Source: Compiled from data of Panstwowa Komisja Wyborcza (see www.pkw.gov.pl)

* Average turnout for provincial, county and commune elections.

1996 Referendum on property rights initiated by Wasa, (It needed a 50% turnout to bind parliament. The question asked was ‘Should there be general property enfranchisement?)

1997 Referendum to endorse new constitution

Between 1989 and 2001 the average abstention rate was over 50%, and according to recent estimates some 20% have never voted (Wasilewski, J. 1999:90). Clearly, such high levels of non-participation raise important questions concerning the substance of Polish democracy, and a variety of explanations have been broached to rationalise the situation, from voter apathy, to suggestions that voice is achieved through extra-parliamentary means.

Millard (1999:110) argues that, ‘too much emphasis on voting turnout can be misleading as an indicator of systemic legitimacy problems. Varied participation strategies evolved at different levels’. For while it is true that extra-parliamentary activity does take place, and plays a crucial role for a number of social groups in achieving voice, the implication that non-participation in elections is compensated by activity outside the electoral process is misleading. For, as Millard herself notes (1999:109), those who do not participate in elections ‘neither knew or cared much about politics, were rather pessimistic, and did not participate in other forms of socio-political activity’.

In short, those who vote are also more likely to be involved in extra-parliamentary activity – whether as trade unionists, participants in organisations and events of ‘civil society’ such as ‘Open Republic’, or as participants in Samoobrona’s campaign of direct action (in this case wealthier farmers) -, than those who do not. The non-voter is also the non-participant, and given the large size of this group, contrary to Millard, a systemic legitimacy problem does exist.

This paper, therefore, aims to demonstrate how this legitimacy problem has been produced, how it is sustained and to indicate why the Polish political class is reluctant to confront this pressing issue.

Producing seriality

Poland’s ‘return to Europe’ in 1989 repositioned it politically and economically. Indeed, these two aspects were conflated. Access to European and American markets was conditional upon transformations within Poland. Rather than construct ‘socialism with a human face’ as argued for at Solidarity’s conference in 1981, Wasa and his colleagues sought to construct a democratic capitalism, with the accent more on the capitalism than the democracy as Garton-Ash (2000:90) points out. However, capitalism is highly adaptive, and can make progress within a variety of regulatory and social frameworks. A choice still had to made as to what model of capitalism to embrace (i.e. Anglo-Saxon, German etc), and as to how ‘efficiency’ was to conceptualised.

The leverage of the West in the initial years of post-communism played a fundamental role in creating a new economic topography, and disciplining the electorate. The legacy of Gierek’s (First Secretary of the Communist Party 1970-1980) dash for growth and Western banks desperation to loan oil dollars during the 1970s, left Poland with an unsustainable debt, and made it especially vulnerable to the hegemonic economic thinking emanating from the West. The result was Leszek Balcerowicz’s plan (he was advised by the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs) which aimed to confront the deep structural crisis and rectify the macroeconomic imbalance, while at the same time creating a landscape favourable, in the first instance, to investors (as opposed to other groups, such as the electorate for example)1.

The debt reductions of the Paris and London Clubs were conditional upon changes made in this direction. Similar to IMF sponsored structural adjustment projects, the Balcerowicz plan has had significant social costs.2 These include systematic increase in unemployment, decline in real wages, uncompensated destruction of personal savings, and decline in consumption (increase in poverty). Furthermore, the attempt to comply with the Maastricht deflationary regime in order to access the European Union has encouraged policies to shrink state expenditure in the key areas of education, health care, pensions, and welfare.3 The direction of government policy has been consistent regardless of which party has held office.

Thus, two major factors have emerged which discourage participation. On the one hand is the broad macro-economic policy pursued by the major parties both post-communist and post-Solidarity which have led to the rupture of social networks and to anomie; and on the other is the representation of these policies as ‘the only show in town’, as ‘realistic’ and most crucially as ‘inevitable’, thus inhibiting the articulation of an alternative future.

This effective depoliticisation of economic policies has been one of the key aims of post-communist governments and regardless which party has been in power and the construction of hegemonic control (Kymlicka 2000:13) in this area has been an on-going project. Clearly, such an endeavour compromises any subsequent deliberation.

Leszek Balcerowicz (1995a:110) explained that ‘the task for Central and East European countries is to build efficient and strong democracies able to continue the process of economic transformation (defined from above)…[requiring norms] …that protect the stability of public finance and therefore the stability of money from populist attempts to gain popularity by implementing expenditures which could only be financed through inflationary measures’ (my italics). The dismissal of an expansionary fiscal policy as populist prior to deliberation is grossly unfair, and linking potential Keynesian alternatives with only negative outcomes (instability / inflation) is contestable, but does serve to undermine this economic alternative.

Indeed, in a work published around the same time, Balcerowicz (1995b:161-3) is somewhat more candid about how to implement a policy which the population has not mandated. He explains that the initial period following a political breakthrough is accompanied by a period of ‘extraordinary politics’ in which people are more likely to ‘think and act in terms of the common good’.4 This allows politicians to push through their policies, in this case, otherwise difficult economic measures. In fact, what Balcerowicz is describing is a period in which representatives’ accountability to the electorate is eased. Recognising this, Balcerowicz is essentially recommending that representatives exploit this to pursue non-deliberated paths to the ‘common good’. But as Young (2000:40-44) has argued, appeals to the ‘common good’ often rest upon systemic exclusion. Balcerowicz appeal worked in a similarly way, since it excluded the citizenry from contributing to the most important decision taken in post-communist Poland: the qualitative reforming of its socio-economic relations.

The Absentee State

The progressive privatisation of key collective endeavours such as education, health care, pensions and welfare, and the unravelling of the social contract implied by universal provision, has promoted serial thinking (Sartre 1976/78). The citizen becomes the individual consumer. But in Poland, where numerous studies have shown that the number of people living in poverty has doubled over the last decade,5 the purchase of an education, good health care, security in old age, and unemployment insurance is therefore extremely restricted, leaving the mass of the population in a state of serial limnality – the non-consuming consumer.6

For where the possibility of unity of action, no matter how shallow, exists amongst consumers (witness consumer group campaigns), the possibility for action amongst the series of non-consuming consumers has proved to be negligible. The withdrawal of the state from providing fundamental services not only for the well-being of the population, but also for continuation of the accumulation process, is replaced by a proliferation of private concerns, benefiting from more or less generous tax concessions.7

The notion of efficiency promulgated has been extremely restrictive. Despite the fact that one of the main agreements of the 1989 Round Table was the principle that different types of ownership were to be protected, including employee ownership there has been widespread antipathy toward employee owned companies. The general prognosis, expressed by economists and politicians alike has been that these firms are a transitional form allowing proper capital privatisation with the minimum of social conflict. In actuality there has been a general shift in share ownership from the rank and file to the managers, but the hostility that employee ownership has evoked is irrational on economic grounds. After all, as Kowalik observes (2001:233), these firms have performed well with gross return and net profitability, on average, greater than that achieved by other privatisation routes.

Employee owned firms produce positive externalities – a sense of collective purpose, engagement, wage-restraint and responsibility, qualities which could underpin meaningful democracy. In contrast the Polish elite has strongly favoured the concentration of capital (and the power which this implies). The alleged egalitarian National Investment Funds, based on models pioneered by Thatcher, and earlier by Pinochet, performed this task. The resulting NIF’s comprised a small proportion of the nations assets, mainly weak small / medium sized firms but were launched under banner of democratizing capitalism. The ability of foreign institutional investors to dominate the NIFs has produced negative externalities as they seek high returns on a short time scale.8 Asset stripping rather that restructuring is taking place as Bochniarz (1999) indicates: ‘Following the sale of the few best companies from each NIF it will the be possible to achieve a satisfactorily large shareholder profit, while the remaining weaker companies would be sold at any price , without duly securing the interests of either the firms themselves or their employees’.

However, it is the chaining of imagination by the internalisation of the doctrine of market supremacy which prevents the social protest that has, in other times, posited alternative futures. As Bauman (1999:273) puts it: ‘These days the suffering of the poor do not add up to a common cause. Each flawed consumer licks his or her wounds in solitude. Flawed consumers are lonely, and while left lonely for a long time they become loners; they do not see how society could help, they do not hope to be helped, they do not believe that their lot can be changed by anything except a football pools or a lottery win..’

The creation of a new topography of economic exploitation has broken networks of social interaction and social reference points. It is in rural areas where this has reached its furtherest point as agriculture has collapsed, and state run rural firms have closed down, or privatised with the concomitant shedding of labour. Maria Jarosz’s (1998) study of suicide in Poland shows part of the high social cost of ‘transition’, and validates Durkheims’s theory of suicide by observing that situational factors are still the strongest determinants. Unlike the findings of ‘Le suicide’, however, it is rural areas rather than the city which is now the main location of suicidogenic people, but it is here were disintegrational processes have been strongest as ‘transition’ follows its non-deliberated course. New investment has been concentrated in the major cities (witness the shiny new office complexes and shopping centres), and rural areas have generally been ignored. Disinvestment from rural areas proceeds apace, with the devaluation of fixed capital and inhabitants skills.

Jarosz’s conclusion notes the different degrees of anomie between the town and the country, and this difference is also reflected in participation rates at elections, with the town recording higher levels than the country. In the parliamentary election of 2001 for example, there was a turnout of 47.99% in the town, and 42.93% in the country. Nevertheless, both these figures are low.9

Producing scale

The incorporation of Poland within the orbit of capitalist social relations has reconfigured socio-spatial power relations. Place is revalued according to the degree of market penetration, which itself is dependent upon the capacity of various social formations to resist and contest.

The penetration of the market proceeds on a number of levels. The global firm fashions the local, driving political elites to shape local conditions in an image favourable, in the first instance, to the firm, rather than the electorate / citizenry. The shift in the regulation of capital – labour relations from the national level (collective deals for workers in particular industries) to the local (individual deals) is particularly acute in Poland. The downscaling of regulation has been resisted in some sectors (Silesian miners for example), but proceeds apace in others, exploiting, and reproducing socio-cultural prejudices. (Women earn a mere 56.7% for the same work performed as do men, for example). This downscaling is buttressed by the rhetoric of the rights of the individual entrepreneur, which draws upon Romantic notions of Polish individuality, as well as the more modern notions derived from the USA and UK which have a particular neo-liberal aspect.

This rescaling may feel, for many white-collar workers in Warsaw, Poznan, and Krakow as liberation, as they are able to command remuneration disproportionate to their social contribution, and are able to enjoy the commodified culture celebrated as ‘Western’, ‘modern’, or ‘cool’. Indeed, knowledge of English is a defining characteristic of the new elite.

Inequality in Poland is among the highest in Central Europe, with a gini co-efficient of 34 for household incomes in 1996. By 1999 Poland ‘entered the group of the most inegalitarian countries’ (Golinowska 1999). Kowalik (2001:229) notes that managers of most large firms already earn 60 times the average wage, and this figure continues to increase. Indeed, this elite overcomes space both physically and imaginatively by co-opting into the glocalization of Poland (Swyngedouw, 1996). In contrast, those trapped in their place by the rapid devaluation of both skills and capital have generally been unable to articulate protest. Indeed, many have sought relief in the embrace of the Catholic Church. Rather, than challenge the current regime of accumulation, with its concomitant social costs, acceptance is preached, and energy is diverted into campaigns cementing the Church’s regressive hegemony.10

Thus the new gestalt of scale draws upon existing socio-cultural formations as changes in the scale of production and reproduction are expressed through everyday life. The broad success of downscaling the regulation of the labour - capital relation owes much to the ceding of ground by labour (through the acceptance of the rhetoric of the individual and the family). In addition, the state’s lax enforcement of labour protection laws further strengthens the position of capital, and dissuades collective action.11

Where resistance has been strongest, so too has been resistance to the accompanying individualistic ideology. From this perspective, rural inhabitants were extremely ill prepared for the process of transition. The large private agricultural sector which had existed under the communist regime educated and disciplined these workers to the dictates of supply and demand. In a shortage economy low productivity could still be rewarded. This is no longer the case. The ratio of capital – labour is far too low for most of Polish agriculture to compete with imports and more efficient agribusiness.12 Nevertheless, collective action remains restricted as commonality of interest is obscured by particularism. This itself is conditioned by the production of scale, which encourages those trapped by the new gestalt to reify their place.

There are exceptions however. In Opole Silesia, the articulation of a German identity by the autochthonous population mobilised the population in the 1990 and 1991 elections, to the degree that in some villages turnout was 80%. Using the rhetoric of Heimat, and the claim ‘We are German’, the leadership of the ‘German’ minority community were able to forge upscale linkages with the German government, its embassy in Warsaw and with powerful German NGOs such as the Union of Expellees, and to achieve representation at all spatial scales – local, regional, national. In consequence over 250m DM has been invested in Opole Silesia. Nevertheless, since 1991 abstention rates have decreased as the leadership failed to deliberate policy with its electorate, and Opole Silesia increasingly became integrated into the European circuit of capital. Furthermore, the willingness of upscale partners to deliberate with the local has declined. Thus the conjectural window which was wide open in 1990, has slowly, but surely been closing. Identification with the German minority has not been reproduced amongst the younger cohorts, as the achievements of the minority has not included expanding the demand for labour. Many have sought exit, and migrate temporarily to work in Germany (they also have German / EU passports). Returning to Poland these migrants eschew collective endeavour, and consume individualistically the commodified culture available to those with the ability to pay.

The upscaling of environmental regulation (the state of the environment in Poland has been a source of concern for the EU) has also effectively marginalised a rural community. The Biaowieza forest in Podlaskie, north-east Poland has been depicted by international NGOs, such as the WWF as the last-primeval forest in Europe, and therefore requiring special protection. Using demonstrations in Warsaw, London and in Canada the space of the forest was appropriated and represented as an exotic wilderness. The claims of local people (Belarussians) were marginalised, to the extent that traditional access rights to collect forest fruits and to graze animals were under threat.

It was not until 2000, following a demonstration in Biaowieza that the views of local people were taken seriously (Franklin 2001). The involvement of the Danish ambassador , and the Danish organisation DANCEE with their desire to implement the Aarhus convention which seeks to safeguard the environment, and promote democratic deliberation has proved crucial in ensuring local voice. What is clear is that a politics of scale manipulated by international NGOs disrupted local democratic deliberation, and in order to rectify the situation local people also had to pursue a scalar strategy, which allowed them to reclaim their place.

These two examples suggest that a connection to place can become a strategy of liberation if detached from restrictive particularism. Contesting the production of scale through networks of alterity on the margins of the current gestalt can reconfigure aspects of the gestalt. But this requires engagement, and in the first instance the strength to refuse. 13 Politicians, the media, and the Church have all acted to diffuse such an outcome.

Elections in Poland form just one part of the political process. Scalar strategies of empowerment are also crucial. Together both voice and legitimacy can be achieved. If action pursues a singular strategy then there is likely to be a deficit of either voice, or legitimacy. Until now, the mass of the populace has failed to act leading to legitimacy and voice deficits. In contrast, the representatives of international capital have ensured voice through manipulating a politics of scale – through the lending clubs, EU, business fora and through hegemonic economic doctrine, especially in the early 1990s. Indeed a number of empirical studies have demonstrated that voters views are poorly reflected in the programmes and policies of the main parties.14 The process of socio-spatial transformation and its accompanying justification has inhibited engagement. This raises questions about the legitimacy of contemporary democracy in Poland. If key policy areas have been decided by the technicians of capital, and politics is reduced to staid managerialism, then perhaps the electorate is right not to rubber stamp the formality of contemporary Polish politics.

Revisiting Sartre: Elections a trap for fools?15

Sartre in his 1973 essay is clear. Elections are not merely ineffective, they are a harm to the possibility of alternative modes of participation and justice. He argues that the electoral process is a mechanism of serialisation, which reinforces the process of atomisation which operate under the capitalist regime. (Sartre, 1978:200). He points to the fact that an individual when engaged in social activities – taking the bus, buying a newspaper, voting, makes use of collectives, but the collectives address him as a member of a series.

‘He (sic) becomes in essence identical with all other members, differing from them only by his serial number. We say he has become serialised’ (201)

In this condition matter mediates between people. Even though the suffrage is universal, granting all the right to choose; the right to act as real participants within a political community is constrained by the system in which it takes place. If the system is configured against the basic needs and desires of the population then the strong citizenship ideal on which the justification for elections is based, is thwarted. Indeed, the electoral process offers the least part of that ideal – the opportunity to make ‘choices’ within a prejudiced framework, rather foster substantive engagement.

For Sartre, such a situation is unbearable. Elections and voting are serious harms for two main reasons. Firstly it leads to the wasting of enormous amounts of political energy (A point which should find resonance with many Labour supporters in the UK), and secondly, they function as safety valves giving the mask of legitimacy to power emanating elsewhere (in Poland, international financial markets, and international institutions). Where the socio-spatial configuration is in flux, with the concomitant changes in material pressures, encouragement to vote is inappropriate:

Confronting them in their abstract solitude and their separation are the groups or parties soliciting their votes. They are told that they will be delegating their power to one or several of these political groups. But in order to ‘delegate its power’, the series formed by the institution of the vote would itself have to possess at least a modicum of power. Now, these citizens, identical as they are and fabricated by the law, disarmed and separated by mistrust of one another, deceived but aware of their impotence can never as long as they remain serialised, form that sovereign group from which, we are told, all power emanates – the People. (203)

Serialisation and anomie proceed apace within Poland, as indicated above. Voting, proclaimed by the elite as civic responsibility, is nothing of the sort according to Sartre:

‘Why am I going to vote? Because I have been persuaded that the only political act in my life consists of depositing my ballot in the box every four years? But that is the very opposite of an act. (206)

Thus on one level, the high rate of abstention can be explained by the populace’s recognition that voting is not a substantial expression of real participation within a real polis. By opting out of the series called ‘voting’ the electorate is declaring that the game is up for ‘formal’ democracy. Meaningful participation, and meaningful decision-making capabilities are urgently called for. Such desires, as yet unarticulated, require a thorough reworking of what ‘transition’ is about, and for whom.

In order for such an articulation to manifest itself, a radical break is required. The rule of the neo-liberal market is not inevitable, and other futures are possible. In one sense, this is a problem of imagination, with the electorate identifying itself, as Freud would put it ‘with the aggressor’. However, given the material conditions of a substantial proportion of the population, any contestation of the hegemonic construction of reality seems distant. As Xavier Emmanuelli (1997) explains:

‘People called these days ‘the excluded’ do not come forwarded with demands nor projects, do not value their rights, do not exercise their responsibilities as human and as citizens. As they stopped to exist in the eyes of other, so they gradually stop to exist in their own eyes’.

The withdrawal of many elements of what has passed for part of the substance of citizenship – free healthcare, education, pension, welfare further reduces the possibility for scaled engagement and traps people in their place (spatially, economically, socially) – increasingly that of the non-consuming consumer.

The Belarusian minority

In this context it is worth reflecting upon the experience of the Belarusian minority in Poland, since it starkly illustrates the contemporary limitations of Polish democracy. On the one hand the minority has felt the full force of economic restructuring as capital abandons their rural heartlands in North East Poland. On the other, they have been systematically excluded from decision-making processes, and have therefore been subjected to policies implemented without due deliberation.16 The experience of the minority brings into sharp focus the false (although heuristically useful) dichotomy between a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. It therefore illustrates the necessity of action that synthesises socio-cultural affirmation with socio-economic justice to substantiate Polish democracy.

Restructuring

The rural areas in Podlaskie, like much of rural Poland, have experienced considerable economic hardship during the transition period. In 1999 GDP per capita in Podlaskie was 76.32% of the Polish average, and investment in the region was 58% of the state average17. But within the region itself there are further inequalities of investment. For example, investment by enterprises per capita in 1999 in the voivodship as a whole was 1092.27 zl. In the Hajnówka powiat, which has the highest concentration of people who can be described as Belarusian, such investment was a mere 450 zl per capita. These figures are indicative of longstanding trends of under-investment.

Investment in agriculture in Podlaskie has declined steadily since 1980, and by 1990 the use of fertilizer had fallen below its 1975 level. According to Radecki (1996), 45% of farmland in the area around Biaowiea has too low a content of potassium and phosphorus.18 This is due to the sustained lack of fertiliser use. In addition, 75% of soils showed strong acidity due to insufficient liming. The consequence of this under-investment has been declining yields, and economic regression. The decline in agriculture has had two important effects for the Belarusians. Firstly, it has stimulated a larger reliance upon non-farming activities. Poskrobko (2000) points out that only 3.3% of farmers earn less than 10% of their income from other sources.19 Secondly, the crisis in agriculture has been a factor encouraging rural to urban migration. In 1975, the population of villages exceeded that of towns by 13,200. By 1995, the population of towns exceeded that of villages by 186,000. Since 1990, Hajnówka powiat has lost 5.2% of its population. While the town of Hajnówka recorded a moderate increase (1.1%), the villages in the powiat experienced a population decline of 10.3%.20 This includes both natural wastage, and migration to larger centres.

Table 2 The use of fertilizer and lime in 1999 (in kg per hectare

It is clear that the economic supportive capacity of southern Podlaskie is being reduced and impoverishing its residents. Instead of reinvesting in agriculture, non-local decisions makers assert that the area is unproductive, in order to promote an exclusively tourism based economic model (See below). This is true only to the extent that investment to improve soil quality has not been forthcoming for a generation. Even the EU, which through the Rome Treaty has an obligation to work to reduce regional inequalities, is complicit. Since Belarusian farmers have holdings that are too small to qualify for EU funds they are excluded from this much needed source of finance.

Although the economic marginalistion of southern Podlaskie is structural, political interventions that could alleviate both people and place poverty are not taking place. In fact, interventions emanating from non-local locations are accentuating an already difficult situation. For example, finance to compensate local communities for economic hardship resulting from the extension of the Biaowieza national park in 1996 did not materialise until 2000, and a substantial proportion of the money ear-marked for local development under the ‘Contract for Biaowiea’ went to the National Park despite assurances to the Council of Europe that it went to local communities.21

Exclusion

As argued earlier, the entire process of transition has rested upon the systematic exclusion of the population from the key decisions of the post-communist period which have determined the new economic topography of the country. However, the experience of the Belarusian minority indicates further mechanisms of how exclusion is perpetuated at the local scale – the level at which the new topography manifests itself.

The regional economic development plan for example aims to achieve economic coherence within the region by setting goals, and isolating specific areas for investment (and by extension disinvestment – since capital, in all its forms is at continual risk of devaluation).22 It is therefore a profoundly political undertaking, determining who gets what, where, when and how, but is not subjected to sufficient democratic deliberation. In this plan for example, southern Podlaskie is assigned a future based on tourism although this unstable industry lacks the capacity to support the population, (For the evidence see Podlaskie statistical yearbooks 1990-date for the number of tourists to the region). Furthermore access to the area is deteriorating as some public transport routes are withdrawn.

The mono-industry model is sponsored by powerful environmental NGOs who argue that Biaowiea forest is primeval and therefore demands restrictive protection. The NGOs have pressed their case at the central government and international levels, while residents have been largely restricted to the local level. Key decisions concerning the future of the forest have been taken at non-local scales, undermining the ability of Belarusians to achieve voice.23

Thus in conjunction with the triumph of neo-liberalism and its concomitant serialisation of the population, the rescaling of political power operates to exclude. Using different arguments in which the role of the ‘expert’ assumes prominence, such as economic coherence and efficiency (the regional development plan), or environmental crisis (as in Biaowiea) an effective strategy is devised to inhibit and / or block citizens participation in the decisions that affect them.

In addition, power exercises hegemony through discourse. The use of negative stereotypes to marginalize and trivialize Belarusian concerns is widespread.24 In democratic fora such as the Sejmik, ‘internal’ exclusion has been problematic since the fall of communism. The domination of Belarusians heartlands around Hajnówka by imposed representations such as ‘primeval forest’ and ‘rural idyll’ has undermined Belarusians’ ability to engage with other scales (national, international). (In contrast, the German minority was able to discuss their Heimat, and this was a factor in their successful engagement with all scales).25

However, resistance is possible. As the mass demonstration in March 2000 in Biaowiea indicated, a wide range of methods must be utilised in order to impact upon the current political framework. Restricting political participation to elections traps people in their place in a situation where the local is determined by the national and international. It is only through action which reaches beyond the local and manipulates scale can voice be achieved. It also requires the appreciation that the harm of exclusion operates through misrecognition / misrepresentation and socio-economic inequality26. To overcome exclusion necessitates action in both areas.

Democracy in Poland

The high rates of abstention indicate a democratic deficit, while contemporary elections are part of the problem. Even if turn out were higher a difficulty would still exist. This paradox is resolved by the notion of seriality which I maintain produce the low turnout rates, and which is produced, in part, by the election process.

The problem is that regardless of which party has been in power, the direction and goal of ‘transition’ has not been subjected to democratic deliberation.27 The main influence on policy has been actors acting at the national and international scale who have been determined to fashion the local in a manner congruent with the dictums of a narrow conception of the market. This has produced a serialised and frequently pauperised population, especially in rural areas, who have been unable to recognise their commonality of interest due to their isolation and acceptance of the ‘ruling ideas’.

This has seriously compromised their ability to act as full participants within the polis, and as such participation in elections would be inappropriate since this is the limit of democratic accountability, and agents operating through higher scales have already taken the key structural decisions. The real possibility of launching a scalar strategy of empowerment is hindered by the same serialisation and pauperisation.

Clearly, in Poland the construction of a neo-liberal market economy has taken priority over the construction of democracy. The production of decentred power operating through a ‘nesting’ of scales mystifies the process of transition, and further encourages the view that the path of ‘transition’ is determined. The government for its part, rather than challenge this view, is happy to acquiescence in its promotion, since it reduces contestation, and the demand for deliberation.

The lack of substantive democracy in Poland has been a necessary feature of the Polish ‘transition’. Lech Wasa explained as early as September 1989 when accused that he was not working for the revival of a strong Solidarity trade union, that with such a union, radical economic reform would be impossible. (awiski 1989). Similarly Leszek Balcerowicz observed that it was important to act quickly in order to push the reforms through (1995:162).

The regressive redistribution of income, the privatisation of fundamental services and the concomitant growth of crony capitalism, with corruption po polsku have worked to produce an alienated citizenry.28 It should be no surprise that consistently since 1993 between 50% and 60% of the population has been unhappy with the way democracy functions in Poland (Zagórski (2000:55). Indeed, despite struggling for over forty years for democratic deliberation, Polish citizens have, once more, been outflanked.

РЭЗЮМЭ

Майкл Флемінг з оксафардзкага ўнівэрсытэту публікуе ў „Годзе Беларускім“ вось дасьледваньне аб рэагаваньні электарату у пасткамуністычнай Польшчы, зьвяртаючы пры тым увагу на асаблівасьці ў рэагаваньні беларускай нацыянальнай меньшыні. Разглядае гэту асаблівасьць у кантэксьце вядомага канфлікту наконт будучыні Белавескай пушчы, важнага цэнтру гаспадарчай дзейнасьці Беларусаў. Згодна духу эўрапэйскай законнасьці, нельга разбураць – у імя інтарэсаў эканомікі дзяржавы тыя асяродкі, якія служаць матэрыяльна-грамадзкім апірышчам у далейшым існаваньні меншыннай этнікі.

Selected Bibliography

Balcerowicz L 1995 (a) Eastern Europe: economic, social and political dynamics in Góralczyk B et al In pursuit of Europe: Transformations of post-communist states 1989-1994 ISPPAN, Warsaw 109-123

Balcerowicz L 1995 (b) Socialism, Capitalism, Transformation Central European University Press London

Bauman Z 1999 The new poor – unneeded, unwanted and forsaken in Jasiska-Kania A, Kohn M and Somczyski K Power and social structure: Essays in honour of Wodzimierz Wesoowski WUW, Warszawa

Bruno M (1992) Stabilisation and reform in Eastern Europe: A Preliminary Evaluation IMF Working paper 92/30 Washington DC.

Blackburn R 2002 Banking on Death, or Investing in Life: The History and Future of Pensions Verso, London

Bochniarz H and Wioniewski A 1999 Godzina prawdy in: Rzeczpospolita 5 February

Camus A 1971 The Rebel Penguin, London

Emmanuelli X 1997 quoted in Bauman Z 1999 The new poor – unneeded, unwanted and forsaken in Jasiska-Kania A, Kohn M and Somczyski K Power and social structure: Essays in honour of Wodzimierz Wesoowski WUW, Warszawa 264-277

Franklin S (2001) Bialowiea Forest, Poland : social function and social power, Unpublished D.Phil thesis, School of Geography, University of Oxford.

Garton Ash T 2000 History of the Present: Essays, sketches and despatches from Europe in the 1990s Penguin, London

Golinowska S 1999 Nędza, ubóstwo, niedostatek in: Rzeczpospolita 9 September, Warszawa

Jarosz M 1998 Suicide ISPPAN Warszawa

Kawecka-Wyrzykowska, E 1996 Developments in Poland’s trade with the EU and CEFTA countries between 1990 and 1994 in Franzmeyer F and Weise L (ed) Polen und die Osterweiterung der Europaischen Union Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 64-77

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1 The assumption that catering to the interests of the business lobby will automatically produce beneficial social outcomes has guided economic policy in Poland. But as the experience of the UK and US demonstrate, such a position is difficult to sustain. For a discussion of the UK experience, see Monbiot (2000). Furthermore, such an assumption reduces the nature of deliberation about economic policy since the meaningful decisions have already been taken by ‘experts’

2 It should be noted however that the IMF presented Poland with three different stabilisation plans. Poland chose the most radical, something which surprised the IMF expert given the very tough negotiations their ‘assistance’ usually provokes amongst third world states. See Bruno (1992).

3 It is worth noting that in France protests followed Juppé’s government decision to cut welfare spending to meet the Maastricht criteria in November 1995, while in Poland such cuts are presented as ‘modernisation’, and ‘inevitable’, successfully inhibiting protest. Poland has one of the highest proportions of private provision in health care in Europe. Welfare provision has become less generous, and increasingly means-tested. There has been an expansion of private schools of higher education as the public funded sector has seen its budget capped. Recent pension reform is transforming a PAYGO system, to include a prefunded element, giving a steady stream of business (and profit) to the private sector. Blackburn (2002) discusses the myriad of problems associated with private funds, including poor returns, high administration costs, the high tax subsidisation (tax breaks) required, as well as conferring ‘ownership’ title which decrees that ‘some regions will boom while others decay’ (2002:5). The structural inequalities which pension fund capitalism fosters is a major concern. The ‘pension-savings’ of Polish workers could be put to better use, both socially and efficiently without the intervention of commercial providers, whose reputation post-Equitable Life, post-Enron is somewhat tarnished.

4 In this Balcerowicz is undoubtedly correct. Opinion polls indicates that following Solidarity’s victory in mid-1989 until March 1990 there was general optimism concerning the political situation in the country. See Zagórski et al (2000:43)

5 While the technical criteria for defining poverty may vary, numerous studies have shown that it has increased during the course of post-communism. The Vienna Institute of Human Studies reports (quoted in Kowalik 2001) that the number of people receiving half average disposable income or less (on an equivalent basis) reached 18.3% in 1995. Subsequent economic growth during the late 1990s rewarded the wealthier percentiles. Since then, the economy has stalled with unemployment pitched at around 18% according to official statistics and disproportionately affecting the younger cohorts.

6 There has been considerable resistance in Poland to the acceptance of the identity of the non-consuming consumer. Social protests, which remain frequent, exploit a variety of historic identities such as class (peasant / farmer, worker), regional markers (ie Silesians), and there remains a vibrant civil society challenging the trajectory of current socio-spatial transformations. Nevertheless, many Poles have fallen out of civil society, and it is they who are the main subject of this paper.

7 These private concerns are increasingly foreign owned, and given the weakness of the Polish market, consumer voice is unlikely to pose a serious challenge.

8 The reform of the pension system is likely to exacerbate short-termist investment, undermining the general rate of investment and thereby reducing long-term increases in productivity. For an account of the role played by pension funds in the economy see Blackburn (2002).

9 It should be noted, however, that the pattern of voting in the 2002 local elections saw many small towns record higher turnouts than for the presidents of large cities.

10 This is not to say that Polish Catholicism is regressive per se, rather to signal the fact that progressive strands within the Church have been eclipsed by agents such as Radio Maryja (independent of the Episcopate) which has promoted atavistic nationalist sentiments and varying degrees of intolerance.

11 However, it should be noted that the State has advocated, and advocates the ‘softening’ of labour regulation assuming that ‘soft’ labour (i.e. unorganized) will produce a friendlier business environment.

12 It is worth noting that as early as 1993 Poland had a $100 million deficit in agricultural trade. Although a drought occurred in 1992, subsequent performance has been discouraging. See Kawcka-Wyrzykowska, E (1996:70). Part of the problem has been the administrative manner in which co-operatives were liquidated at the beginning of the ‘transition’ process. Only after the increasingly regular demonstrations and road blockages by farmers, did a government minister in 2000 advise the (re)creation of co-operatives in order to shift trade profits to raise primary food prices. Such a shift is urgently called for. In Podlaskie, for example, the cost of production has for many small farmers exceeded farm gate prices. (Interview with Jan Syczewski, May 18th 2000 former SLD MP), and without increased seller’s power this is unlikely to change.

13 See Camus (1971:19). Notwithstanding Sartre’s critique of Camus’ voluntarism, Camus’ insight into the power of refusal remains valuable.

14 For further details see Wasilewski, J. et al (1999)

15 The question of low electoral turnouts has been a thorny issue for political scientists, and numerous theories have been advanced to explain the phenomenon. Sartre’s theorisation is particularly useful because it collapses the false dichotomy of the political and the economy. It recognises that structural social relations are important. Some theorists see the abstention from political activity as a rational, pragmatic decision allowing time and energy to be spent on other activities rather than any calculated choice concerning the status of ‘formal’ democracy. If this is the case, then those abstaining are willfully abstaining from participating in the decisions that affect them in order to do other things. Ultimately, however, abstention rather than creating time and saving energy for these other activities could actually constrain non-political activity since others decide what can be done, where and how.

16 I explore the Belarusians exclusion from, and marginalisation in democratic fora elsewhere. See Fleming, M. (2002) ‘Fixing the political landscape: The Belarusian minority in Poland after the 2001 parliamentary elections’ in Annus Albaruthenicus 2002, p33-50 Krynki, Poland and Fleming, M. (2003) National minorities in post-communist Poland Veritas, London.

17 See www.stat.gov.pl ‘Investment’ and Urząd Statystyczny w Białymstoku (2000) p454 Rocznik Statystyczny 2000: Województwa Podlaskiego WUS Białystok

18 Radecki, A. (1996) p17 Agriculture in the region of the Biaowiea Primeval Forest (sic) Warsaw Agricultural University, Warsaw. Radecki claims that the basic fertiliser used in this area is manure

19 Poskrobko, B. (2000) p53 Restrukturyzacja przemysłu w gminach rejonu Puszczy Białowieskiej. Wydawnictwo Ekonomia i Środowisko, Białystok.

20 Source WUS (various years) and Zarząd Województwa Podlaskiego w Gminach rejonu Puszczy Białowieskiej Wydawnictwo Ekonomia i Środowisko. Białystok. (1999) p66 Strategia rozwoju województwa podlaskiego, Biaystok

21 This was revealed by an inspection of budget figures by NIK, Poland’s Supreme Chamber of Control in September 2000.

22 Harvey, D. (1991) The Limits to Capital Blackwell, Oxford

23 For full details of the Biaowiea conflict see Franklin, S. (2002) ‘Biaowieża Forest: Myth, Reality and the Politics of Dispossession – The Power of representation’ in Environment and Planning October 2002 & Fleming, M. (2002) ‘The Biaowieża forest conflict: Is there a democratic solution?’ published as ‘Bialowieża: A Minority View’ in Central Europe Review 26th November 2002 (www.tol.cz)

24 See Czykwin, E. (2000) Białoruska mniejszość narodowa jako grupa stygmatyzowana, Trans Humana, Białystok.

25 For further details concerning the importance of place based discourse see Fleming (2002)

26 The recognition / redistribution debate is of key relevance to understand the problems of contemporary democracy. See recent work by Nancy Fraser, Judith Butler & Iris Marion Young.

27 One seasoned commentator was surprised with ‘the ease with which the elites, called to life by the workers’ movement, were able to make a turn about 180 degrees and discard the values, hitherto considered essential’. Modzelewski (1993). Clearly such an about face would not be possible if the deliberation advocated by Young (2000) and Kymlicka (2000) took place. The scale of the disjunction between representatives and the population has been captured in numerous CBOS opinion polls, and sociological studies.

28 It is worth recalling Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of corruption. He wrote: ‘The normal exercise of hegemony is characterized by the combination of force and consent in variable equilibrium without force predominating too much over consent’ In certain circumstances the use of force is too risky (force is not a realistic option with Poland on the brink of EU membership) but ‘between consent and force stands corruption-fraud, that is the enervation and paralyzing of the antagonist or antagonists’. No one should be surprised by the explosion in corruption in Poland since 1989, given the difficulties in exercising force for internal control and the shallowness of the consent of the ruled. See Gramsci, A. (1975) Quaderni del Carcere, vol III p1638 Turin.