Continuities in Poland's permanent transition

Abstract

This book deals with continuities in Poland's transition. A book on continuities may be a surprise to the reader familiar with the social science literature on Eastern Europe. Politics and societies in Eastern Europe are nowadays primarily associated with political and social change on a broad scale. The strong impact of change is reflected in different domains of the social science literature. Accordingly, the demise of the communist system has induced research on conceptual alternatives for a new system (Hankiss, 1990; Beyme, 1993; Merkel, 1994; Offe, 1997; Holmes, 1997a). The emergence of individual autonomy and the liberation from a closed system have stimulated works on civil and open society (Keane, 1988; Ash, 1990; Dahrendorf, 1990; Ekiert, 1994; Gellner, 1994). Changes in the regime of Eastern Europe became a major and controversial study of object of transitology and its sub-disciplin6' consolidology (Linz and Stepan, 1996b; Schmitter and Karl, 1994, 1995; Offe, 1996; 1997; Elster et al., 1998; Holmes, 1997b). In this vein, scholars were recommended to shift their thinking 'from the heady excitement and underdetermination of the transition from autocracy ( ..) to the prosaic routine and overdetermination of consolidated democracy'.