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Vertical Integration and Political Control in Eastern Europe: The Polish and Romanian Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Daniel N. Nelson
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Extract

The legitimacy of ruling Communist parties rests, in large part, on their alleged identity with the working masses. Ties to the citizenry are crucial for these parties if they are to retain Marxist credentials and, thereby, their rationale for taking power and maintaining an authoritarian system. All political systems, authoritarian ones included, seek willing obedience from citizens if for no other reason than efficiency. But as a subset of authoritarian polities, Communist states have an additional burden. No ultimate truth, national interest, or religious purity sanctioned their road to power, although national interests are increasingly used by many Communist parties to attain greater credibility with citizens. Instead, Communists' identity with the interests of working people constitutes the primary rationale for their hold on government.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , Summer 1981 , pp. 210 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1981

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References

1. These aims for local political institutions are a paraphrase of Zhivkov, Todor, “Report of the Central Committee to the Eleventh Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party,” By and For the People (New York: New World Review Press, 1977), p. 84 Google Scholar. Nicolae Ceausescu can be seen making almost identical statements in “Cuvintare la plenara Comitetului Central al Comunist Român din 28 Februar- 2 Marti, 1973 ” in Romania pe drumul construirii societafii socialiste multilateraldezvoltate (Bucharest: Editura politica, 1973). Gierek, the former Polish leader, provides similar expressions, reported in Trybuna Ludu, May 13, 1975.

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5. Regional inequalities in fact persist. The effect of Communist rule thus far has been small in altering the distribution of wealth. While the degree of success and effort has varied greatly, Poland and Romania have made some headway in equalizing wealth and standards of living among subnational units over thirty years, but enormous gaps remain. In Romania, for example, a goal of the late 1970s and early 1980s is to bring all thirty-nine judefe up to ten billion lei (officially about eight hundred fifty million dollars) in gross product (Producfie global). Several judefe, however, have produced over or close to forty billion lei since the mid-1970s, for example, BraŞov, Huneadoara, TimiŞ, and Constanţa. In Poland, similar gaps remain. In 1961, Katowice, Opole, and Łodz województwa had GNPs and levels of personal consumption far above provinces such as Białystok, Kielce, and Lublin (see Kosta Mihailović, Regionalni Razvoj Socijalistićkih Zemalja [Belgrade, 1972], p. 200). Over the late 1960s and early 1970s, gross regional differences remained evident in mean expenditures on health, education, and housing (see Roczniki Branizowe [Warsaw: Glowny Urząd Statystyczny, 1966-72]). Such data on budgets and expenditures cannot be regarded as more than gross estimates since they tap none of the barter and black market economic operations of Eastern Europe.

6. There are exceptions to this statement regarding juntas, of course. In Latin America, the Peruvian military regime has (since 1970) identified itself with the interests of “masses” while displaying uneasiness about the participation of lower classes. “Revolutionary” military governments are frequent in Africa and the Middle East.

7. Gebert, Stanisiaw, Wtadze i Administracja Terenowapo Reformie (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1976), p. 18 Google Scholar.

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13. Calculated from Rocznik Statystyczny (Warsaw, 1971, 1976).

14. Judeţele Romaniei Socialiste (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1972).

15. An anonymous reader for the Slavic Review reminded me of these nonmanipulative functions of reforms.

16. Mihailovic, Regional Razvoj, p. 200.

17. The mean number of years in office for provincial first secretaries in Poland from 1948 through 1970 was almost six years (Radio Free Europe, Polish Section, archival material investigated by this author in 1979).

18. Grim, Alojzy, Zagadnienie RownówaŻenia BudŻetów Rad Narodowych (Katowice: Sląski Instytut Naukowy, 1972), p. 13 Google Scholar.

19. Audiences are a form of citizen-government contact practiced in a number of Communist countries wherein individual citizens appear before local people's council officers in a private session. The citizen in effect petitions the officer for his intervention in matters such as housing, job security, community action, and sometimes family quarrels. Each member of a people's council permanent bureau holds an audience on one day of the week, usually on a first-come, first-serve basis.

20. loan Vida, “Participarea Maselor la Adoptarea Planului §i Bugetului,” mimeographed (Bucharest: Academia, 1977), pp. 26-28.

21. Oral communication to the author, 1977.

22. Krzystof Jasciewicz, “Articulation of Interests in the Polish Political System: A Model Type Approach,” mimeographed (Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, 1979), p. 10.

23. Ibid., pp. 11-12.

24. Oral communication to the author, 1977.

25. Sylvester Zawadzki, “The Reform of Local Government in the Polish People's Republic, 1972- 1975,” manuscript, p. 33; emphasis added.

26. Nelson, “Dilemmas of Local Politics,” pp. 32-54.

27. Ceausescu, Nicolae, Romania Pe Drumul Desăvir$irii Construcţiei Socialisle (Bucharest: Editura Politica, 1970), pp. 632–33Google Scholar.

28. Ceauşescu, Nicolae, Raport la Conferinţa Nafionala a Partidului Comunisl Român, Decembrie 1967 (Bucharest: Editura Politica, 1967), p. 95 Google Scholar.

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30. Ştefan Bobo$, “Atragerea Maselor in Procesul Conducerii,” Era Socialista (July 1974): 11-13 and Angela Niculescu, “Participare Con§tien(a—Factor Hotaritor al Perfec(ionarii Regimului Politic Socialist,” Analele Universitajii Bucure$ti: Ştiinţe politice $i economice, 22 (1973): 2-8.

31. Demeter, Janos, Eisenburger, Eduard and Lipatti, Valentin, Romania and the National Question (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1972), p. 52 Google Scholar.

32. Buletinul Oficial, 65 (May 11, 1973).

33. Jackson, Marvin, “Industrialization, Trade, and Mobilization in Romania's Drive for Economic Independence,” in U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, East European Economics Post- Helsinki (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 891Google Scholar.

34. Ibid.

35. Fischer, Mary Ellen, “Nation and Nationality in Romania,” in George W. Simmonds, ed., Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe (Detroit: University of Detroit Press, 1977), p. 510Google Scholar.

36. Radio Free Europe, “The 14th Plenum: Mistakes Admitted,” Polish Situation Report, 9 (May 3, 1979)

37. Daniel N. Nelson, “Subnational Policy in Poland: The Dilemma of Vertical vs. Horizontal Integration,” in Kanet, Roger and Simon, Maurice, eds., Prelude to Crisis: Policy and Politics in Gierek's Poland (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980 Google Scholar).

38. Ion Vintu argues that such a harmony can be achieved (see Vintu, , “Centralisme et Autonomie” Res publico 13, no. 5 (1971): 757–58)Google Scholar. However, the resources are often unavailable for autonomy. Counties in Romania and provinces in Poland vary considerably in the proportion of expenditures derived from local sources. Local refers not to enterprises based in a particular county or province, many of which are directly subordinate to central ministries, but to resources over which the local unit has nominal discretion. In that regard, local contributions to the judeţ-level budgets in Romania vary from 20-40 percent, according to interviews by this author in 1973. Even at the commune level, a tiny fraction of the money spent in the commune is raised by local government. A large Romanian commune, for instance, raised slightly over one hundred twenty thousand dollars (1,475,000 lei) in three months in 1978, but over eight million were spent in the local government “budget” during the same time. For most of Eastern Europe, however, budgetary data are not reliable indicators for inferences about political processes. The appearance of a particular figure in the budget of a local unit in no way indicates the decision maker in allocating resources to that locale. Often a patron-client relationship is the decisive variable in the location of economic enterprises. Moreover, amounts in the nominal “budgets” of a gmina or województwo in Poland, for instance, cannot be presumed to be disposable resources at the discretion of the local unit.

39. See Zawadzki, Sylvester, “Reform Wladz Terenowych a Rozwoj Samorządności w Miastach” Nowe drogi, 10 (1974)Google Scholar; and Leonski, Zbigniew, “Z problematyki Samorządu Mieszkancow Miast i Wsi” Organizacja-metody technika, 6 (1975).Google Scholar

40. Yugoslavia, as it often is, is an exception in this regard. See Cal Clark, “Commune Policies and Socioeconomic Parameters,” in Nelson, Daniel N., ed., Local Politics in Communist Countries (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1980 Google Scholar).

41. Fried, Robert C., The Italian Prefects (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 297 Google Scholar.

42. See ibid., and Alfred Diamant, “The Department, the Prefect, and Dual Supervision in French Administration: A Comparative Study,” Journal of Politics, 16 (1954): 472-90.

43. Fried, Italian Prefects, pp. 299-300.

44. Hough, Jerry F., The Soviet Prefects: The Local Party Organs in Decision-Making (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969 CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and Victor C. Falkenheim, “Decentralization and Control in Chinese Local Administration,” in Nelson, ed., Local Politics in Communist Countries.

45. Nelson, Daniel N., “Sub-national Political Elites in a Communist System” East European Quarterly, 10, no. 4 (1976): 459–94Google Scholar and Nelson, “Dilemmas of Local Politics.”

46. Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Romania (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1968).

47. Ceauşescu, “Raport la Conferin﹛a,” pp. 117-18.

48. Ibid., p. 118.

49. “Deklaracja I Krajowej Konferencji PZPR,” Trybuna Ludu, November 8, 1973.

50. Ostrowski, Krzysztof and Przeworski, Adam, “Local Leadership in Poland” The Polish Sociological Bulletin, 16, no. 2 (1967): 53–71.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., p. 64.

52. Ibid., pp. 69-70.

53. Scinteia, February 18, 1971.

54. Calculations by this author based on Radio Free Europe archives, Romanian section, Munich 1979.

55. Kesselman, Mark, The Ambiguous Consensus: A Study of Local Government in France (New York: Knopf, 1967 Google Scholar); Hayward, Jack, The One and Indivisible French Republic (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973 Google Scholar); and Tarrow, Sidney, “Local Constraints on Regional Reform: A Comparison of Italy and France” Comparative Politics, 7, no. 1 (1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar