European University Institute Library

Individualism and the rise of democracy in Poland, Tomek Grabowski

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

Individualism and the rise of democracy in Poland

bibliography

1345517863

Tomek Grabowski

Rochester studies in East and Central Europe

"This book investigates the long-term preconditions of lasting and successful democratization. It counters conventional wisdom that they are a matter of proper institutional design, or that the political culture of democracy is a by-product of modernizing economic change. Instead, it argues that achieving lasting democracy is difficult without a prior breakthrough to individualism: a system of beliefs centered on the belief in one's inner worth and in one's inner capacity for judgment. The rise of an individualist belief system that is widely proliferated in society requires social conditions that are in turn hard to meet, including a widespread breakdown of traditional culture, a frontier experience, and a process of civic nation building. The book's empirical focus, Poland, demonstrates the logic of the individuation process in a condensed form. Poland's road to individualism (and with it, to democracy) consisted of a catastrophic uprooting of broad segments of society in the aftermath of World War II, the rise of a frontier environment in the Western Territories acquired from Germany, and an unlikely emergence of the Catholic Church as a civic nation-builder in these Territories in the 1960s and the 1970s. However, the Polish case is not unique, and the book offers an analytical approach that could successfully be brought to bear on other cases of democratization, both past and present"--, Provided by publisher

Introduction -- Part One. Individualism and social theory -- Four discourses of individualism -- Individualism reconsidered -- Theories of social individuation and a way forward -- Part Two. Individualism and democracy in Poland -- The democratic promise of western Poland -- Individualism disaggregated : the Wrocław and Łódź elites in a cultural perspective -- Part Three. Rupture and reintegration -- Rupture, 1945-1948 -- The Communist Party and the taming of the frontier, 1949-1955 -- A quasi-reformation : the Catholic Church in the western territories, 1945-1956 -- The socializers, 1965-1980 -- Conclusion : the resilience of individualism -- Appendix 1. Selected socioeconomic development indicators for Wrocław and Łódź at the beginning of the democratic era (1994) -- Appendix 2. Interview questionnaire for sorting out individual and corporate identities -- Appendix 3. List of interviewees together with their classification into two main identity types