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Old Political Rationalities and New Democracies: Compromise and Confrontation in Hungary and Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Anna Seleny
Anna Seleny
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

Studies of democratic consolidation tend to highlight the same factors previously used to explain countries' transitional dynamics. Yet one cannot properly understand success or failure in democratic consolidation—much less discern significant qualitative differences among consolidated democracies—by focusing exclusively on formal institutions, modes of transition, incentive structures, or exogenous factors. Close inspection of two newly consolidated democracies—Poland and Hungary—shows that despite radically altered institutional arrangements, legal structures, and political-economic incentives, the most important determinants of the models of democracy emerging today derive from pretransition conceptual frames and informal political settlements. Specifically, the core conflicts between ruling elites and society in communist Poland and Hungary, as well as the patterns of political accommodation that evolved in the management of those conflicts, continue to structure the political agenda and order debate in both countries. In Poland overlapping ethical-ideological cleavages and failures of political accommodation under the ancien regime have resulted in a confrontational-pluralist model of democracy. In contrast, Hungary's compromise-corporatist model stems from early informal accommodation between the party-state and society that recast most conflicts as “economic” in nature. These long-standing conflicts and political patterns explain striking contemporary differences in social mobilization, party competition, and constitutional development. The article concludes with a discussion of how these models are likely to shape each country's prospects for sustained governability and increased democratic legitimacy.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , July 1999 , pp. 484 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1999

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References

1 Scholars who have addressed this issue include O'Donnell, Guillermo, “Illusions about Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 7 (April 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Linz, Juan and Stepan, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Higley, John and Pakulski, Jan, “Elite Power Games and Democratic Consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe” (Revised paper for the E.S.F. Network Conference on Social Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe, C.N.R.S., Paris, May 15–17, 1998)Google Scholar; and Schedler, Andreas, “What Is Democratic Consolidation?” Journal of Democracy 9 (April 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3 Many assumed that even in the absence of contextual knowledge, their theoretical expertise would permit the rigorous application of models derived from other parts of the world to Eastern Europe. See Bernhard, Michael, Institutional Choice after Communism: A Critique of Theory-Building in an Empirical Wasteland, Program on Central and Eastern Europe Working Papers Series 47 (Cambridge: Minda De Gunzberg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 1998)Google Scholar. For another detailed critique of this practice and an overview of some important methodological debates that have arisen in connection with it, see Bunce, Valerie, “Should Transitologists Be Grounded?” Slavic Review 54 (Spring 1995), 111–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the following in Slavic Review. Terry, Sarah Meiklejohn, “Thinking about Postcommunist Transitions: How Different Are They?” Slavic Review 52 (Summer 1993), 333–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmitter, Philippe C. and Karl, Terry Lynn, “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt To Go?” Slavic Review 53 (Spring 1994), 173–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karl, Terry Lynn and Schmitter, Philippe C., “From an Iron Curtain to a Paper Curtain: Grounding Transitologists or Students of Postcommunism?” Slavic Review 54 (Winter 1995), 965—78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bunce, Valerie, “Paper Curtains and Paper Tigers,” Slavic Review 54 (Winter 1995), 979–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 The analysis is also broadly compatible with path-dependent analyses; see Jeffrey S. Kopstein and David A. Reilly, “Explaining the Why of the Why: A Comment on Fish's 'Determinants of Economic Reform in the Post-Communist World”' (Manuscript, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, August 1999), 1. But whereas such analyses emphasize how various equilibria result from institutional choices, I stress (1) informal patterns of politics and (2) the power of specific conceptual frames to organize and limit political agendas and institutional possibilities (at founding moments), as -well as institutional interactions (once established). Daniel Chirot made an interesting variant of this criticism when he decried the neglect of the “ideological intent of those who take power” by sociologists working in the tradition of structural materialism; see Chirot, , “Social Revolutions in Modern World” (book review), Social Forces 75 (March 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Finally, this study lends support to analyses focusing on the procedural elements of elite interaction, for example, Burton, Michael, Gunther, Richard, and Higley, John, “Introduction: Elite Transformations and Democratic Regimes,” in Higley, John and Gunther, Richard, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. But similar caveats should be observed: ideas and the discourses that link them to political practice—as well as the informal institutions that routinely give them expression—condition both elite behavior and that of their social interlocutors.

7 Ekiert focuses on major political crises in post-World War II Central Europe, and his comprehensive analysis supports the approach used here. See Ekiert, Gregorz, The State against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 325Google Scholar. Most experts who have long written about Eastern Europe eschew reductionistic explanations of East European politics, whether institutional choice explanations or other varieties. The list of scholars who have produced rich work on the region would require a separate, lengthy review article. While the present article helps explain several recent political developments in Hungary and Poland, at the theoretical level, it is the recent literature on Eastern Europe that makes it necessary

8 Increasingly, the Baltic countries are included in this camp. Rupnik actually sees a tripartite classification, with the Balkans and Russia in separate categories. Rupnik, Jacques, “The Postcommunist Divide,” Journal of Democracy 10 (January 1999), 57–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For example, many analysts pair pre-1989 Hungary and Poland as “reformist,” “parted,” “negotiated,” or “national consensus” systems or transitions. On parted and negotiated transitions in the region, see Huntington, Samuel P., The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991)Google Scholar; on national consensus systems, see Kitschelt, Herbert, “Formation of Party Cleavages in Post-Communist Democracies: Theoretical Propositions,” Party Politics 1 (October 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ishiyama, John, “Transitional Electoral Systems in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” Political Science Quarterly (Spring 1997), 112Google Scholar. But such studies cannot explain contemporary Polish or Hungarian politics, precisely because they adopt analytical categories that eclipse fundamentally different sociopolitical cleavages and core conflicts, and thus often confuse cause and effect. Take the common misconception that economic reforms are the primary object and cause of the most fundamental political conflicts in these new democracies. In fact, the core conflicts shaping contemporary politics issue not so much from reforms per se as from patterns of intraelite and statesociety interaction that motivate or block reforms. Andrew János, for instance, suggests a useful distinction between developmental and reconstructionist regimes and offers a deep analysis of the variety of regimes that evolved in Eastern Europe (and in the Soviet Union over time). See János, , “What Was Communism: A Retrospective in Comparative Analysis,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 29 (March 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 It may yet prove too soon to employ the language of “models”—even loosely and for convenience' sake as I do here: some of the divergence that now appears fixed may yet turn out to be “transitional.” But whatever important differences persist decades hence between the Polish and Hungarian democracies, their origins are likely to be found in the variables identified here.

11 Poland approximates but does not precisely fit what Giovanni Sartori called “polarized pluralism”: systems characterized by highly polarized political entities that find it difficult to cooperate with one another. Sartori, , “European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism,” in Palombara, Joseph La and Weiner, Myron, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

12 During the May 1998 election campaign, as in the previous two election cycles since 1989, other strains of moralistic politics more similar to the Polish variety could be heard in Hungary. Similarly, one finds myriad examples of political compromise in everyday Polish politics, as well as a few more dramatic ones: the political compromise of the 1989 roundtable agreement (discussed below), Adam Michnik's rapprochement with General Jaruzelski, and so on. Thus my characterization is intended only as shorthand for describing overall trends in the political development of the two countries. Moreover, in a deeper sense Polish politics rests on strong multiple corporate identities (the church, unions, “the nation”) as much as on “individuals” as generally understood in the Western liberal tradition, while Hungarian politics seems to be more thoroughly based on a kind of “civic individualism.” If Ken Jowitt is correct in asserting that “individual civic identities do come at the exense of corporate identity,” then my characterization of the Hungarian and Polish democratic models as broadly “corporatist” and “pluralist” respectively raises a certain irony, which in this venue I can do no more than acknowledge. See Jowitt, , “In Praise of the Ordinary,” in Michnik, , Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), xxiiGoogle Scholar.

13 The point here is not to draw conclusions about how effectively Polish unions defend the interests of their membership. Determining this would require an in-depth empirical study carefully specifying and contextualizing the definition of success. A few impressionistic points must suffice here. Given Poland's legacy of trade-union activism, it is somewhat ironic that since 1990 Polish unemployment was several percentage points higher than in Hungary, and between the third quarter of 1993 and 1997 the percentage increase over Hungarian levels grew. Moreover, real wages in Poland fell further between 1990 and 1993. For unemployment figures, see Winiecki, Jan, “East Central Europe: A Regional Surveys—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia in 1993,” Europe-Asia Studies 46 (January 1994), 729CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For real wages, see Greskovits, Bela, “Hungerstrikers, the Unions, the Government and the Parties: A Case Study of Hungarian Transformation—Conflict, the Social Pact and Democratic Development” (Manuscript, Central European University, Budapest, 1994), 32Google Scholar. For time-series data since 1992, see the Statistical Bulletin 1994/4–1997/4 (Budapest: Kozponti Statisztikai Hivatal (KSH), 1995)Google Scholar. By comparison, at least in the early posttransition years, Polish workers' councils maintained a degree of influence in many enterprises and used this influence to establish numerous ESOPS, as well as to veto some privatization arrangements. See Slay, Ben, “Privatization in Poland” (Paper delivered at the conference “Privatization and Democratization in Russia and Central Europe,” Berlin, May 23—27, 1995)Google Scholar; and Jarosch, Maria, ed., Employee-Owned Companies in Poland (Warsaw: Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, 1994)Google Scholar.

14 On voter turnout, organizational participation, and political engagement in the region, see Simon, János, “Post-Paternalist Political Culture in Hungary: Relationship between Citizens and Politics during and after the 'Melancholic Revolution' (1989–1991),” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 26 (June 1993), 230–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Makó, Csaba and Simonyi, Ágnes, “Inheritance, Imitation and Genuine Solutions (Institution Building in Hungarian Labour Relations,” Europe-Asia Studies 49 (March 1997), 224CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 The railroad workers, for example, strike every year at the same time—just before the budget negotiations—in order to try to influence the budget. This is well understood by all relevant parties and, as one former MP said, has become “regular showbiz.” Author interview with Zoltan Bretter, Princeton, February 1999.

17 According to Ekiert and Kubik's data, Poland also had seven times as many strikes as Hungary (432 versus 61) during this period. Grzegorz Ekiert and Kubik, Jan, Collective Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989–93, Pew Papers on Central Eastern European Reform and Regionalism, no. 3 (Princeton: Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1997)Google Scholar, table 2, line 7. In contrast, according to Table 1 above, Poland averaged 390 times as many strikes as Hungary between 1991 and 1993. The absence of data for two years (1989–90) is insufficient to account for this significant difference; thus reconciling these two data sets would require further research into the assumptions and methods of the Hungarian journal that originally reported those reproduced in Table 1.

18 The degree of unionization in Poland is remarkable by any measure. There are fifteen hundred trade unions (two hundred are national). Union penetration of enterprises is particularly high: many are represented multiply in enterprises; see Ekiert and Kubik (fn. 17), 22. The Hungarian union landscape is strikingly dissimilar. There are three groups of unions, comprising seven individual unions, and “in most cases only one … union has been present at [the] branch level and at the workplace”; see Greskovits (fn. 13), 10.

19 We must, of course, judge the degree of political quiescence versus confrontation against the degree of unionization as a percentage of active earners. This figure is higher, though not dramatically so, in Poland for the years in question. Hungarian union membership is approximately 30 percent of active earners; see Greskovits (fn. 13), 10. Poland's is 38 percent; see Ekiert and Kubik (fn. 17). More importantly, we could not wholly explain a greater incidence of strikes even if the percentage of union members were much higher in Poland, since a “quantity theory of protest” would assume that workers and unions have no means of expressing their grievances other than strikes. Finally, the different strategies of protest prevailing in Central Europe cannot be explained by economic dissatisfaction or “relative deprivation.” Protest continued to increase in Poland—which experienced the shortest recession—even as the economy improved; surveys consistently showed Hungarians to be far more dissatisfied with post-1989 changes than Poles, yet they protested much less; East Germans, the economic “winners” of 1989 in terms of living standards, protested more than Hungarians. Nor are the divergences explainable by type or sequencing of reforms or by purely structural-institutional factors; see Ekiert and Kubik (fn. 17), 31–33; and idem, Contentious Politics in New Democracies, Central and Eastern Europe Working Paper, no. 41 (Cambridge: Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 1997), 26Google Scholar.

20 Hungary's main union, the National Federation of Hungarian Workers, is the successor to MSZOSZ, the former communist trade union, and now enjoys growing legitimacy. Clearly, however, it could not have played a role analogous to Solidarity's.

21 Greskovits (fn. 13), 25.

22 Kövrig, Bennett, “Hungarian Socialism: The Deceptive Hybrid,” East European Politics and Societies 1 (Winter 1987), 126Google Scholar. The direct precursor of the IRC dates to 1988, when the National Council of Coordination of Interests was established. Here the trade union (SZOT), the government, and the chambers of the economy (until 1985 the chambers of commerce) deliberated over wage determination.

23 Haggard, Stephan, Kaufman, Robert, and Shugart, Matthew, Politics, Institutions and Macroeconomic Adjustment: Hungarian Fiscal Policymaking in Comparative Perspective, Collegium Budapest Discussion Paper no. 51 (Budapest, November 1998), 16Google Scholar.

24 Frank L. Wilson has criticized, for instance, the tendency of scholars to rely too heavily on formal institutional features of corporatism in analyses of the actual degree of corporatism at work in a particular country; Wilson, , “Interest Groups and Politics in Western Europe: The Neo-Corporatist Approach,” Comparative Political Studies 16 (October 1983), 118–19Google Scholar. Peter Katzenstein has also argued that a country in which the formal institutions of corporatism seem weak (e.g., Switzerland) can nevertheless be quite strongly corporatist in a variety of ways; Katzenstein, , Corporatism and Change: Austria, Switzerland and the Politics of Industry (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. There remains considerable disagreement about just how to rank countries along a continuum between corporatist and pluralist. See Lijphart, Arend and Crepaz, Markus M. L., “Corporatism and Consensus Democracy in Eighteen Countries: Conceptual and Empirical Linkages,” British Journal of Political Science 21 (1990)Google Scholar. Analogously, in their study of elite settlements, Burton, Gunther, and Higley (fn. 6), 32, wisely focus more on procedural elements and on elite interaction per se than on any particular institutional arrangement or the political inputs and outputs distributed through such arrangements.

25 The Hungarian Tripartite Commission has been reminiscent of other corporatist models in terms of two broad intentions: (1) to craft agreements among business, labor, and the government, and (2) to do this in a manner that prevents allocative disputes from entering the parliamentary arena insofar as possible. It did not, however, comfortably fit classical conceptions of fully institutionalized corporatism in which both the actors and their interactions are clearly recognized and regulated by law, as in the paradigmatic (former) Austrian model. Hungarian employers' associations and trade unions do not have a constitutionally guaranteed position as bargaining partners with the government. Yet since 1989 the budget committee has consulted the Tripartite Commission before presenting its draft budget to parliament, and parliament has generally conformed to the commission's internal negotiations. As this article goes to press in July 1999, the government has decided to include a broader range of civil society institutions in the commission (e.g., nonprofit foundations). It is still unclear exactly what this will mean for the IRC's role, but in the short run it will likely weaken labor's position. This, at any rate, ap-pears to be the government's intention. Robert Jenkins suggests that the nonprofit sector's role in provision of social services will expand along with pressure to reduce central budgetary expenditure; see Jenkins, , “The Role of the Hungarian Non-Profit Sector in Post-Communist Society,” Meeting report no. 176, East European Studies (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, May-June 1999), 12Google Scholar. If he is correct, then there may be unintended consequences of including foundations and other societal actors in the IRC. The government may eventually find that it has strengthened the position of the actors to which it has newly granted institutional voice and be forced to respond to them on an increasingly broad variety of issues. A more important short-term consideration is that the government's action may radicalize the unions.

26 János Kornai (Lecture, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, March 1996). A s noted above, however, as this article goes to press in July 1999, the IRC is being reorganized to include other representatives of civil society (foundations, for example), and the new government is trying to reduce its political clout.

27 It is not surprising that, by contrast, the Polish Tripartite Commission should be marked by precisely these tendencies. As both genuine sociopolitical movement and trade union, Solidarity was, and its successor institutions remain, far more complex and internally contradictory than any Hungarian party or trade union. Hungary's main pre-1989 union (MSZOSZ) remains dominant among Hungarian unions even after 1989, retains close ties with the postcommunist party, and, of course, was never a po litical movement. Contrast this with Solidarity's split into political party-cum-multiple trade unions (Solidarity '80, Rural Solidarity, and so on) plus an employers confederation (Confederation of Polish Employers, or KPP). Consider, too, the deep ideological and institutional divisions between Solidarity-as-union(s) and Solidarity political elites as legislators. Even Poland's counterpart of Hungary's MSZOSZ, the OPZZ, is considerably more internally differentiated (it is a confederation of trade unions). For more detail on East European tripartite bargaining arrangements, see Hethy, Lajos, “Tripartism in Eastern Europe,” in Ferner, Anthony and Hyman, Richard, eds., New Frontiers in European Industrial Relations (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1994)Google Scholar.

28 In communist systems these represented an unmonetized part of wages and were often listed in constitutions, though they lacked the legal status and weight of full rights. Paczolay, Peter, “The New Hungarian Constitutional State,” in Howard, A. E. Dick, ed., Constitution Making in Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993), 47Google Scholar. In Hungary family and maternity allowances, unemployment and other benefits, and social subsidies expanded even amid the economic crisis of the 1980s, and the first postsocialist government created a “range of entitlement” broader than that of many developed countries. Even so, the Hungarian court struck down attempts at sudden or wholesale revocation of the informal social compact between society and the old party-state.

29 World Development Report (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 215Google Scholar. Calculated at the end of September 1995, the court's rulings against various aspects of the Bokros package entailed the loss of potential savings of somewhere between 40 and 60 billion forints (then roughly U.S. $308, 000,000–462, 000,000 at a rate of HUF 130: U.S. $1). The state budget deficit for the first eight months of 1995 was HUF 206.2 billion (roughly U.S. $1.6 billion). See Rick Bruner, The Hungary Re-port (Online at [email protected]; or at http://www.isys.hu./hrep/, 1995), 3.

30 Wiatr, Jerzy, “Executive-Legislative Relations in Crisis: Poland's Experience, 1989–1993,” in Lijphart, Arend and Waisman, Carlos, eds., Institutional Design in New Democracies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

31 Osiatynski, Wiktor, “A Letter from Poland” East European Constitutional Review 4 (Spring 1995)Google Scholar.

32 Thanks to Tomasz Inglot for pointing this out.

33 The tribunal was established along with the Office of the Ombudsman and the system of administrative courts, and although these institutions were unable to operate autonomously between 1986 and 1989, they did prove important in the internal dismantling of Polish communism during the same period; author's written communication with Agnieszka Rybcznska, Lublin, August 1997.

34 Author's written communication with Agnieszka Rybcznska, Lublin, August 1997.

35 Ibid.

36 The new constitution somewhat increases the tribunal's powers (e.g., by the year 2000 its decisions will be final and binding). It has also slightly reduced the broad powers of the presidency; “Constitution Watch,” East European Constitutional Review 6 (Winter 1997), 21Google Scholar. The 1997 constitution makes the constructive vote of confidence the only permissible means for unseating a government, as in Hungary (as well as in Germany and Spain). Such provisions should promote greater balance and stability among the branches of the Polish government, even if they cannot, in themselves, ameliorate core conflicts.

37 Haggard, Kaufman, and Shugart (fn. 23).

38 Holmes, Stephen and Sunstein, Cass R., “The Politics of Constitutional Revision in Eastern Europe,” in Levinson, Sanford, ed., Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 300Google Scholar. Another author writes that the Hungarian court has “emerged as the boldest judicial actor in the former Soviet bloc (and perhaps the world)”; Brown, Nathan J., “Judicial Review and the Arab World,” Journal of Democracy 9 (October 1998), 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Anyone, including foreigners, even without involvement or interest, can challenge a law's constitutionality. No other court in the world offers such “unrestricted standing” to challenge “abstract norms.” See Sajo, Andras, “How the Rule of Law Killed Hungarian Welfare Reform,” East European Constitutional Review 5, no. 1 (1996)Google Scholar.

40 For example, the decision to require a two-thirds majority dates from a 1990 constitutional pact made by political opponents, the MDF and the SZDSZ. The two parties agreed that certain categories of laws with potentially broad impact should be placed outside the framework of normal parliamentary business and that amending these laws should involve both the government and the opposition. Among these were the media law, the law on local government, and the nomination of constitutional court members. Another effect of this pact was the likelihood that the president would always be a consensus figure. The election of the president requires a two-thirds majority of the parliament for the first two votes. Only on the third vote can a simple majority carry.

41 Elster, Jon, “Explaining Legislative Dominance,” East European Constitutional Review 5, no. 1 (1996)Google Scholar.

42 Quite obviously, however, the court has strong policy preferences of its own and in this sense is not at all above politics.

43 Paczolay (fn. 28).

44 Again, the numbers alone cannot tell the story, since the MSZP and SZDSZ had a two-thirds majority.

45 Parliament thwarted the tribunal's attempt to overturn the Balczerowicz plan, for instance, and to index pensions.

46 Although the left faction of the MSZP was at times in favor of legislating at least some constitutional changes, moderate socialists and especially the SZDSZ blocked all such attempts. Indeed, the SZDSZ succeeded in imposing a moratorium on all attempts to overturn the rulings of the Constitutional Court between 1990 and 1995, with the exception of slight changes that were approved with the accord of the opposition parties.

47 Author interview with Zoltan Bretter, Princeton, February 1999. Rudolf Tokes also notes that the MDF made a pact with the SZDSZ-FIDESZ “to avoid recurrent legislative stalemate with respect to constitutional issues requiring a supermajority.” On this point and for in-depth analysis of the history of Hungarian communism, the transition process, and parties, see Tokes, , Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change and Political Succession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, and see p. 397 for the MDF/SZDSZ-FIDESZ pact.

48 The socialists wanted the new constitution to integrate a deeper corporatism and a greater role for trade unions, but the IRC was not enacted as an institution belonging to the political decision-making process. The MDF wanted language more sensitive to national issues and at least symbolic attention to Hungarian minorities abroad.

49 Jasiewicz, The Woodrow Wilson Center East European Studies Newsletter (March-April 1997), 10.

50 Thanks to Jan Kubik for pointing this out.

51 Editors, East European Constitutional Review 7 (Summer 1998), 26Google Scholar.

52 Marody, Mira, “Three Stages of Party System Emergence in Poland,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 28, no. 2 (1995), 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and author's interview with Marody, Warsaw, November 1994. s3 Jasiewicz (fn. 49) explains that this cleavage overlaps with others, for example, nationalist versus pro-Western orientations.

54 Markowski, Radoslaw, “Political Parties and Ideological Spaces in East Central Europe,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30 (September 1997), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Jasiewicz (fn. 49).

56 Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (SDRP) formed the SLD coalition with the communist trade union OPZZ and other former communist groups. SDRP's platform emphasized separation of church and state, secular education, and abortion rights. It refused to support special privileges for the Catholic church and called for a general decrease of clerical influence in Polish politics.

57 This was especially the case for the Peasants Party (PSL), the Labor Union (UP), and to some degree Freedom Union (UW), although the latter has “relatively stable support from the old Polish intelligentsia and urban professionals—the nucleus of the emerging middle class”; Jasiewicz (fn. 49), 3.

58 The MDF essentially faded away as a political force in the elections of 1994.

59 Körösényi, András, The Divided Republic, Program on Central and Eastern Europe Working Paper Series, 32 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1993), 20Google Scholar.

60 Stanclik, Katarzyna, “Electoral Law and Party System Formation in New Democracies: The Case of Poland” (Manuscript, New York, Columbia University Institute on East Centeral Europe, March 1997), 7Google Scholar.

61 Ibid.

62 Recall only the extremes of political polarization and discourse of the mid-1995 initiative by Union of Freedom activists to block the socialist front-runner, Kwaszniewski.

63 Markus, György, “The Preeminence of the Centre-Periphery Cleavage in the Hungarian Party System” (Paper presented at the conference “Democratic Consolidation: The International Dimension—Hungary, Poland, Spain,” Vienna, September 25–26, 1998), 19Google Scholar.

64 Stanclik (fn. 60), 10–11.

65 Lewis, Paul, Lomax, Bill, and Wightman, Gordon, “The Emergence of Multi-Party Systems in East-Central Europe,” in Pridham, Geoffrey and Vanhanen, Tatu, eds., Democratization in Eastern Eu-rope (New York: Routledge, 1994), 163Google Scholar. Deak, Istvan, “A Fatal Compromise?” East European Politics and Society 9 (Spring 1995), 222Google Scholar.

66 Haggard, Kaufman, and Shugart (fn. 23), 21.

67 Certainly, the MSZP's rational self-interest must also be taken into account. Th e SZDSZ could have tried to block legislation proposed by the socialists from a position as an independent opposition party. Together with other opposition parties like the Young Democrats (FIDESZ) and, on some issues, with other parties, the SZDSZ could perhaps have posed greater problems for the socialists as an independent opposition party than as a coalition partner. It is quite likely, however, that the socialists could have pushed through a certain amount of legislation simply on the strength of their mandate and by consolidating even greater control of ministerial portfolios and administrative positions than they eventually did during their four years in office.

68 Author interview with Ivan Peto, Budapest, June 1994; author interview with Zoltan Bretter, Princeton, February 1999.

69 Author interview with Zoltan Bretter, Princeton, February 1999.

70 At least on the vectors of deep institutional restructuring and on some important constitutional is-sues of citizenshp and human rights, notably, the effective disenfranchisement of the Roma population.

71 Deak (fn. 65).

72 Clearly, the historical failure of revolutions cannot, by itself, explain Hungarians' propensity to choose compromise politics, and the foregoing examples are only suggestive of possible early influences. Especially if events predating the communist era are taken as part of the analysis, then 1956 is an important and unexplained exception—even though 1956 began from attempts to reform the system from within, not as a revolution.

73 Zielonka, Jan, “Let Poland Be Hungary?” SAIS Review 4 (Summer-Fall 1984), 119Google Scholar.

74 Avineri, Shlomo, “State Weakness as an Obstacle to Democratization,” Review, East European Constitutional Review 6 (Winter 1997), 99Google Scholar.

75 Gitelman, Zvi, “Is Hungary the Future of Poland?” EEPS 1 (Winter 1987), 146Google Scholar.

76 Ekiert, Grzegorz, Rebellious Poles: Cycles of Protest and Mobilization under State Socialism, 1945–93, International Institute Working Paper Series, no. 5 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1995)Google Scholar. Ekiert synthesizes an enormous literature on Polish opposition activities and their significance from 1956 through the 1980s and demonstrates that even very early encounters between the authorities and op-position groups resulted in the creation of “unpatrolled spaces” that “became laboratories of experience that nurtured political dissent and opposition.” Poland's 1956 de-Stalinization crisis gave rise to a much more open “political opportunity structure” than that found in Czechoslovakia or Hungary (p. 29).

77 Ireneusz Bialecki, review of Burawoy, Michael and Lukács, János, The Radiant Past in Journal of Contemporary Sociology 22 (January 1993), 43–44Google Scholar.

78 In the 1985 elections over seventy such candidates ran for office and forty-five became deputies in the National Assembly; at the same time several party stalwarts were defeated; Kövrig (fn. 22), 125.

79 Kövrig (fn. 22), 118.

80 “Rational,” because in exchange for political quiescence, their second economy activities would not be punished or blocked as in earlier years and thus would more likely yield economic payoffs.

81 Kövrig (fn. 22), 123.

82 See, for instance, Andorka, Rudolf, “The Importance and Role of the Second Economy for Hungarian Economy and Society” (Manuscript, Budapest, Budapest University of Economics, 1990)Google Scholar; Gábor, István, “Second Economy and Socialism: The Hungarian Experience,” in Feige, Edgar, ed., The Underground Economies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univrsity Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Gábor, István and Galasi, Péter, “Second Economy, State and Labour Market,” in Galasi, Péter and Sziráczki, György, eds., Labour Market and Second Economy in Hungary (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1985)Google Scholar; Kenedi, János, Dolt Yourself: Hungary's Hidden Economy (London: Pluto Press, 1982); Los, Maria, ed., The Second Economy in Marxist States (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rona-Tas, Akos, The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: The Demise of Communism and the Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “The Second Economy as a Subversive Force: The Erosion of Party Power in Hungary,” in Walder, Andrew, ed., Departures from Central Planning: China and Hungary (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Seleny, Anna, “The Foundations of Post-Socialist Legitimacy,” in Braun, Aurel and Barany, Zoltan, eds., Dilemmas of Transition (New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; idem, “The Long Transformation and the Point of No Return: The Socio-Political Impact of Hungarian Economic Reforms,” in Walder; idem, “Hidden Enterprise and Property Rights Reform in Socialist Hungary,” Law and Policy 13 (April 1991)Google Scholar; Sik, Endre, From Second Economy to Informal Economy: The Hungarian Case, Program on Central and Eastern Europe Working Paper Series no. 23 (Cambridge: Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 1994)Google Scholar; Sik, Endre and Kelen, András, Az “Örök” Kaláka: A Társadalmi Munka Szolciolóogiája (Budapest: Gondolat, 1988)Google Scholar; Stark, David, “Coexisting Organizational Forms in Hungary's Emerging Mixed Economy,” in Nee, Victor and Stark, David, eds., Remaking the Economic Institutions of Socialism: China and Eastern Europe (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; idem, “Rethinking Internal Labor Markets: New Insights from a Comparative Perspective,” American Sociological Review 51 (1986)Google Scholar; idem, “The Micropolitics of the Firm and the Macropolitics of Reform: New Forms of Workplace Bargaining in Hungarian enterprises,” in Evans, Peter, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Stephens, Evelyn Huber, eds., States -versus Markets in the World System (Beverly Hills, Calif: Sage, 1985)Google Scholar; and Szelényi, Iván in collaboration with Robert Manchin, Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Aslund, Anders, Private Enterprise in Eastern Europe (London: Macmillan, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wedel, Janine, The Private Poland (New York: Facts on File, 1986)Google Scholar.

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85 Ekiert (fn. 76), 22.

86 Recall that the Polish armed resistance came aboveground only after the amnesties of 1945 and 1947; Karpinski, Jakub, “In Poland, a Long-Standing Tradition of Resistance,” Transition: Events and Issues in the Former Soviet Union and East-Central and Southeastern Europe 3, no. 1 (1997)Google Scholar.

87 For example, Gdansk and Nowa Huta combined the potential for strikes in major industrial centers with intellectual communities that could support them; for Gdansk, see Laba, Roman, The Roots of Solidarity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Hungary, Tatabánya, Diósgyõr, and Paks lacked analogous intellectual centers on which to draw. Of course, dissident activity also occurred in cities without these features.

88 Aslund (fn. 82), 225.

89 Pelczynski, Z. A., “Solidarity and 'the Rebirth of Civil Society' in Poland, 1976–1981,” in Keene, John, ed., Civil Society and the State (New York: Verso 1993)Google Scholar.

90 Ash, Timothy Garton, “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism” (book review), New York Review of Books 42 (July 13, 1995), 22Google Scholar.

91 None of the major parties made a serious effort to appeal to second economy entrepreneurs in their 1990 platforms. From my numerous conversations on the subject with politically active intellectuals between 1989 and 1992, it became clear that many still doubted (erroneously) that a stratum of truly successful indigenous private entrepreneurs actually existed in Hungary.

92 Many analysts have emphasized the uncertainty regarding Gorbachev's reaction to the first Eastern bloc democratic elections as the main factor explaining the calculations of the opposition and the compromise outcome of the roundtable negotiations. This uncertainty, however, does not fully explain the compromise. Several equally important factors contributed to Solidarity's choices, not least among them Adam Michnik's conceptual frame, which had evolved in response to the political lessons he learned in 1980–81. “My political position during the Round Table had its origin in the memory of the collapse of the compromise of 1980—81 and in the feeling that it was now my obligation to make com-promise possible and to remember why it had previously failed.” See Michnik (fn. 12), 279. On the Hungarian opposition, see Bruszt, László and Stark, David, “Remaking the Political Field in Hungary: From the Politics of Confrontation to the Politics of Competition,” in Banac, Ivo, ed., Eastern Europe in Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 21–23Google Scholar.

93 On the calculations of Solidarity leaders, see Jan Gross, “Poland: From Civil Society to Political Nation,” in Banac (fn. 92).

94 This is especially so since the political referents for East Europeans were European, not Latin American. See Nodia, Ghia, “How Different Are Postcommunist Transitions?” Journal ofDemocracy 7 (October 1996), 17Google Scholar.

95 And arguably, they may be skipping or at least accelerating the prescribed “stages” of democratic and capitalist development often presumed to precede corporatism and pluralism. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

96 It meant, in other words, understanding corporatism as just one “element of consensus democracy,” as Markus Crepaz and Arend Lijphart have suggested. See Crepaz, and , Lijphart, “Linking and Integrating Corporatism and Consensus Democracy: Theory, Concepts and Evidence,” in British Journal of Political Science 25 (April 1995), 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In more detailed analyses of corporatism than it was possible to undertake here, it will also mean, as Kathleen Thelen has argued, paying attention to the “goals and strategies of employers … and looking at how politics at the local level shape and are shaped by macro level developments”; see Thelen, , “Beyond Corporatism: Toward a New Framework for the Study of Labor in Advanced Capitalism, Comparative Politics 27 (October 1994), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 For a more extensive discussion of possible ways to judge the quality of democracy, see O'Donnell, Guillermo, “Illusions and Conceptual Flaws,” Journal of Democracy 7 (October 1996), 160–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Illusions about Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 7 (April 1996)Google Scholar; Diamond, Larry, “Is the Third Wave Over?” Journal of Democracy 7 (April 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Linz and Stepan (fn. 1); and Remmer, Karen, “The Sustainability of Political Democracy: Lessons from South America,” Comparative Political Studies 29 (December 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Berman, Sheri, “Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic,” World Politics 49 (April 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Higley and Gunther (fn. 6), 13, 32.

100 Hirschman, Albert, “Social Conflicts as Pillars of Democratic Market Society,” Political Theory 22 (May 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Elster, Jon, Offe, Claus, and Preuss, Ulrich K., Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 250CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 J. S. Mill cited in Körösényi (fn. 59), 1993.

102 Rather than unilaterally eschewing this right in favor of the four-fifths option (see p. 11). Author interview with Zoltan Bretter, Princeton, February 1999.

103 FIDESZ, for example, refused to cede to the opposition leadership of the Committee on EU affairs, despite the fact that, thanks to the SZDSZ-MSZP coalition's self-restraint, FIDESZ itself held leadership of this committee when in opposition between 1994 and 1998. Indeed, Prime Minister Orban was the head of that committee. FIDESZ has also attempted to reassert (indirect) government control over the media and has altered the procedural rules of parliamentary debate in its favor. But it has backed away from some of its more divisive campaign rhetoric. FIDESZ has a conception of well-functioning democracy somewhat different from that of previous governing parties, insisting that party stability will be enhanced by the clarification of party programs and ideologies through the crystallization of clear left-right alternatives; see Tamas, Bernard Ivan, “Party Competence: Hungarian Intellectuals in the Struggle for Political Survival” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 1999), 372Google Scholar. FIDESZ's strategy is not, however, the result of the kind of bipolar communist/anticommunist conceptual frame that prevails in Polish politics.

104 The government has amended the working process of parliament so that it meets in plenary session less often, resulting in less time for the opposition to make its proposals in full session. The op-position challenged this, and the constitutional court has ruled that two-thirds of the entire parliament must decide upon its working order, and must do so by December 15, 1999. In that event the governing coalition's amended working order will meet stiff opposition and may well be reversed.

105 Ekiert and Kubik (fn. 17); Berman (fn. 98).

106 Since my concern here is with mobilization as a substitute for party politics and other democratic channels, Herbert Kitschelt's reminder is apposite. He points out that parties (as well as interest groups and social movements) are part of a “closely woven fabric of linkages between civil society and political institutions”; Kitschelt, , “New Social Movements and the Decline of Party Organization,” in Dalton, Russel J. and Duechler, Manfred, eds., Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 179Google Scholar. Clearly, this fabric is more tightly woven in older, better-established democracies. However, even France's venerable democracy has grappled with serious legitimacy problems and tensions in the relations between citizens and the state. See the classic analysis by Berger, Suzanne, The French Political System (New York: Random House, 1974)Google Scholar.

107 Slomczyftski, Kazimierz M. and Shabad, Goldie, “Systemic Transformation and the Salience of Class Structure in East Central Europe,” East European Politics and Societies 11 (Winter 1997), 188Google Scholar.

108 Poznahski, Kazimierz Z., “Rethinking Comparative Economics: From Organizational Simplicity to Institutional Complexity,” East European Politics and Societies 12 (Winter 1998), 184Google Scholar. Sarah Meiklejohn Terry also notes that “political volatility” has slowed privatization in Poland. See Terry, , “Poland: A Troubled Transition,” in Fischer, Mary Ellen, ed., Establishing Democracies (Boulder, Colo.: West-view Press, 1996), 239Google Scholar.

109 Bermeo, Nancy, “Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict during Democratic Transitions,” Comparative Politics 29 (April 1997), 311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Even high levels of strikes are compatible with transitions to democracy; Bermeo (fn. 109), 311. Yet what is not problematic during transitions and the early consolidation phase may present a major challenge later, if labor unrest combines with other forms of protest or more institutionalized pressure.

111 On the influence of “prior games” in the construction of political culture, see Consuelo Cruz, “The Politics of Fate and Possibility: World-Making in the Tropics” (Manuscript, New York, Columbia University, 1998).

112 As mentioned earlier, my argument about labor mobilization as a partial substitute for formal democratic channels should not be understood as a claim about labor's current strength. If anything, labor unions seem to have lost some of their earlier enterprise-level power to affect the transition process and especially to control privatization. Labor mobilization may represent frustration more than strength—a potentially troubling political state of affairs.

113 Hirschman (fn. 100), 214.

114 For a broad-ranging analysis of the long-standing tension between “advocates of collective rights” and “advocates of societal rights” in Eastern Europe, see Ramet, Sabrina P., Whose Democracy? Nationalism, Religion, and the Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post-1989 Eastern Europe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), esp. 97–110Google Scholar.

115 It is also evident in broader social controversies like the abortion debate. See Ramet (fn. 114), 97–110.

116 The origin of the first cross at Auschwitz was “an act of anti-Communist opposition: in 1979 a memorial cross was placed at the site (where more than 150 Poles were shot by the Nazis) to commemorate Pope John Paul II's visit to Auschwitz during his triumphal return to Poland”; Osa, Maryjane, “The Dynamics of Religion and Politics in Poland,” East European Studies, Meeting Report 168 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1998), 2Google Scholar.

117 See Stanclik (fn. 60), 12.

118 Harmel, Robert and Robertson, John D., “Government Stability and Regime Support: A Cross-National Analysis,” 'Journal of'Politics 48 (1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Weil, Frederick D., “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies: A Consolidated Model Tested with Time-Series Data in Six Countries since World War II,” American Sociological Review 54 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted in Stanclik (fn. 60), 1–2.

119 Michnik (fn. 12), 322–23.

120 Along the lines suggested by Ertman, Thomas, “Democracy and Dictatorship in Interwar Western Europe Revisited,” World Politics 50 (April 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should prove particularly interesting over time to compare East European cases with Ertman's argument that a rough balance between the strength of civil society and political parties was a crucial factor in the ability of a majority of West European nations to sustain democracy in the interwar period.