The Roots of Polish Culture-Centered Politics: Toward a Non–Purely Cultural Model of Cultural Domination in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

This article's main aim is to propose a novel model explaining the continuous domination of identity issues in modern Polish political discourse. The model proposed here may also appear useful as an explanation of similar tendencies in some other Central european countries. It is based on a specific reading of the modern history of the region-one relying on a structural perspective and specifically using Pierre Bourdieu's notion of a "field of power." In conclusion, the article suggests that the perspective it proposes may challenge what it calls simplistic accounts of processes of long duration.

Differential Illiberalism: Classifying Illiberal Trends in Central European Party Politics

“…336-339). The key concepts of the transformation from Third to Fourth Republic were framed in terms of culture and identity, and this corresponded to the tradition of Polish politics in the twentieth century (Zarycki et al 2017). Programmatic elements linked with moral issues, such as the struggle against cultural 'progressives' and the rejection of abortion, and the rights of sexual minorities, have been very important for PiS in the long term.…”

“…Even those works that address East Central Europe as a whole (Pakulski 2016) are not consistently comparative. However, we can build on the analyses of the Hungarian (Bozóki 2012;Bozóki and Hegedűs 2018;Bugarič 2015;Ilés et al 2018;Innes 2015;Körösényi 2018;Pappas 2014) and Polish (Buras and Knaus 2018;Pacześniak 2015;Zarycki et al 2017) approaches to an illiberal concept of democracy, as well as those of East Central European populism (Havlík and Voda 2018). Besides, we draw on our own research on the Czech Republic and Slovakia.…”

Judging the Communist Past: Historians and Cultural Expertise in Polish Administrative Courts

“…In a region where wars and foreign domination have repeatedly annihilated fortunes and destroyed property, intellectual capital came to be particularly valued because it was easier to transfer it between generations, compared with other more traditional forms of capital. 47 In the first decade after the transformation, higher education was also an effective protection against the unemployment that massively affected representatives of all other social classes. Combined with the de facto systemic discrimination against other social groups, such as private entrepreneurs, and given the relative irrelevance of legal professions under the communist regime, all this contributed to the unusually high status of intellectuals.…”

“…Similarly, among the 541 members of 115th United States Congress, elected in 2016, 194 have previously had a career in public service or politics, 179 came from business, 168 were lawyers (held a law degree), and only 99 were educators (including not only teachers or university professors, but also school administrators). In Poland, among the 460 members of the Parliament elected in 2015, "teachers and university professors" (58) were second only to career parliamentarians (67)-many of whom, however, could also claim an academic background; lawyers came in third (47). Fifteen MPs specifically identified themselves as historians.…”

Introduction: Capturing the Dilemmas of Modernity and Tradition in Mexico

“…Interestingly, some of these economies were particularly promising in the first decade of the millennium, such as Turkey (Parlar Dal ), Mexico (Villanueva Ulfgard and López ), and Chile (Gutiérrez and Jaimovich ). It is also worth mentioning countries with high cultural and political capital/power such as Brazil (Stuenkel ), Poland (Zarycki, Smoczyński, and Warczok ), and South Africa (Ogunnubi and Amao ). Finally, there are the cases of South Korea (Gray ), Singapore (Calder ), and Australia (Byrne, Tyler, and Harris Rimmer ; Laifer and Kitchen ), all displaying very high levels of generalized development while not being military or political powers.…”