Life after the "Big Bang" in Poland
Economy Meets Democracy
By Steven J. Norton

Poland's early experience with economic and political transformation has served as both model and anathema to policy makers, politicians and citizens throughout the former Soviet bloc. Moreover, the pain and discontent caused by stabilization and continued austerity have brought to the surface basic conflicts; one of the most important is the conflict between "necessary" economic restructuring and the need for the fledgling democracy to respond to the concerns of its citizens. Some practical compromises among the leading political parties, and positive economic reports, have helped dispel the atmosphere of crisis which clung to the nation's politics and economy, but crucial questions about the direction of economic policy, and about the extent of democratic control of the economy, remain without final answers.

Many in Eastern Europe and the former USSR have been looking, rather nervously, at Poland for an indication of what they may have to expect as the transition to a market economy and a democratic polity moves beyond the honeymoon period. There has been legitimate cause for concern, as Poland's "shock therapy" program of stabilization and restructuring ran into heavy weather after the first year, and the stormy 1991 parliamentary elections -- the first since the end of Communist control -- returned a deeply fractured legislature with no easy majority in sight. New questions were raised about the suitability of the kinds of austerity programs favored by market-oriented economists and pressed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Worries were expressed about administering a prescription of economic pain in a new and fragile democratic system; some hinted ominously that the Eastern European nations were not ready for democracy, and that a little authoritarianism was needed to keep them on the "right" economic course....

Download the complete article: pl-politics-v1n3.pdf (70K).
Viewing this document requires Acrobat Reader version 3 or higher (this link will open a new browser window).