Conclusion: The Resilience of Individualism

Summary

Poland's liberal democracy emerged out of the earlier breakthroughs of individualism. The main reason why the Solidarity movement beat the overwhelming odds and toppled the Communist regime—and then, during the next quarter-century, went on to reshape the polity, economy, and society in its own liberal image—was that it had had a mass social base in the culturally individuated working class in the cities of the Western Territories.

Herein, too, however, lay the insurmountable limit to the Polish democratic achievement. Liberalism's partisan constituency was considerable, but it was mostly limited to one geographical area—the west (i.e., half the country). That regional base and constituency were not enough to create, in the last thirty years, a nationwide institutional hegemony that would embody the principles and the spirit of liberal democracy.

In chapter 5, I distinguished between the articulation and institutionaliza-tion stages in the development of political liberalism. For the institutionaliza-tion to succeed, the new postrevolutionary political leadership must convert the values of liberal democracy into “authoritative patterns of behavior,” safe-guarded with predictable sanctions. These patterns, embodied in stable orga-nizations and procedures, must, moreover, be accepted by critical groups in society. These conditions were not met in Poland. Formal democratic institu-tions were set up, but they remained defective with regard to the disciplining and empowering of the citizenry. The school system, the judiciary, the bureau-cracy, political parties, and professional organizations—in other words, key building blocs of the public- organizational lifeworld that, in mature democra-cies, acculturate the citizens to egalitarian-universalist values—remained too narrow or aloof to create widespread compliance and allegiances.

Low popular interest and participation in public life did not help robust democratic institutional development. In the post-1989 environment, most personal energies were spent on finding one's place in the market economy. That was enough of a revolution in ordinary people's lives to keep them occupied. Polish individuals scored impressive successes in this field, demonstrating a high adaptability to capitalism. But society's capacity for public engagement suffered because of this redirection of social energies. In the absence of public interest and supervision, institutions remained elitist; this, in turn, alienated even more citizens. Voter turnout, membership in voluntary associations, and other forms of civic activism in Poland lagged behind Western European levels.