Politics of Protest in Poland

The Paper is an account of political impact of protests organized in Poland by trade unions after 1989. Social protest in Poland both before and after transformation was primarily a working-class phenomenon. Unionized employees were able to influence transformation processes in many ways: directly in enterprises, politically via their representatives in parties and indirectly, by creating a public opinion climate sympathetic with their goals. After transition trade unions declined numerically, but they retained a great deal of political influence by linking with political parties of both right and left. They organized a large number of protest events with both purely economic and economic-political goals. Moreover, they articulated normative visions of political order. By targeting protest activities at areas in the process of transformation they were able to change the outcome of reforms. This applies in particular to the systemic reforms in late 1990s, when public services were overhauled. Trade unions used their political capital to magnify the effectiveness of traditional enterprise-level protest activities. In subsequent years political influence of trade unions declined and they became increasingly instrumentalized by political parties. The Paper uses protest event analysis to examine the impact of trade unions on institutions after transition. The data is from the comparative project Politics of Protest in East Europe and East Asia.