drift away from those of the movement community she left.
The dilemma facing the security head may be by institutional design, but it is rooted in the identity- and network-based social movement phenomenon of multiple embeddedness, where actors must balance between different groups of peers and objectives (Jasper Reference Jasper2006: 67). Spending one’s days facing new colleagues and engaged in tasks related to the new organization can gradually erode the standing of one’s previous cohort as, Jasper (Reference Jasper2006: 66) explains, ‘we come to feel solidarity with a different group’. Yet is it not possible that a state leader who spent years in the pro-democracy trenches could emerge from that period with a deep-seated identity and bonds that could at least provide resistance to the strong institutional tug?
A basic tenet of this institutional approach is that former movement leaders will hold onto some prior beliefs and friendships, but these connections are overshadowed by the burdens of governance. Intra- and extra-organizational constituent pressures, budgetary constraints and new perceptions propel state leaders from the ideal to the feasible, but previously formed identities and networks should continue to have some influence. Those in state institutions intent on bringing about change must balance the demands of these various actors, including their social movement organizations, which may still have mobilizing potential.
Balance is the operative word. As Searing (Reference Searing1991: 1241) notes, ‘politicians are purposive actors who pursue their individual preferences or goals. They calculate and they compromise as they adapt to the situations’. Ex-activists in the state struggle to appease colleagues in their new institutions without going against either former movement peers or their internal sense of what is right. Moreover, as illustrated above, perceptions of what must be done are altered as a result of their new institutions. This balancing act is daunting; movements might be good at winning elections, but the people they empower do not necessarily have the requisite experience or skills to run a country.
This lack of experience, coupled with the tendency of non-democracies to pursue economic programmes that disproportionately favour a relative few, leaves leaders of new democracies in an awkward position when it comes to delivering economic goods. On the one hand, they need to restructure their economies to convince voters they are delivering on promises of a better life rather than just the ‘rhetoric of democracy’. On the other hand, they need help – from expertise and capital to trading partners and investors – to make this happen. It is in this context that new state leaders find that they face not only the significant domestic pressures noted above, but also international ones. The third wave of democratization has largely dovetailed with the dominance of neoliberalism, meaning that those in policy-making institutions sought assistance from, and were pressured by, outside state, interstate (such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and non-state (including multinational corporations) actors. The assistance of outsiders frequently came with painful conditions, but without this assistance new state leaders felt they had little chance of success. Unlike their ideologically motivated counterparts back in the social movement organizations, ex-activists were left with little choice but to engage in pragmatic compromise.
Under what conditions, then, should former activists in the state expect conflict versus cooperation with movement activists who remain behind? Conflict, I argue, is a function of high mutual expectations of support based on former beliefs and bonds that fit awkwardly in the new institutional context. The larger the potential field of contention, the more we should expect these bonds to snap and even backfire. In particular, this should occur where: (1) organization demands concern broad policy goals; (2) ex-colleagues are placed in positions most influential with respect to their former organization’s locus of activity and interest; and (3) movement organizations continue to rely on contentious activities to force their agenda. Under these conditions, leaders on both sides of the state–non-state line question the loyalty of their ex-comrades, rendering previous ties a liability rather than an advantage.
Goals
Given the institutionally defined differences outlined above, ex-activists in the state will be most likely to resist post-breakthrough organizations that continue to struggle for broad policy goals, since these former activists’ new constituents, peers and organizational mandates should trigger a preference adjustment. By broad policy goals, as opposed to finite goals, I mean objectives that are national or regional in scope and complex in nature; a broad policy must be applicable to a wide swathe of the country and involve an array of derivative policies. One example of a broad policy would be sweeping national health care reform, which could necessitate legislation governing a variety of sub-issues, from insurance regulation to infrastructure creation. Another would be an effort to support judicial independence, which might involve everything from the appointment and impeachment process to salary formulas for judges. These are wide-ranging reforms that demand change across dimensions.
Finite policies, by contrast, are those more limited in scope (restricted to a particular location) and complexity (not involving significant ramifications on broader policy). They are, in other words, occasional exceptions rather than new rules. In contrast to the broader policies discussed above, examples of finite issues include individual matters (for example, health or pay issues) or localized grievances (such as those related to public goods delivery to a particular area, or limited to a particular workplace or behaviour of a small group of functionaries). Because these issues are so specific, they can fly under the radar of, and may not even significantly run counter to, policymakers’ new institutional pressures (Eaton Reference Eaton2003: 482). They provide an easy way for activists and ex-activists alike to remain loyal to old friends without risking the ire of their current peers.
Position
Institutional position matters as well, but in ways not predicted by activists who watched hopefully as their colleagues took high-ranking positions in institutions most pertinent to them. In short, both movement activists and the new state leader will expect loyalty and, subsequently, the ability to influence the other. The former have found the goose that lays the golden egg – a senior state leader who, as ‘one of ours’, will implement the array of broad policy goals the movement has long espoused. The latter, conversely, accepts the new powers and duties with the confidence that movement activists will trust and support her as she presses for the most optimal, and simultaneously feasible, policies. The leader’s high-profile position may also make quiet compromise more difficult. The stronger the position, and the more it is related to the movement’s objectives, the higher and less sustainable the expectations will be.
Social Movement Organization Reactions
New conditions change the nature and demands of constituents for ex-movement leaders in the state, but they also do so for those running the movement. As organization leaders come up against obstacles to their agenda they can continue to rely on contentious forms of political action or adopt less aggressive and more institutionalized modes of operation. Where they rely on contentious methods they risk a public and emotional run-in with ex-colleagues in the state. A repertoire of political action that involves open and public criticism is inherently a challenge to the credibility of the targets, but it can also be seen as a breach of loyalty and, ironically, leave movements with ex-leaders in positions of power at a disadvantage relative to those lacking such connections. By contrast, those organizations that keep their criticisms less public and work through ‘quiet diplomacy’ are more likely to maintain a working relationship with one-time colleagues.
Hypothesis 3: Relations between ex-movement activists in the state and ongoing activists who remain in the organization will be best where these individuals find a mutually beneficial relationship.
This is most likely where movement organizations press for finite rather than broad policies, where they have ex-activists in less powerful positions and limit their political action repertoire to a form of quiet diplomacy. By contrast, relations between ex-movement activists in the state and ongoing activists who remain in the organization will be worst where these individuals feel the others have betrayed them. This is most likely where movement organizations press for broader rather than finite policies, where they have ex-activists in more powerful positions and continue to rely on contentious forms of political activism.
THE CASE OF POLAND
I evaluate these arguments in the case of Poland, where the Solidarity social movement defeated the communists in 1989. After victory, some Solidarity leaders migrated to the state while others remained behind. The unit of analysis is the individual, rooted in or uprooted from a social movement organization. I focus on elites, those who use their positions in key state or non-state institutions or organizations that regularly influence political outcomes on a national scale.
The Polish case poses a robust test of each of the above arguments. From an identity and network perspective, Solidarity was a long-lived organization that functioned in periods of both openness and considerable repression, phenomena that should have forged a hardy commitment by activists to goals and fellow activists of the organization. According to the identity-based hypothesis, former and ongoing Solidarity leaders should remain bound by movement-era identities, which should result in broad agreement between state and social movement organization actors over policy direction; newly empowered leaders from pro-democracy organizations should carry their missions to the state. According to the personal network hypothesis, former and ongoing movement actors should remain bound by movement-era networks, and informal pressures should be effective at convincing associated governing elites to cooperate with the demands of their former organizations. In both cases, organization leaders who take state positions might end up as what Wedel (Reference Wedel1998: 106) calls ‘institutional nomads’, more loyal to their personal cliques than to the offices they are placed in.
According to my institutional hypothesis, the effect of social networks and identities will be in part a function of the new institutional walls built between former colleagues and friends who take positions on either side of the state line. We should expect to find institutional constraints setting the parameters for relations. The personal dimension can help organizations on small issues, by providing them with new access and opportunities as they support their former colleagues. But personal ties can also spark a backlash where views and preferences conflict as a result of these institutional pressures, particularly with respect to broader issues and where organizations refuse to moderate.
My methods, media analyses and elite interviews, were designed to uncover the evolving nature of the relationship between these two sets of actors. The media analysis, including both international and domestic reporting, is helpful in gaining strong institutional knowledge (locating the occurrence and intensity of possible rifts between particular organizations and the government) and becoming acquainted with key local players. International media analysis involved conducting broad keyword searches on Lexis-Nexis, including North American and European newspapers and wire services as well as select translations of national media. Next, I performed a more deliberate search of a leading Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, focusing on the first several years after regime change (1989–93).
The media analysis is useful for establishing a general history of critical events, but the primary evidence for or against the arguments is based on elite perceptions. My key interest is perceived organizational influence and access provided by personnel bridges. What are the core areas of conflict and cooperation between the organization and the government? How have various aspects of inclusion or formal exclusion influenced these relationships? To what degree are included actors perceived as independent or co-opted? What have been the (dis)advantages of these bridges?
To answer these questions, I conducted in the winter of 2009 approximately 45 open-ended interviews with (one-time) Solidarity leaders. I talked to Solidarity activists who after democratic breakthrough had taken various state and political positions, as well as those who had remained in the organization. These included (ex-)heads of the national organization as well as its regional bodies. Some never left the organization, others left to take prominent positions in government and parliament, and still others left only to return when their state appointment ended. In addition to asking the sort of broad questions noted above, I also posed a number of questions specific to individual actors on issues suggested by the media analysis (for example, when interviewing a former health deputy minister I enquired about a series of strikes by her former colleagues during the time she was in office). Site locations included Warsaw, Gdansk, Katowice, Gliwice, Wroclaw and Krakow; interviews generally lasted from 40 minutes to 3 hours, with the average time about 1 to 1½ hours.
From Social Movement to the State: The Rise to Power of Poland’s Solidarity
Communism came to Poland in the wake of enormous destruction, following the Second World War. Yet, unlike further east, the churches were not shuttered, the land was not wholly collectivized and there was little effort to change a people beaming with national pride into anything like Homo Sovieticus. Bringing communism to Poland, Stalin once said, was like putting a saddle on a cow. Periodic revolts in Poland (1956, 1968, 1970, 1976) and other Central European states, such as Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), challenged communist rule. But Poland’s Solidarity movement would prove the gravest threat to communism.
Solidarity’s 1980 appearance was triggered by a series of events, from state subsidy cutbacks to the inspiring 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II. As in the past, initial strikes were largely localized and focused on particular grievances. But with the backing of intellectuals Solidarity quickly exploded from a traditional workers’ union to a gigantic, grassroots movement numbering 10 million people and taking on a national character. At the time, Solidarity leaders called themselves ‘the most powerful mass movement in the history of Poland’ (Solidarity 1982: 205). Realizing that their primarily economic goals could not be met without political change, Solidarity became the strongest ever opposition to the communist system.
Communists initially met Solidarity’s demands with half-hearted reforms, but soon turned to repression. Throughout the early 1980s many activists were in jail. While the organization continued to function underground for several years, its visibility and popularity plummeted. But in 1988, in the face of continued economic decay, punctuated by the overt absence of any viable recovery plan, Solidarity returned. As in times past, the trigger was a series of price hikes that led to spontaneous, small-scale strikes in February 1988. New activists, claiming to follow the Solidarity tradition, subordinated themselves to former Solidarity leaders, who directed a new wave of popular strikes that August. Authorities submitted to a series of roundtable talks that would ultimately lead to the communist bloc’s first semi-free elections, in mid-1989. Solidarity, running as the Civic Parliamentary Club (Obywatelski Klub Parlamentarny – OKP), won practically every seat open to it, taking 35 per cent of seats in the lower house (Sejm) and 99 per cent in the upper house (Senat) of parliament. This victory gave rise to the first post-Solidarity government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and enormous expectations of change.
The First Years: 1989–91
Solidarity leaders preaching a movement to ‘normalcy’ in 1989 came to the state with a heavy burden, charged with transforming a communist state into a democratic, free-market one. Knowing firsthand what social movements were capable of, post-Solidarity leaders pursued a radical economic reform programme to effect changes before interest groups could mobilize against them. As a social movement, Solidarity had throughout the 1980s preached egalitarianism. Yet the rapid transformation into a capitalist economy resulted in an immediate devaluation of the currency and a sharp rise in unemployment. Even after the economy stabilized, Poles were stuck with double-digit unemployment and stores stocked with goods they could not afford (Kolarska-Bobinska Reference Kolarska-Bobinska1994: 113).
Despite these hardships, relations between activists and ex-activists in the state were surprisingly positive during this early period, when there is some support for Hypotheses 1 and 2. Yet analysis highlights how identities and networks led to a common veneer rather than a consensus on policy direction. This veneer of harmony provided largely one-sided benefits to state leaders, who gained from Solidarity’s ‘protective umbrella’ over the tough reforms that would, in the words of one, keep society from getting ‘in the way of the sensible direction of the changes’ (Lewicka Reference Lewicka2009).
Movement support for the new government during this period was based on a faith that movement leaders in the state were doing their best under trying circumstances. Identity and networks took on a new character. For both sets of actors, Solidarity went from emphasizing the egalitarian side of its identity to the ‘for the good of Poland’ side. The assumption was that the bitter reform medicine would soon kick in, meaning this division was a short-term one. Similarly, personal networks still encapsulated high degrees of trust but became much more hierarchical in nature than the network argument seems to suggest. As one core activist recalled the feeling, ‘We looked at them [former leaders] like at Mother Mary. They were our representatives, from the union movement’ (Borowczak Reference Borowczak2009). ‘These were authority figures. I didn’t reflect on whether it was smart or dumb’, another regional leader said of the reforms (Mosinski Reference Mosinski2009).
Thanks to this faith in networks and a lowest common denominator approach to identity cohesion, Solidarity leaders urged patience for their struggling members. Strike activity fell from nearly 900 strikes in 1989 to only about 250 in 1990 (Levitsky and Way Reference Levitsky and Way1998: 178; Ost Reference Ost2001: 86). But, as the costs of reforms rose in 1990 and 1991, Solidarity leaders were pressured from below to fold up the umbrella. Thousands of members demanded a promise that things would get better. Thousands more walked away from the union, whether out of anger or because the reforms took their jobs. Solidarity suffered under the widespread belief that the organization was responsible for all the pain its workers experienced (Palubicki Reference Palubicki2009).
Deterioration in Solidarity’s support exposed both identity and network rifts between current and one-time organization leaders. Many interviewees from the movement side, unlike their ex-colleagues in the state, confided that at an ideological level they were already split between doing what they thought was best for the country and what they felt would be best for the workers they had long identified with. ‘I had this personal dissonance’, recalled one regional union leader (Bartosz Reference Bartosz2009). Interpersonal dimensions exacerbated this dilemma, as organization leaders were forced to go against, and watch the dismissal of, colleagues lower down in the ranks (Mozolewski Reference Mozolewski2009). Solidarity heads were accused of lying and profiting from the economic restructuring that wreaked havoc on society (Bujak Reference Bujak2009; Frasyniuk Reference Frasyniuk2009). The fallout hit activists hard. ‘I was even ashamed of my role’, one union leader from the time said (Dubinski Reference Dubinski2009). ‘I, as one of the holders of the umbrella, feel horrible’, lamented another (Bujak Reference Bujak2009).
By 1991, union leaders began to speak out against the reforms. By that point it was clear that ex-Solidarity state and political leaders were functioning in ways shaped by their own institutional environment, and willing to ignore former colleagues who had supported their rise to power. Political elites’ focus on the societal rather than the narrower union aspects of Solidarity helped to create a disconnect between those who departed for Warsaw and those who remained at Solidarity headquarters in Gdansk. Having personally struggled with this conflict, one MP concluded, ‘You can’t be a little bit a unionist and a little bit a politician’ (Smirnow Reference Smirnow2009).
As activists spoke out, the weakness of ideological bonds and personal networks shone through. Their ire was soon aimed at their own heroic leader of Solidarity, Lech Walesa, who campaigned for the presidency in 1990, pledging to contest reforms – only to support them after taking office. Walesa’s transformation highlights the elements in Hypothesis 3. Solidarity leaders thought that with their leader at the top their good fortune had begun. Instead, interviewees complained that in the presidential palace Walesa pursued an anti-union agenda, pressing the union to accept painful reforms without strikes and promoting particular policies – such as salary caps – that unionists almost universally opposed. For Walesa, the decision to back tough reforms was a function of his office and came down to the basics of budgetary policy. ‘I considered myself a worker, a union activist, but also the president’, Walesa later reflected. ‘Many people still wanted to see me just as a worker or a union activist’ (Walesa Reference Walesa2009). Walesa’s words rang of arrogance to those he had formerly led. ‘Solidarity should involve itself in passing out parsley and carrots like unions did under communism’, one organization leader interpreted Walesa’s message (Langer Reference Langer2009).
The result, in contrast to expectations arising from network and identity arguments, was an environment where during the initial period former ties could provide only small advantages, such as ameliorating factory-specific, and sometimes even branch-specific, conflicts, but did not translate into favour as far as big-ticket items were concerned. As one parliamentarian from the period recalled of his organization colleagues, ‘Of course they came with many issues that were impossible to do. What could be done I tried to do’ (Jurczak Reference Jurczak2009). Rather than providing Solidarity with influence in the fundamental policy debates taking place, networks meant narrow favours that were usually designed by state leaders to encourage the union to stay patiently out of the fight, if only for long enough to make the reforms essentially irreversible.
The identity and network conditions for this sort of cooperation evaporated as movement leaders began openly and contentiously to condemn the direction in which ex-colleagues had taken the state. The attacks laid bare ideological fractures. ‘We did everything so these [enterprises] wouldn’t fall’, one activist from the period said in reference to the privatization process, ‘and [ex-colleagues in power] did everything so they would crumble to the ground’ (Pietrzyk Reference Pietrzyk2009). Unionist frustrations resulted in threats to stage localized and even national strikes in an effort to get their government’s ear. ‘[Tadeusz] Mazowiecki, as premier, didn’t have to think so hard about what this meant for others’, recalled the head of Solidarity’s representation at an enormous Warsaw-based enterprise that faced large-scale job losses. ‘He didn’t want to know what my situation was’ (Bujak Reference Bujak2009).
The number and scale of strikes grew almost exponentially, from about 250 in 1990, to 6,350 strikes, some massive, in 1992 (Langer Reference Langer2009; Levitsky and Way Reference Levitsky and Way1998: 178; Ost Reference Ost2001: 86). For leaders of the largest of these actions, the strikes signified Solidarity’s fragmentation along clearly institutional lines. As head of Solidarity’s National Mining Committee, Waclaw Marszewski led the huge 1991–2 strike against mine closures, among the largest in Polish mining history (Marszewski Reference Marszewski2009). Standing against the strike was Marszewski’s predecessor, then Deputy Minister of Industry Andrzej Lipko, who just a year or so before had been seen by his peers as a ‘very radical’ union leader known for organizing local mining strikes to the ire of Solidarity’s national authorities (Gazeta Wyborcza, 5 November 1990; Marszewski Reference Marszewski2009). Now he was in the ministry, it was Lipko who accused his successor of radicalizing the mining sector. ‘The mining sector simply had to change’, he explained from his new vantage point (Lipko Reference Lipko2009).
As the institutional schism widened, as predicted by Hypothesis 3, personal ties in the early period appear to have hurt rather than healed relations. For those who went to the state, it was evident that ‘the union wanted things that were not at all possible to implement, but they didn’t understand this’ (Palubicki Reference Palubicki2009). For those back in the trenches, the apparent policy reversals of ex-colleagues reeked of arrogance. ‘Now that he’s on a higher rung of the social ladder, because he has this post, he doesn’t care about them’, said a regional Solidarity leader. ‘He says, “I am a lofty [wielki] politician”’ (Marczak Reference Marczak2009). Another local leader related this to a similar phenomenon that he said occurred when Solidarity activists moved to management positions in an enterprise during that same period. ‘He was worse than the communists. He knew better, he was Solidarity’ (Osinski Reference Osinski2009).
Under these circumstances, personal ties were actually counter-productive. ‘We negotiated and they were offended that we were pressuring them’, recalled one organization leader, who would a decade later experience this dilemma himself (Komolowski Reference Komolowski2009). ‘The labour union was always pushed in the corner and told “be quiet because we are doing very noble things”’, said a local leader in Warsaw (Dubinski Reference Dubinski2009). Unionists were enraged that they had so little influence on the policies implemented under the Solidarity banner. ‘We were [held] responsible but really we often did not have any influence on the decisions taken’, commented one regional leader (Denysiuk Reference Denysiuk2009).
Policy disagreements spilled over into conflicts over identity, both sides charging their ex-colleagues not only of abandoning the Solidarity identity, but of never having it in the first place. More senior personnel who moved to the state, including more workers in 1991, claimed that other more junior leaders taking their place – though often of the same generation – were substantively different from themselves. By turning their backs on the reforms the country needed to move forward, former leaders said, new organization leaders lost the universalist qualities that had once made the organization so great. This division became one of the ‘first Solidarity’, a social movement with the goals of the entire country in mind, and the ‘second Solidarity’, a classic labour union representing narrow workers’ interests (Komolowski Reference Komolowski2009; Mietlicka Reference Mietlicka2009). Those remaining in the union were indignant, noting that while they may not have been in the top leadership circles since 1980, they were long-time activists. ‘I am living, museum-like proof of the continuity, that there is no first and second Solidarity’, said Marian Krzaklewski, Lech Walesa’s successor as Solidarity’s head (Krzaklewski Reference Krzaklewski2009).
Despite disappointment with their colleagues in the first two years of the transition, Solidarity leaders decided that, having shed their ‘liberals’ in the first phase of the transition, Solidarity activists would in the 1991 election send true union leaders to Warsaw to ‘take care of workers’ issues’ that had been pushed to the side (Rybicki Reference Rybicki2009). The Independent Self-Governing Trade Union (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy, NSZZ) Solidarity Parliamentary Club, which won 27 seats in the 1991 parliamentary elections, was to ensure the union could propose, analyse and amend policy initiatives pertaining to social and economic legislation (Tomaszewski Reference Tomaszewski2009). Again, those in the Solidarity movement were confident that they would profit if the government gave positions to their colleagues who shared ‘a certain catalogue of principles and values that we declared publicly’ (Sniadek Reference Sniadek2009). And again, in accord with Hypothesis 3, a schism emerged between unionists who expected their parliamentarians to take union orders, and parliamentarians, who felt they should represent union interests more independently (Bartosz Reference Bartosz2009; Borusewicz Reference Borusewicz2009; Polmanski Reference Polmanski2009; Sniadek Reference Sniadek2009). Parliamentary Club leader Bogdan Borusewicz recalled ‘numerous’ votes in which he and his colleagues supported government programmes, from transforming heavy industry to restructuring the mining sector, that they knew ‘would hit the unionists’ (Borusewicz Reference Borusewicz2009). In the end, he added, ‘We voted for Poland. We had to reform Poland.’ This was little comfort to unionists who saw their newest wave of representatives ‘on the other side of the barricade’ (Polmanski Reference Polmanski2009). Identities and networks were, once again, not merely unhelpful, but actually a source of disadvantage under the weight of institutions.
CONCLUSION
Identities and networks developed through social movements can be instrumental in propelling those movements to victory. Their long-term utility, however, is less certain, as institutions mediate relationships and transform ties that are initially assumed by both activists and ex-activists to be to their advantage. This is not the story of ex-activists in new institutions running roughshod over their former colleagues, though. As the Polish case demonstrates, there is a more subtle mechanism at work. Ex-activists in the state often seek to be loyal to long-held ideals and colleagues, but the institutions they inhabit dictate the boundaries of the feasible (or their ‘win-sets’). The result is that post-movement relationships can yield small favours, which are for power-holders cheap tokens of continuity, but are far less likely to result in more fundamental changes. Where activists and ex-activists expect to have the understanding and support of the others, they are preparing the ground for disappointment and animosity. Competition over movement identity and personal rifts make cooperation even more difficult between ex-colleagues than between long-standing rivals.
One might argue that the phenomenon observed is simply a selection effect: those who left the social movement organizations for the state had always thought differently – more moderately – than those who chose to remain. Indeed, identities and networks that had failed to create political opportunities for Solidarity during the early post-breakthrough period were explained away by activists as a function of the dominance of Solidarity’s intellectual advisers (rather than true workers) in politics (1989–91) and the numeric and aspiration limitations set for the Solidarity Club (1991–3). Yet Solidarity’s third attempt to place its people in power, in 1997, was also a failure. By that point, organization members were confident that only ‘true unionists’ remained among them. Surely they would represent the union well in government, especially given that they won the elections sufficiently to head a governing coalition? As predicted by the institutional argument, however, Solidarity’s third attempt at politics was another disappointment.
One might also argue that the Polish case was unique in that it involved such a broad umbrella of activists – from workers to intellectuals – that any identity or network forged was illusory. But the reality is that Polish actors themselves claimed that they had formed what they thought were strong identities and networks, and they even felt these were helpful to a limited extent. A more general discussion of movements outside Poland reveals much the same pattern. In two other cases studied but not, for lack of space, described here, the same scenario played out. In South Africa, two massive organizations, one a labour union and the other a grassroots neighbourhood organization, sent waves of organization leaders off in return for very limited support and then, when relations soured, high levels of public vitriol. This effect was even more pronounced in the case of Georgia, where leaders of the smaller and more homogeneous NGOs involved in the 2003 Rose Revolution took to the state.
It is worth noting that in these cases, leaders did not purposely purge themselves of long-held identities and interpersonal networks. They held onto them to the degree that they were compatible with their new, institutionally structured views and goals. Leaders who moved into politics felt a responsibility to those ideas and friends, making difficult governing decisions even harder. Ex-activists went to pains to maintain collegial relations, providing what they felt they could without dramatically breaking with the new institutions in which they served. The result was a Solidarity union that on the national level gained some crumbs, but lost the bread.
Clearly, how this plays out is linked to organizational adaptation. In the Georgia case, I found that those organizations that abandoned contentious politics for quiet lobbying felt they retained more pull with the new government than did those who angrily yelled from the outside. Yet they also acknowledged that their pull remained limited to finite policies and could be construed as self-censorship. This is precisely what we saw in Solidarity during the initial period of each phase discussed. Perhaps other models of operation may be more effective. One may be simply the dissolution of the organization and creation of a new one, something that might at least eliminate conflicts over identity.
The latter point raises the important issue of demobilization. While much work has looked at the disappearance or routinization of social movement organizations, this study suggests that neither is inevitable at least in the case of pro-democracy groups. For those that linger under the new regime, the reality that democracy brings with it a whole new competition over resource distribution can be sobering. The big lesson here is that social movement leaders would be wise to avoid complacency in the aftermath of victory, and should put aside the assumption that colleagues and friends in the state will uphold the principles and long-standing demands of these organizations. If organizations believe these goals are still worth fighting for, then fight they must.
