[guest name="Tomasz Zalewski " biography="Tomasz Zalewski is a journalist writing from Washington for the Polish Press Agency (PAP) and the weekly Polityka news magazine."]

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

The state of democracy in Poland is good, at least compared to some other countries of Central Europe where xenophobic and anti-Semitic parties are quite strong. In Poland they do not count. The greatest challenge, in my opinion, is the political apathy of Polish voters which leads to a very low turnout in the elections, usually one of the lowest in Europe. As a result, some rather mediocre characters get sometimes elected to the parliament.

The root cause of this apathy is a general distrust of politicians and politics in Poland. There are historical explanations for this phenomenon — the history of partition and foreign occupations of our country — as well as more recent developments, like the pain of market transformations in the last 20 years and disappointment with many prominent political figures, including the ones who get due credit for their past achievements in the fight against communism when they had shown enormous courage. Unfortunately, nobody is perfect, and qualities useful in an era of confrontation with a totalitarian regime do not always serve well in a normal democratic country where politics is a game of compromises, making deals, etc.

I could also draw attention to other weaknesses, like a too-small intellectual base for politics in a form of think tanks — there are still not enough of them and politicians do not use existing ones to a sufficient extent. Besides, media do not play their role as one of the pillars of democracy in a satisfactory way. They are so commercialized that they approach political issues too often in a sensationalized way which undermines their credibility.

That said, I would not assess the situation of Polish democracy as bad. In the U.S. you also have serious problems with the democratic process, as the debate about the health care reform shows.

[guest name="Krzysztof Jasiewicz" biography="Dr. Krzysztof Jasiewicz is the William P. Ames Jr. professor in sociology and anthropology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia."]

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

A couple of years ago Journal of Democracy, prompted by the apparent resurgence of illiberal populism in the region, published a series of articles under a joint headline: “Is East-Central Europe Backsliding?” (v 18 n 4). Several contributors to this symposium expressed particular concern with the situation in Poland, ruled at the time by a coalition of populists, nationalists, and religious fundamentalists. For one of the writers, the developments in Poland “have called up memories of the collapse of democracy in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.”

Yet, as copies of the journal were being shipped to subscribers in October 2007, Poland reclaimed the position of a trendsetter in democratic consolidations. Extremists of all colors and shapes may sometimes do well in elections, but, once elevated to power, seldom can deliver on good governance. The constant bickering among the parties of the ruling coalition eventually led to an early election, in which the people made their will quite clear, rejecting the extremists and electing a moderate, centrist government.

Of course, the outcome of a single election, be it a victory of or a setback to pluralist democracy, does not constitute a sufficient base for the general assessment of democracy’s condition. For this, we need to look at long-term trends. Poland’s record over the past twenty years has been remarkably strong, albeit not perfect. Of the five arenas of democracy (see Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation), Poland has achieved consolidation in at least three. Her political society has matured from an alphabet soup of political parties in the 1990s to a stable party system catering to an attentive electorate. Polish civil society remains vibrant and effective in solving emergent problems, in particular on the local level. The economic society, with the spirit of entrepreneurship and well-designed market institutions, has cushioned Poland against the negative effects of global recession. There are also positive developments in the arena of the rule of law. Decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal, which is charged with the judicial control of legislation, even controversial ones, are fully respected by all state agencies and institutions. The criminal and civil courts, however, have been notoriously slow in handing down sentences and resolutions.

The most worrisome remains the situation of the state apparatus. Poland attempted in the 1990s to create institutions and agencies based on the principles of apolitical civil service. To no avail: All state agencies that could possibly be used for partisan purposes (sometimes by the ruling parties, sometimes by the opposition), from the Central Bureau of Investigations to the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, from the National Broadcasting Council to the Institute of National Remembrance, are being used and abused this way. A country where an agency set up to fight corruption in all other state institutions is most corrupt of them all, because its leaders go after their political opponents as targets of investigations and provocations, cannot be considered a consolidated democracy.

Political expediency breeds corruption; corruption in turn breeds illiberal, populist attitudes among the public. For Poland to complete her democratic consolidation, the establishment of a truly apolitical and non-partisan Civil Service and removal of any partisanship from all segments of state bureaucracy are absolute necessities.

Learn more about Dr. Krzysztof Jasiewicz.