Disaffected New Democracies? Identities, Institutions and Civic Engagement in Post-Communist Europe

Hubert Tworzecki

Department of Political Science Emory University htworze@emory.edu

draft - please do not cite without author's permission

Paper prepared for the ECPR JOINT SESSIONS OF WORKSHOPS April 12-18, 2004, Uppsala, Sweden

1

Introduction1

During the past decade, a vigorous scholarly debate has

focused on explaining the nature, severity and causes of

declining public trust and confidence in democratic

political institutions. Numerous surveys have reported

increasingly critical evaluations not just of governments

and their performance, but of the "political class" in

general, as indicated by agreement with statements that most

politicians are dishonest, that they lose touch, do not care

about ordinary people, are only interested in votes, and so

forth. (Pharr and Putnam 2000) Often coupled with similarly

negative evaluations of parliaments, state bureaucracies

and, especially, political parties, as well as a declining

sense of political efficacy, such findings seem to suggest

that something is amiss with conventional channels of

political representation. (see Table 1) Unlike the "crisis

of democracy" literature of a quarter-century ago, this

current research does not diagnose the problem as one of

excessive public demands on government, which create a

condition of "overload" that could ultimately undermine

democracy itself. (Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975;

1 This paper is part of a research project supported by a grant from the University Research Committee (URC) of Emory University. Warsaw's Center for the Study of Public Opinion (CBOS) carried out the survey fieldwork. Rafal Raciborski provided valuable research assistance.

2

O'Connor 1973) Instead, its authors speak of public

disaffection, cynicism and disengagement from civic life,

all of which, while perhaps not placing the future of

democracy as such in doubt, does have negative consequences

for the performance and effectiveness of democratic

institutions.

[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]

While much of this research has focused on Western

Europe and the United States, scholars working on the post-

communist region have also observed symptoms of public

disillusionment, declining trust in political institutions

and disengagement from politics. As Table 1 shows,

confidence in political parties is particularly lacking.

However, such findings are often analyzed in the broader

context of obstacles to democratic consolidation in these

new, and still arguably fragile, regimes. But while it is

true that in some post-communist cases declining evaluations

of political institutions and government performance go hand

in hand with doubts about democracy itself, in other cases

(primarily the Central European ones), the two kinds of

evaluations remain clearly separate in people's minds (see

Figure 1). In other words, whatever is going on in places

such as Poland in terms of public dissatisfaction with

politics, it is not necessarily a turn away from support for

3

democracy.2 Indeed, it may even have some similarities to

the malaise experienced by western democracies. It is this

latter possibility that will be explored in this paper.

[FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE]

Theoretical Overview

Broadly speaking, two major explanatory frameworks have

been put forward to account for this state of affairs, one

focusing on identities and institutions, the other on values

and social networks. With regard to Western democracies,

the first school argues that the explanation lies first and

foremost in the inability of political parties and other

representative bodies to keep up with rapid social change.

It is not just that, as Lipset and Rokkan have famously

argued (and other scholars still do, albeit with various

modifications and caveats), West European party systems were

"frozen" into their present shape close to 100 years ago,

under social and economic circumstances almost

unrecognizably different from the ones that prevail today.

(Bartolini and Mair 1990; Kalyvas 1998; Lipset and Rokkan

1967) More importantly, the very issues that gave rise to

the party systems we know today -- issues related to, in

Dahrendorf's words, "basic civil and political rights and

continued...

2 As Figure 1 shows, in 2003 there was some decline in support for democracy in Poland. It remains to be seen, however, whether this is the beginning of a new trend, or simply a reaction to the political

4

the social conditions that lend substance to these rights" -

- have largely been settled or at least defused. (Dahrendorf

2000, 311) But instead of adapting to changing

circumstances, political parties have switched their focus

from the pursuit of increasingly fickle voters to the

pursuit of control over state resources. Competition among

parties has thus given way to collusion, leading to cozy

"cartel" arrangements that breed corruption and only

increase public dissatisfaction with and disengagement from

politics. (Katz and Peter 1995; Kitschelt 2000; Lewis 2002)

Furthermore, historically representative democracy has

been inextricably tied to the idea of the nation-state,

which itself is under pressure from numerous sources.

(Dahrendorf 2000) The problems of public dissatisfaction

and withdrawal from political life can therefore be seen as

symptoms of a broader crisis of democratic legitimacy

prompted by various contemporary challenges to conventional

ideas about nationhood. (Maier 1994) A viable democracy

requires a demos that sees itself as a collectivity on the

basis of affective bonds rooted in common culture (with

culture serving as "the bonds of solidarity that underlie

consent" (Schopflin 2000, 30)), considers itself represented

by national political institutions, and believes that these

institutions do, in fact, have the power to make the most

important decisions that shape people's lives. (Fuchs and

corruption scandals ("Rywin-gate") that dominated the headlines for most of the year.

5

Klingemann 2002; Lacroix 2002; Schopflin 1996) But with

national cultures being redefined by immigration, and with

the authority of democratic institutions increasingly

restricted by transnational forces (globalization, European

integration) the result is a sense of disorientation,

disempowerment and fear. In the words of one observer,

... the average voter has lost control of the political and economic forces that control his life; parties in power have become absorbed only in perpetuating their tenure; outside peoples and abstruse concepts have achieved too great an influence. Identity -- defined as the expectation of predictable relationships within a given spatial domain, familiar faces in familiar places -- must be defended. The remedy is to realign a meaningful territory and political voice (Maier 1994, 61)

In other words, the problem -- at least in Western

democracies -- may well lie in a growing mismatch between

the realm of politically relevant individual identities and

the realm of political representation. For some voters, the

solution lies in turning to populist, often xenophobic

parties and movements that speak to such concerns; for

others, the reaction is one of disaffection and withdrawal

from politics they no longer recognize as their own.

The second broad category of explanations, associated

most closely with the work of Robert Putnam, sees the source

of the problem in the decline of values of trust and

reciprocity prompted, in turn, by the weakening of

associational life in western democracies. Active

membership in community organizations -- bowling clubs,

choral societies and the like -- is said to generate trust

6

in fellow citizens, which leads to greater civic engagement

and forms the basis of "social capital" that is critical to

the efficient performance of democratic institutions.

(Putnam 2000; Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1993) This

theory has been criticized from various angles, most notably

for its inability to specify what kinds of associational

memberships should matter and which should not (the so-

called "Hell's Angels" problem), the likelihood of a self-

selection effect (joiners may be more trusting to begin

with), as well as an inability to specify the exact causal

mechanism that leads from trust to better institutional

performance. (Rose-Ackerman 2001; Rothstein 2002) Despite

these shortcomings, the social capital theory does offer a

persuasive "big picture" explanation for what ails

contemporary democracies.

How applicable are these two schools of thought to

explaining disaffection in the post-communist region? At

first glance, the "institutional obsolescence" hypothesis

would seem inappropriate, not just because post-communist

democracies are little more than a decade old, but also

because of the relative instability of their party systems

during this short period of time: instead of parties that

have been around for decades, East European voters have had

to contend with immature parties that often lasted no more

than a few years. In other words, the problem is not

organizations that have outlived their usefulness, but

organizations that do not last long enough to become useful.

7

Of course this difference does not preclude the

possibility that post-communist societies, just like their

western counterparts, face major problems of political

representation. The post-1989 voter alignments were formed

on the basis of identities that seemed the most relevant to

people during those early, tumultuous years. But whereas in

the 1990s one of the sharpest political cleavages was

between, as I had argued elsewhere, between anticommunism

and anti-anticommunism (Tworzecki 2002), this is less the

case today as the old regimes fade in people's memories.

Conversely, whereas at the beginning of the economic

transformation process people were often unsure of their

economic status and their interests, today the divisions

between the winners and losers have become quite visible and

well understood. Combine this with the fact that whereas

party organizations come and go, the cadre of politicians

remains relatively stable (regardless of organizational

reshuffles, the same faces tend to show up in leadership

positions), and one can plausibly claim that the major

source of voter dissatisfaction in post-communist

democracies has to do with a kind of mismatch between supply

and demand for political representation. (Bielasiak 1997;

Ilonszki 1998)

In other words, one possibility to be explored in this

paper is that the manner in which post-communist political

systems are set up to articulate demands, aggregate

interests, provide representation and serve as legitimate

8

decision-making mechanisms, is out of sync with how the

voters conceptualize the political realm and how they

understand their own place in it. If people do not see

mainstream actors as relevant to the way they think about

and experience politics, the end result may well be

disenchantment and withdrawal, or, perhaps, the channeling

of political activity into certain limited patterns, such as

protests and demonstrations. (Ekiert and Kubik 1999)

The alternative explanation to be explored in this

paper, focusing on the sphere of values and shared patterns

of thinking, is not a simple test of the social capital

theory under post-communist realities. In the east, the

problem extends well beyond the fact that communism, by

clamping down on civil society and eradicating most

independent organizational activity, undermined the values

of trust and reciprocity. First of all, the concepts of

nationhood and citizenship developed in the east under very

different circumstances from those in the west. In the

east, where the history was largely one of rule by foreign

powers, states did not create nations; instead, national

consciousness emerged in parallel with or in opposition to

state structures that were perceived as something alien,

imposed from the outside, and designed to serve the

interests of outsiders. The communist regimes were

similarly regarded as alien impositions, and as such did not

generate feelings of shared civic pride and responsibility

for a common good.

9

As to civil society, its virtual destruction under

communism resulted in the emergence of what has been

described as a "sociological vacuum" between the level of

family and the level of nation. Consequently, people in

communist Eastern Europe came to conceptualize politics in

rather simplistic "us vs. them" terms: the "nation" (defined

ethnically, since civic nationalism was not possible for

reasons described above) against the "regime," both

perceived in undifferentiated, monolithic terms. This type

of thinking led to the belief that politics was a great

moral struggle in which specific interests and goals did not

have to be identified because they were obvious to all

right-thinking people. (Marody 1990; Matynia 2001)

This basic pattern continued into the early post-

communist era because the habits and attitudes and

orientations developed under communism could not be expected

to change overnight. The state -- even though it was now a

democratic and sovereign state -- continued to be perceived

as something remote, abstract, distinct from "society";

something on which you could make demands without sharing in

the responsibility of making tough choices. In the same

vein, the networks of civil society were slow to emerge, and

when they did, the new political parties, pressure groups,

business and civic associations were often viewed with

suspicion by the wider society as little more than cliques

or, worse, "mafias" out to exploit the common people.

10

It can be argued, therefore, that one of the basic

aliments of the post-communist condition is not just the

ongoing influence of the mental legacies of communism,

but a wider syndrome of what Piotr Sztompka has described as

"civilizational incompetence." (Sztompka 2000) Sztompka's

theory is complex and multi-faceted, but at its core lies

the claim that post-communist publics may have difficulties

in three major areas: first, the ability to participate in

public deliberation, which requires open-mindedness,

tolerance, respect for opponents and rejection of absolutist

modes of thinking; second, acceptance of pluralism, in the

sense of acknowledging that society is made up of a number

of different and quite often conflicting interests -- in

other words, rejection of the myth of society as an integral

whole; and third, an ethic of responsibility, both in the

personal sense of self-reliance, strong work ethnic,

entrepreneurship and so forth, and in the wider political

sense of understanding that democratic governance requires

an active and involved citizenry -- in other words, a

rejection of the old "us vs. them" mentality in favor of co-

responsibility for public life.

To sum up, the alternative hypothesis is that

disenchantment with politics in post-communist democracies

is not due to shortcomings of party systems or

representative institutions in general, but is the result of

the voters' intellectual unpreparedness for participation in

democratic politics.

11

The Data

The results presented here are derived from a survey

prepared by the present author and administered in November

2003 on a national, random sample of 1000 Polish

respondents. All interviews were conducted in-person by

staff of the Center for the Study of Public Opinion (CBOS).

For the dependent side of our analysis, the survey asked a

battery of questions, loosely modeled on a design used in a

recent British study of citizenship3, about participation in

a variety of civic activities ranging from voting to signing

a petition to taking part in a demonstration. The results,

presented in Table 2, are striking for how low most of the

figures are, especially if we bear in mind that the question

asked about participating in each activity at least once

since 1989. Indeed, a quick comparison with British data

(which asked about participation during the previous 12

months; see Table 2) suggests that civic disengagement may

be a far greater problem in the East than in the West.

[TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]

3 The British Citizen Audit. Pattie, Charles, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley. 2002. Citizenship and Civic Engagement: Attitudes and Behavior. Paper read at The Political Studies Association Annual Meeting, University of Aberdeen, April 5-7, Seyd, Patrick and Paul Whiteley. 2002. Is Britain Still a Civic Culture? Paper read at The Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29-September 1.

12

Because the Polish figures were so low, we decided to

reduce the large number of activities shown in Table 2 into

a smaller number of more generic types of participatory

behavior. To this end, the responses were subjected to

principal components analysis, the results of which are

shown in Table 3. Five dimensions of participation were

identified, accounting for 15%, 12%, 11%, 10% and 7% of the

variance, respectively. The first dimension is clearly

about political contacting (the media, politicians, state

institutions), both to share own views and to seek solutions

to specific problems. The second dimension is more

difficult to interpret, but it appears to be first and

foremost about what the literature sometimes calls

"consumer" or even "checkbook" participation: donating

money, buying or boycotting products on political grounds,

signing a petition, volunteering -- activities that for the

most part do not depend on sustained involvement with

political organizations. This is in sharp contrast to the

third dimension, which is precisely about organizational

membership and involvement, especially with political

parties during election campaigns. The fourth dimension

captures protest-type activities and the fifth one is about

voting.4 Factor scores were then computed to estimate each

continued...

4 The survey contained both a vote intention question and questions about participation in past elections (presidential, parliamentary and local). But whereas the intention question ("would you vote if an election were held next Sunday"), asked at the beginning of the interview, produced results in line with recent turnout figures, questions about past turnout, asked toward the end, were inflated by about 20-22 percentage points. It is possible that by the end of the

13

respondent's position on each of the five dimensions. These

scores will be used as dependent variables in the analysis

that follows.

[TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE]

On the independent side of the equation, the

civilizational incompetence hypothesis will be tested by

means of a battery of questions designed to tap into

Sztompka's realms of discourse, pluralism and

responsibility. As shown in Table 4, the questions were

asked in the form of ten 7-point scales anchored at each end

by statements expressing opposing viewpoints, such as "If I

had to choose, I’d rather be governed well than participate

in governing" versus "If I had to choose, I’d rather

participate in governing than be governed well" (respondents

were shown a card with a graphical representation of the

scale and asked to indicate their position on it). Three

index variables (Discursive, Pluralism, Responsibility) were

then created by adding the responses in each category

together.

continued...

interview some respondents -- who had just given detailed answers on a variety of political issues -- were reluctant to admit that they did not bother to vote. In other words, the interview process itself heightened their awareness of certain norms. Bishop, George F., Robert Oldendick and Alfred Tuchfarber. 1984. What Must My Interest in Politics Be If I Just Told You 'I Don't Know'? Public Opinion Quarterly 48:210-19. Rather than re-weigh the sample (and effectively reduce the N to about 600) we decided to use the vote intention question only. We did, however, run

14

[TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE]

Histograms of the three indices show fairly normal

distributions, with only the Pluralism index slightly skewed

in the negative (i.e. "non-pluralist") direction (see Figure

2). Do these results give prima facie support to Sztompka's

hypothesis, or do they place it in doubt? Answering this

question is a classic case of deciding whether to focus on a

glass as half full or half empty. On the one hand, the

majority of Polish respondents do not espouse the kinds of

values and attitudes that would arguably make it difficult

for them to participate in democratic, pluralistic politics.

On the other hand, the majority does not hold values that

would make this task especially easy, and the fact that so

many respondents place themselves in the middle of the

scales is somewhat disappointing. The question remains, of

course, to what extent do these value patterns correlate

with participatory behavior.

[FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE]

For testing the alternative hypothesis, having to do

with deficiencies of representative institutions, the survey

also employed several different questionnaire items,

including the fairly straightforward "Do you feel that there

the principal components analysis both with and without past vote questions and generated essentially the same results.

15

are political parties in Poland that represent people like

you?" As Table 5 shows, fewer than 22% of respondents gave

a positive reply, 65% a negative one, and the remaining 13%

chose "Don't know." At first glance, therefore, it seems

that there may be something to the idea that political

parties are failing in their function of providing political

representation. But this question also presented an

opportunity: by asking about "people like you," it prompted

the respondents to think how they see themselves in relation

to the political system. In order to take advantage of this

opportunity, we followed up with: "When we talk about

'interests of people like you', what kind of people do you

have in mind?"

[TABLE 5 ABOUT HERE]

This was an open-ended question, so a wide range of replies

was possible: everything from generational identifications

(e.g. "the elderly") to regional, religious and ideological

ones. In the event, however, the bulk of responses

mentioned socio-economic characteristics: some people

referred to social stratification categories (e.g. "working

class" or "intelligentsia"), others mentioned their

occupation or profession, others still referred to their

employment status (e.g. "wage earner," "part-time employee"

or "unemployed"). Taken together, these kinds of criteria

accounted for close to 60% of the total. Age or

16

generational identifications were a distant second, at

roughly 14%, with character traits ("honest," "hardworking")

in third place, at 7%. It is particularly revealing that

this breakdown is almost the same for those who feel

represented by a party and those who do not. In other

words, it does not appear that political parties are failing

to make themselves relevant to the kinds of self-

identifications that matter the most to ordinary citizens.

Extrapolating from this a little bit, one could even argue

that these findings place in doubt the hypothesis that

Poland's party system is in trouble because it is built on

the wrong (irrelevant) kinds of social cleavages.5

Another way of measuring the representativeness of a

country's party system is to present the respondents with a

series of questions about specific social groups -- women,

the elderly, farmers, business owners -- and for each group

ask whether there exists a political party that represents

this group well (if so, which one), or whether no party

represents the group in question. For the purposes of this

project, a battery of questions about 13 different social

groups was used to create a "Party system non-

representativeness index." It was constructed as follows:

5 Exploring the reasons for the Polish public's low regard for political parties demands a separate paper. However, preliminary evidence from this project suggests that much of the disenchantment or even anger directed at politicians (especially members of parliament) is due to a sense that they violate the trust placed in them as people's representatives. For example, when asked "How would you describe most politicians?" 77% of respondents chose "Dishonest," 9% "Honest", 14% "Difficult to say." In answers to a similar question 78% chose "Untrustworthy," 8% "Trustworthy" and 14% "Difficult to say."

17

for each respondent, all the "no party represents this

group" answers were added together, so that someone who

feels that no groups are represented at all would earn the

score of 13, and someone who feels that all groups are

represented would earn the score of zero.6

[TABLE 6 ABOUT HERE]

In Table 6 the two competing explanations of civic

disengagement are put to the test. The dependent variable is

a composite measure of political participation, created by

summing up each respondent's scores in the five dimensions

identified earlier (Contacting, Consumer participation,

Party involvement, Protest and Voting). The model is

estimated in stages, in order to first assess the strength

of the key independent variables, and later to see how they

fare when various controls are introduced. The first model

shows that signs on all the coefficients point in the

expected direction, and all the coefficients except for the

"Discursive Index" are statistically significant. The

second model introduces several additional items generally

believed to influence participation: interest in politics,

generalized trust (i.e. whether "most people" can be

trusted) and a sense of efficacy. The third model adds

continued...

6 The groups asked about were: 1. workers, 2. farmers, 3. pensioners, 4. civil servants, 5. the intelligentsia, 6. youth, 7. women, 8. the unemployed, 9. religious believers, 10. political elites, 11. ordinary

18

further controls for a range of socio-economic

characteristics, in order to make sure that the observed

effects are not due to education, age, occupation and so

forth. But even with all the controls in place, at least

one of the value indexes (Responsibility) remains

significant, as does the "Non-representativeness of the

Party System" index.7

Conclusion

The analysis presented in this paper shows that in the

case of Poland both the basic values held by respondents and

their assessments of the representativeness of political

institutions play a role in explaining the extent of

participatory activity. In other words, some support was

found for both hypotheses. The findings indicate that the

phenomenon of civic disengagement on the part of post-

communist publics is a complex and multifaceted one. It is

clear that fundamental beliefs about how a "good society"

ought to look like (how it should be structured, how

decisions ought to be made), as well as about relations

between individuals and the state (what individuals ought to

be prepared to give of themselves, what they can expect to

receive in return) do play a role in explaining political

people, 12. small business owners, 13.managers/owners of large companies. 7 Table 7 extends this analysis by looking separately at each of the five areas of participatory activity. However, the results should be interpreted with caution given that relatively few respondents indicated involvement in areas other than voting.

19

behavior. These findings are very much in line with

previous research on post-communist societies, which

demonstrated that commitment to democratic values may be

strong in a simple declarative sense ("democracy is better

than any other form of government"), but is in fact quite

shallow when it comes to the acceptance of pluralism,

respect for political opponents, tolerance of different

viewpoints and so forth. Perhaps predictably, the ethic of

responsibility was found to be a consistently significant

predictor of civic engagement.

As regards assessments of political parties, this paper

found that overwhelmingly negative opinions about their

ability to provide representation are not due to a mismatch

between the realm of individual political identifications

and the realm of partisan competition. On the contrary,

Polish respondents see themselves primarily in socio-

economic terms and the party system is structured by an

economic cleavage, with parties at one end appealing to

voters who have done reasonably well, and those on the other

side appealing to the bitterly disappointed "losers" of the

transformation process. What appears to be the case instead

is that political parties and their parliamentary caucuses

are judged primarily on their performance as "trustees" of

people's interests -- and the judgment here is crushingly

negative.

In the final analysis, however, both explanations

account for only a limited amount of variance in

20

participation data (about 13%; see Table 6, Model 1). Those

old staples of participation research -- interest in

politics and a feeling of efficacy -- as well as the more

recent, Putnam-inspired "generalized trust" indicator, carry

a considerable amount of additional explanatory power. So

indeed do certain socio-economic characteristics that would

not surprise any students of political participation in the

U.S. or Western Europe: gender, education, occupation, and

even residence in a large city. The post-communist

environment does have its unique characteristics, but it is

not some kind of terra incognita. The forces behind civic

engagement in these new democracies, however complex, in the

end turn out to be quite familiar.

21

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Politics in East-Central Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Tables and Figures

Table 1a: Trust in Political Institutions, EU Candidate Countries, 2003 Institution Mean Std.

Dev. Bulga ria

Czech Rep.

Estonia Hunga ry

Latvia Lithua nia

Poland Roma nia

Slova kia

Slove nia

Television 71.5 8.7 73 70 81 58 81 84 60 71 71 66Radio 67.7 9.0 54 69 77 53 74 79 65 65 75 66Army 54.5 11.1 62 38 61 48 49 47 59 75 62 44Written press 53.5 11.4 39 61 48 33 62 72 54 56 59 51EU 49.6 9.8 64 43 38 56 45 47 40 67 51 45UN 49.6 7.1 55 47 46 56 48 38 54 62 47 43Churches 43.8 15.3 34 28 32 40 42 45 51 82 48 36Charities 42.9 8.7 27 46 44 45 46 38 59 37 50 37Police 39.8 8.0 48 33 51 48 39 27 42 43 31 36Civil service 33.4 8.6 22 30 51 40 31 39 24 34 36 27Government 32.5 11.4 28 30 50 38 46 31 14 38 17 33Legal system 31.7 9.8 23 30 46 48 37 24 24 35 19 31NGOs 31.3 7.0 19 33 25 38 30 24 42 33 33 36Big companies

26.7 6.2 16 25 36 21 33 27 23 32 23 31

Parliament 25.8 8.4 16 20 36 36 30 23 13 33 20 31Trade unions 25.4 7.0 10 30 32 18 23 26 25 27 33 30Political parties

12.9 3.5 9 13 14 15 12 10 8 17 12 19

Note: entries are % of positive responses to "I would like to ask you a question about how much trust you have in certain institutions. For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?"; Source: Candidate Countries Eurobarometer 2003.4 (Oct-Nov 2003).

Table 1b: Trust in Political Institutions, EU 15, 2003 Institution Mean Std.

Dev Bel

gium Den mark

Germa ny

Gree ce

Spain France Ire land

Italy Luxem bourg

Nether lands

Austria Portu gal

Fin land

Swe den

UK

EU 43.8 13.1 45 40 35 65 57 37 53 57 52 38 36 61 33 28 20Government 43.3 11.1 40 68 31 54 41 33 34 33 53 41 43 46 52 53 27Parliament 38.9 10.6 38 53 24 47 42 30 31 27 60 37 40 39 49 42 24Political Parties

19.9 7.2 22 39 12 20 23 12 22 12 26 26 19 17 19 18 12

Note: Entries are % of positive responses to "I would like to ask you a question about how much trust you have in certain institutions. For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?"; Source: Eurobarometer 60 (Oct-Nov 2003).

Figure 1: Poland - Satisfaction with Democracy, 1992-2003

(CBOS data)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1992 1993 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Perc

ent

Democracy better than any other form of gov't Satisfied with way democracy functions

Table 2: Involvement of Participatory Activities Activity Poland UK Would vote if parliamentary election were held next Sunday 49.9 Worked as volunteer with others to solve some problem 18.7 Encouraged friends to vote 18.3 Signed petition 17.6 41 Took part in political rally 11.0 5 Contacted politician to present own views 10.2 13 Avoided buying products for political or moral reasons 9.7 30 Joined trade union 7.6 Contacted state institution about some problem/issue 7.5 Gave money to political party or civic organization 7.5 28 Contacted the media 6.2 Took part in demonstration 5.7 4 Took part in strike 5.4 2 Used personal contact with politician/official to solve problem 5.1 Joined political party or civic organization (other than trade union) 4.4 Volunteered for party or civic organization during campaign 4.3 Displayed button/sticker during campaign 3.5 21 Took part in illegal protest action 1.9 1 Note: Entries for Poland are % of respondents who engaged in given activity at least once since 1989; entries for UK are % of respondents who have done so during past year; not all questions were asked in both surveys or were comparable, hence the gaps in the UK column.

Table 3: Dimensions of Political Engagement 1 Contacting 2 Consumer

Partic. 3 Active

Partisanship4 Protest 5 Voting

Used personal contact with politician/official to solve problem

0.712

Contacted state institution about some problem/issue

0.701

Contacted politician to present own views 0.686 Contacted media 0.568 Avoided buying products for political or moral reasons

0.714

Signed petition 0.673 Gave money to party or civic organization 0.610 0.372 Worked as volunteer with others to solve some problem

0.468 0.473

Took part in political rally 0.429 0.425 0.365 Became member of party or civic organization 0.710 Displayed button/sticker during campaign 0.668 Volunteered for party or civic organization during campaign

0.462 0.524

Took part in illegal protest action 0.744 Took part in strike 0.738 Took part in demonstration 0.651 Would vote if election were held next Sunday 0.926Encouraged friends to vote 0.421 0.448 Principal components extraction, Varimax rotation. A scree plot was used to determine the number of principal components to be extracted. Entries less than abs(.3) were removed for emphasis.

Table 4: Construction of "Civilizational Incompetence" indices

1. Discourse Index There exist clear and unalterable laws that allow us to tell good from evil. These laws apply to everybody and to every situation.

Clear and unalterable laws that allow us to tell good from evil do not exist. What is good and what is bad depends entirely on a given situation.

Society should not tolerate political views that differ significantly from the views of the majority.

Every person should have the right to express his political views, even if they differ significantly from the views of most people.

With so many different ideas, theories, and political views, it's difficult to know who is right.

Despite there being so many different ideas, theories, and political views, it is easy to tell demagogues from rational and level-headed people.

2. Pluralism Index It is obvious to all reasonable people what should be changed and fixed in Poland in order to solve our problems.

It is not obvious at all what should be done to solve the problems of our country. Reasonable people can have different views on this matter.

Disputes among political parties are one of the causes of our problems.

Disputes among political parties are something normal and indispensable for the proper functioning of democracy

The majority of people in Poland want the same things; that is why politicians should care above all about the interests of the whole society.

People in Poland have different, often contrary, interests; that is why politicians should care above all about the interests of those who voted for them.

3. Responsibility Index A good society is a society which gives the lives of its citizens order and discipline

A good society is one in which citizens have as many opportunities as possible to shape their own lives.

If I had to choose, I’d rather be governed well than participate in governing.

If I had to choose, I’d rather participate in governing than be governed well.

It does not matter whether citizens show interest in politics or not because politics is a matter for politicians.

Citizens should show interest in politics because everybody is responsible for what happens in Poland.

The state should provide for the needs of all its citizens. People themselves should provide for their needs.

Figure 2: Distribution of Responses along "Civilizational (in)Competence" indices

Discursive index

10.07.55.02.50.0-2.5-5.0-7.5-10.0

500

400

300

200

100

0

Std. Dev = 2.99

Mean = .8N = 1000.00

Pluralism index

10.07.55.02.50.0-2.5-5.0-7.5-10.0

300

200

100

0

Std. Dev = 3.43

Mean = -2.3N = 1000.00

Responsibility index

12.510.0

7.55.0

2.50.0

-2.5-5.0

-7.5-10.0

-12.5

400

300

200

100

0

Std. Dev = 3.93 Mean = .2

N = 1000.00

Table 5 : Political Representation and Self-Identification

Feels Represented? Self-Identification Category

No Yes

Column Percent

Age 13.9% 13.4% 13.8%

Alienation .8% 2.8% 1.2%

Character Trait 7.0% 5.6% 6.7%

Education 1.3% .9% 1.2%

Employment Status 14.4% 15.3% 14.6%

Family Status 1.5% .5% 1.3%

Happiness 1.5% 1.9% 1.6%

Health 1.8% 1.4%

Life Chances/achievements .5% 1.4% .7%

Occupation 14.3% 15.3% 14.5%

Place of Residence 1.9% 2.3% 2.0%

Political Goal .1% 1.4% .4%

Political Identification .3% .9% .4%

Religion .3% .2%

Socio-economic status 27.5% 26.9% 27.3%

Sex .3% 1.4% .5%

Nation .6% 1.4% .8%

Don’t know/NA 12.0% 8.8% 11.3%

Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Row Percent 64.8% 21.6%

Note: Entries in "Feel Represented" column represent responses to question "Are there political parties in Poland that represent people like you?" The self-identification categories were derived from answers to a follow-up, open ended question "When we talk about 'interests of people like you', what kind of people do you have in mind?"

Table 6: Regression Analysis of Political Engagement

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3Discursive Index .05 .04 .00Pluralism Index .09 ** .07 * .05Responsibility Index .15 ** .09 ** .06 * Feels represented .10 ** .06 .05Non-representativeness of party system Index -.24 ** -.18 ** -.16 ** Interested in politics .24 ** .19 ** Generalized trust dummy .09 ** .07 ** Efficacy index .15 ** .11 ** Under 30 yrs -.06Over 60 yrs -.04Highly Religious .05Not Religious .02Primary Education -.04Post-Secondary Education .15 ** Unemployed -.06Professional/Managerial .07 * Unskilled Laborer -.04Female -.11 ** Farm Household .01Large City .06 *

Adjusted R square .13 .22 .27

Note: Dependent: combined political engagement index. Entries are standardized regression coefficients; ** - sig. at 0.01 level, * - sig. at 0.05 level.

Table 7: Regression Analysis of Political Engagement, by Area of Activity

Contacting Consumer Partisan Protest VotingDiscursive Index .06 .01 -.06 -.03 .02Pluralism Index -.06 * .01 .03 .08 ** .04Responsibility Index .06 * -.03 .03 -.01 .09 **Feels represented -.02 -.07 * .04 .01 .16 **Non-repres. of party system Index -.01 -.11 ** -.05 .03 -.23 **Interest in politics .15 ** .09 ** .14 ** .01 .04Generalized trust dummy .04 .05 .05 .01 .01Efficacy index .14 ** .07 * .02 -.01 .03Under 30 yrs -.08 ** .03 -.03 -.05 .00Over 60 yrs .06 -.07 * .02 -.17 ** .06Highly Religious .00 .03 -.04 .04 .10 **Not Religious .07 * -.01 .03 .02 -.06Primary Education -.07 * -.06 -.04 .08 * .01Post-Secondary Education .11 ** .16 ** .06 -.04 .03Unemployed .00 -.02 .01 -.09 ** -.02Professional/Managerial .09 ** .06 .02 .02 -.03Unskilled Laborer .02 -.01 .05 -.10 ** -.05Female -.06 .03 -.04 -.14 ** -.02Farm Household .05 -.03 .00 .05 -.04Large City .01 .14 ** -.04 .02 .00

Adjusted R square .14 .14 .05 .06 .14

Note: Entries are standardized regression coefficients; ** - sig. at 0.01 level, * - sig. at 0.05 level.