The 1989 Roundtable Agreements in Poland: An Incomplete Elite Settlement?

The 1989 Roundtable Agreements in Poland: An Incomplete Elite Settlement?

March, 1997

After the 1993 parliamentary elections, the people who once stood on opposite sides of the barricade, representatives of certain milieus within the Solidarity opposition movement and reformers from the now defunct Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), attempted to form a "grand coalition." The victorious Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), a coalition of the Social Democratic Party of the Polish Republic (SdRP), the PZPR's direct descendant, and a number of trade unions and associations, entered into negotiations to form a governing coalition with the Labor Union (UP) and courted the Democratic Union (UD). After the failure of the talks, the SLD formed a government with the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), the descendant of a former PZPR satellite party.

This essay examines the relations of post-Solidarity and post-communist milieus and their ability to achieve a settlement, understood as the attainment of a formal agreement on new political institutions and rules of political conduct. The primary theoretical framework draws on the concept of elite settlement explored by Michael Burton, Richard Gunther, and John Higley in their book Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe. Their conceptualization of elite settlement is a process "in which warring elite factions suddenly and deliberately reorganize their relations by negotiating compromises on their most basic disagreements." ₁ Examining clear-cut examples of elite settlement, such as those in England in 1688-89, Sweden in 1809, Colombia in 1957-58, Venezuela in 1958, and Spain in the late 1970s, scholars see two sets of circumstances that are likely to trigger the process. These include the prior occurrence of a conflict in which all sides endured substantial losses, and an emergence of a major crisis that threatens the resumption of widespread violence. These circumstances threaten elites with a possible loss of their positions, and make them more inclined to compromise.

A distinct feature of elite settlement is the speed with which such a settlement is accomplished. Its essential components are put together rapidly, and only later does the subsequent broadening of elite consensus take place. Another feature is the accomplishment of a settlement through face-to-face, largely secret negotiations between the leaders of major competing sides. Such negotiations usually produce formal, written agreements which publicly commit all participants to the concessions made privately. An important element is the predominance of experienced political leaders, which Burton, Gunther, and Higley view as crucial to the successful accomplishment of elite settlement. Only established leaders enjoy the considerable autonomy from mass pressures that is needed to compromise on questions of principle that settlements require. They also have substantial knowledge of how the game of politics is played, and experience with previous costly conflicts, which make them keen to reduce elite enmities. Scholars stress that "the extent to which social groups are organized and led by elites, and the ability of such elites to reach agreements on divisive issues and subsequently commit their respective groups of followers to the terms of those agreements" are crucial factors to attain a settlement. ₂

The principal feature distinguishing an unconsolidated from a consolidated democracy, Burton, Gunther, and Higley argue, is the absence of elite consensual unity. Elite settlement helps promote the transformation of disunified elites -- disunified in the sense that they distrust one another, lack interfactional formal and informal networks of communication and influence, and disagree on the rules of political conduct and the legitimacy of existing institutions -- into one consensually and structurally united elite. It establishes patterns of open but peaceful competition and produces common acceptance of new forms of political conduct featuring restrained partisanship, forbearing and conciliatory behavior on the part of elites, the downplaying of explosive issues, the limitation of the costs of political defeats, and the avoidance of intransigence and hostility. Thus, elite settlement can facilitate the eventual emergence of a consolidated democracy.

The existence of a sustained antiregime mass mobilization or insurrection demanding radical political change, or the presence of anti-system parties with substantial and persistent levels of electoral support, are indications of elite disunity and the associated lack of successful consolidation. Other independent measures of consolidation may be found when constitutions are being drafted and ratified: public pronouncements by elite representatives and formal votes of ratification by elites are made, and often the electorates involved in the process also signal the degree of democratic consolidation.

Negotiations

Despite the PZPR's efforts to crush autonomous secondary organizations or subordinate them to state control, a reasonably well organized counterelite emerged in Poland long before the collapse of communism. The counterelite gathered around two poles: the Catholic Church and the lay intellectual opposition, and gradually expanded its influence over other social groups, including workers. The emergence of the Solidarity trade union in the fall of 1980 signified an important landmark in the integration and institutionalization of various opposition groups on the national, regional, and local levels. The introduction of martial law in December 1981 and the union's delegalization did not deprive Solidarity of its legitimacy, but it did significantly reduce the movement's political influence. Systematic persecution reduced the former national opposition movement to a few scattered centers of underground activity. Solidarity survived as an active but numerically reduced clandestine opposition and as the myth of a great movement. The allegiance of the work force to the movement's moderate leaders began to wane. Outside of the outlawed union, a number of ideologically differentiated underground circles began to grow in importance. With the continuation of the economic crisis and the gradual erosion of living standards, non-Solidarity workers' protest movements and non-Solidarity based, radically anti-communist groupings grew in strength.

The avalanche of strikes in the spring and summer of 1988 fell only partially under the control of Solidarity's established leaders. The emerging new leadership of the rebellious workers disregarded the "old" leaders, from whom they were separated by a generational divide. The strikes were too weak to force the PZPR to make the sort of concessions that had been granted in the so called August agreements of 1980, but they exposed the stalemate between the authorities and the opposition that had paralyzed Polish politics through the 1980s. ₃ A likely outcome was that the younger workers behind the 1988 strikes would in time drift towards Solidarity's more radical leaders, such as Marian Jurczyk and Andrzej Gwiazda, opposing a compromise with the government, ₄ and possibly drift towards extra-Solidarity extremist political groups, unless the union's moderate elements could be reinforced through some sort of power-sharing arrangement with the authorities.

That precarious new turn in political developments and the failure of Mieczys_aw Rakowski's reform program underscored the urgent need to arrive at a broad social consensus for socioeconomic reforms. Both the communist and the Solidarity leadership realized that the wave of strikes threatened a social explosion of unknown consequences. The danger posed by a possible new radical labor movement, together with the impact of Gorbachev's reforms, encouraged the political breakthrough that eventually resulted in the roundtable agreements. ₅ The party leadership decided to accept the calls for negotiations on the part of moderate Solidarity leaders that it had left unanswered during the winter of 1987-88.

The invitation to participate in the roundtable discussions, issued by Internal Affairs Minister Czes_aw Kiszczak in late August of 1988, was accepted by Wa__sa on behalf of the union, and the two held their first meeting on August 31, 1988, discussing the conditions for the roundtable talks. On September 16, Wa__sa and Kiszczak again met, accompanied by Stanis_aw Ciosek, Father Orszulik, and Professor Adam Stelmachowski. At a later phase, the number of participants was extended to include 20 other people from the government, Solidarity, and those occupying intermediate positions. The roundtable talks were scheduled to begin in mid-October. In fact, they began on February 6, 1989, but the actual process of negotiations had already begun. The meetings at which the framework for the roundtable negotiations was drafted were conducted in secrecy in the autumn of 1988. At least four meetings between selected representatives of the PZPR and the opposition, including the two top leaders from each side, Prime Minister Rakowski and Internal Affairs Minister Kiszczak of the PZPR, and Wa__sa and Bronis_aw Geremek of Solidarity, took part in the Internal Affairs Ministry villa in Magdalenka, outside of Warsaw. ₆ Therefore, the delicate early negotiations were named the "Magdalenka talks."

Once the unofficial negotiations with the government started, Wa__sa used his leverage to persuade striking workers to end their protest. The PZPR's promise to enter into negotiations strengthened the moderate wing represented by Wa__sa, enabling it to contain the wave of strikes and preempt the emergence of a new radical labor movement. Wa__sa's faction, warning that a radical splinter group within Solidarity was playing into the hands of the communists, managed to marginalize a rival group comprised of Gwiazda, Jurczyk, Jan Rulewski, and Anna Walentynowicz, who accused Wa__sa of betraying the union. ₇ Solidarity formed a more cohesive leadership before entering negotiations with the communists, creating the Citizens' Committee led by Lech Wa__sa.

To prevent any unpredictable turns at the roundtable negotiations (through the PZPR and Solidarity delegates interacting spontaneously with one another), a strict negotiating pattern and personnel segregation were utilized. Delegations were divided into sub-teams of parallel numbers and dealt with specific agenda topics at specialized sub-tables. Wa__sa's participation in the negotiations themselves was essentially limited to attending their opening and celebrating the signing of the agreements. A born popular tribune,Wa__sa instead traveled throughout the country delivering speeches in support of the negotiations, which lasted two months. The agreements were signed on April 5, 1989.

At the roundtable, the authorities agreed to legalize Solidarity, Rural Solidarity, and the Independent Students' Association, providing them with modest amounts of state resources. A powerful presidency was created and it was agreed that PZPR First Secretary General Wojciech Jaruzelski would assume the position. Solidarity agreed to accept the PZPR's rule for another four years, while assuming a role of legal but limited opposition. That careful arrangement was to be introduced by parliamentary elections, in which 65 percent of the Sejm seats were reserved for the PZPR and its satellite parties. Free elections were to be conducted for the Senate, the newly-created second house of parliament.

At the time, the roundtable compromise seemed advantageous for both sides. The PZPR expected to gain a breathing space of four years to complete economic reforms, until 1993 when fully democratic elections were scheduled. Through the successful implementation of economic reforms, the authorities hoped to raise living standards and elicit support from a substantial part of the population. Solidarity, for its part, hoped to build up the middle level cadres capable of replacing the old nomenklatura in the state apparatus, and to prepare a coherent socioeconomic program while being in the comfortable position of a parliamentary opposition without any responsibility for governing the country.

In addition to opportunities, the terms of 1989 agreements also presented risks for both sides. Many party members were against making any concessions to Solidarity. The PZPR VII Plenum (December 1988 to January 1989) convened to accept the results of pre-roundtable talks with the opposition and grant its agreement to enter into official negotiations. About 20 percent of the Central Committee members voted against the resolution to introduce political pluralism and to create new labor unions, including Solidarity. Under dramatic circumstances, Jaruzelski and Rakowski, threatening resignation, managed to marginalize the conservative wing was resisted the compromise.While appreciating its major gain -- the legalization of Solidarity and other independent organizations -- the opposition feared that its participation in prearranged elections would legitimize the communist system while its role in parliament would be reduced to that of an outspoken but weak opposition. Wa__sa greeted the agreements with the reservation that "we have obtained the indispensable minimum for... a democratic transformation." ₈ Indeed, the concessions by Wa__sa and his Citizens' Committee were received with skepticism by some of the public, and more radical opposition groups called for a boycott of the elections.

To prevent exposing and aggravating the movement's internal divisions, Solidarity presented a general ideological platform during the electoral campaign. More than 250 candidates selected by the Citizens' Committee ran as a united body, "the Wa__sa team," as symbolized by election posters featuring photos of each candidate shaking hands with a smiling Wa__sa. The chief message was that the team, sharing common values and able to work together, was the most promising vehicle for democratic change. Solidarity's electoral strategy helped neutralize the danger that some important components of the movement, dissatisfied with the partially prearranged character of the elections and the deteriorating economic situation, could splinter and either boycott the elections or campaign independently. In the end, some small groups that opposed the roundtable process did call for a boycott or launched their own independent campaigns, but they were marginalized. ₉

The scope of Solidarity's triumph and the PZPR's defeat astonished both sides. The Citizens' Committee candidates won all of the 161 Sejm seats open to independents and 99 of the 100 Senate seats. Only three candidates for the 264 Sejm seats allocated to the official coalition were elected in the first round. Only two of the 35 candidates running unopposed for the Sejm on the national list (which included prominent members of the political establishment), managed to win the required 50 percent of the vote. The defeat of the national list ushered in a constitutional crisis, as the election rules did not include provisions for a second round of voting for the seats expected to be filled by the candidates from the list. Eventually, an agreement was reached under which, four days before the second round, the Council of State modified the electoral law to fill the empty seats.

Poland's transition to democracy was achieved by elite settlement, as conceptualized by Burton, Gunther, and Higley. They view the key condition of the successful accomplishment of elite settlement to be the existence of elites secured in relatively coherent and powerful organizations and acknowledged as valid interlocutors for their respective clienteles. These factors, which enable elites to make concessions and strike a compromise, were present in Poland at the time that the two opposing sides entered the negotiations. The emergence of an anti-system opposition with some minimal level of organization and a favorable elite configuration within the outgoing regime facilitated the bargaining process that led to the roundtable negotiations. Both the PZPR and the Solidarity leadership feared that a wave of strikes might turn into a major crisis that could cost them elite positions. The secrecy of the pre-roundtable negotiations conducted at Magdalenka, far from public scrutiny, facilitated the arrangement of concessions at the negotiating table without mass pressure to stand firm. The leadership of both the PZPR and Solidarity enjoyed substantial authority to make binding commitments on behalf of their followers and to sell the negotiated compromises to their respective groups. The PZPR's reformist wing, which had been gradually gaining ground over the conservative wing throughout the second half of the 1980s, and which was helped by international developments, eventually managed to marginalize the hard line faction. The roundtable provisions, envisioning the PZPR's continued control over internal security and foreign affairs, as well as guarantees giving party members the opportunity to continue transforming their political power into economic influence, could be sold to PZPR members as guarantees of their relatively secure positions in the new political circumstances -- which made them inclined to accept the compromise with the opposition.

In the predominantly dichotomous political environment of the 1980s, Solidarity was not so much constrained by calculations of electoral costs, party splits, and the like as is likely for an organized political party under conditions of inter-party struggle. Although Solidarity's leadership entered the pathbreaking negotiations with the communist elite with considerably fewer links to the movement's former base, ₁₀ Solidarity was still widely regarded as embodying the national aspirations of freedom from communist rule, and its leaders were seen as speaking on behalf of the nation. The movement's "old" leadership, although weakened by the emergence of more radical factions which grew in strength throughout the 1980s, retained the position of indisputable protagonists of the movement, especially after the radical Gwiazda-Jurczyk-Rulewski faction became marginalized. Their background of anti-communist resistance prevented them from being perceived as selling out their followers. Moreover, Wa__sa himself, who was able to sway the masses, threw his weight behind the compromise with the communists and acted as a guarantor of its "rightness." These factors rendered the two sides comparatively free to make the concessions that the settlement required and to impose them on their followers.

Burton, Gunther, and Higley argue that the sudden and deliberate elite cooperation that make settlement possible must be extended over several years or even a generation in order to sustain the broadening of value consensus and to solidify elite unity. ₁₁ In Poland, the successful achievement of the settlement between the PZPR's reformists and Solidarity in the initial stage of transition could have laid the foundations for subsequent elite integration and the emergence of value consensus. The question remains: what prevented the convergence, or at least the coalition, of some post-communist and post-Solidarity milieus? ₁₂ The opportunity for a coalition appeared after the 1993 parliamentary elections. The Labor Union (UP), in particular, Poland's most leftist party, would be an obvious candidate for an alliance with the SdRP. In addition, the Democratic Union (UD), now the Freedom Union (UW), and the SdRP have much in common: they both have strong liberal wings, and they account for much of the intelligentsia between them. These two parties entered into a de facto alliance on many ideological and economic issues. A merger of parts of the post-communist and post-Solidarity milieus could have led to the formation of a strong social-democratic party able to attract a third of the electorate.

The post-Solidarity elites' insecurity prevented reconciliation. Post-Solidarity milieus do not have the support of relatively coherent and organized social groups, and therefore do not feel secure enough in their leadership positions to cope with such a daunting political and ideological task as forming an alliance with the reformed post-communists. The following section examines the reasons for the weakness of the post-Solidarity elite: 1) Solidarity's anti-party legacy; and 2) the fragmentation of the political spectrum.

The Anti-party Legacy of Solidarity

Solidarity's character as a synthesis of trade union and social movement, as well as a repository of national hopes, influenced its leaders' early perceptions of the need for party development in Poland. Solidarity's early ethics worked directly against the very concept of party and party politics. The movement's canon embodied sentiments of national unity, a distaste for decades of discredited one-party rule, and the desire for popular participation. Solidarity's key political strength was perceived to lie in its social unity, which its leadership feared would be imperiled by the formation of competing parties. ₁₃ A reliance on social unity was therefore a major factor in Solidarity's electoral strategy in 1989. The Citizens' Committees chose to remain within the bounds of Solidarity, and did not attempt to form a broad opposition coalition that would extend to fledgling independent parties. ₁₄ In contrast to Hungary, in Poland a full political spectrum independent of the communist authorities emerged only after the elections. Moreover, the prearranged character of the elections themselves turned the independent Sejm and Senate race into a vote for or against communism instead of merely a contest of programs supported by distinctive parties.

With the increasing differentiation of political forces within the Solidarity parliamentary caucus, the Civic Parliamentary Club (OKP), the disagreement over the movement's political future became more obvious. At the December 1989 conference on the ethos of Solidarity, some argued for the transformation of the organization into a political party, while others remained committed to the idea of a social movement. The first major party to emerge from within Solidarity was the Center Alliance (PC), formed by second-generation activists frustrated by Solidarity's "old" leaders' dominance in the government and legislature. The PC took advantage of the tensions between Wa__sa and the intellectuals allied with Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki over Wa__sa's aspirations to the presidency, and rallied behind the latter's candidacy. Even though Wa__sa's supporters broke up the unity of the Solidarity camp under the banner of the battle for pluralism as a necessary element of democracy, they stated in September 1990 that they were not predominantly concerned with recruiting members and strengthening their party base. In response to the formation of the PC, the Civic Movement-Democratic Action (ROAD) was created, thus inaugurating the shift towards a somewhat more coherent post-Solidarity organizational framework.

The reluctance of the Solidarity leadership to push Solidarity to develop along traditional party lines can also be explained by their "anti-political" ethos. Solidarity's leaders faced the task of converting themselves from an elite operating within the framework of a plebiscitary discourse ("us" versus "them") and articulating general national interests to an elite operating through mechanisms of representative democracy and expressing the interests of various collective actors. The communist elite, on the other hand, always represented group interests (mainly of the PZPR and economic nomenklatura) and had more experience in defending particular interests and orchestrating societal protests. ₁₅ Moreover, Solidarity's leaders wanted to preserve the movement's unity in order to provide a broad framework of political support for a program of economic reforms, the so-called Balcerowicz plan.

The other factor which impeded party formation was that Polish leaders conspicuously lacked the charisma that would help strengthen their authority and gather faithful supporters. The most charismatic figure on the Polish political scene was of course Wa__sa, but his tactics of balancing right against left ultimately worked against party development, rather than for it. At a time when the network of Citizens' Committees could have been transformed into a political party, Wa__sa pressed for their dissolution, fearing that a new party with close links to Mazowiecki's supporters in the OKP and the government would marginalize him and Solidarity. Instead, he chose to pack the national Citizens' Committee with his own followers and, later on, to support the "left leg" -- the post-communists. Wa__sa never had a clear party base and kept aloof even from the groups for which he temporarily indicated his support, including the PC in 1990-1991, and in 1993, the Non-Party Bloc in Support of Reform (BBWR).

Mazowiecki, who as the first non-communist prime minister and Wa__sa's challenger in the 1990 presidential elections had an opportunity to rally supporters and give rise to a strong party organization, is perceived to have rather negative charisma, and to be lacking in public relations skills. Other prominent political figures who could have assumed leadership positions were either technocrats unappealing to the mass public, like Leszek Balcerowicz or Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, or ideological figures lacking political flexibility, like Jan Olszewski. In terms of public relations, post-communist leaders like W_odzimierz Cimoszewicz and Aleksander Kwa_niewski made a much more attractive showing.

Party formation in Poland initially had a predominantly top-down character, which corresponded to the romantic and elitist features of the Central European intelligentsia in its Polish version. In intelligentsia-focused politics, personalities and individual relations played a prominent role. Moreover, the first fully contested national elections to be held in post-communist Poland were those for the presidency, which did not provide the most conducive context for party formation and development. The tendency towards personality politics was further strengthened by the unexpectedly rapid emergence of the question of the presidency, including the personal competition that got under way once the campaign to replace Jaruzelski began. The highly proportional electoral system utilized in the 1991 elections and the unexpected evenness of the distribution of the vote (the vote for the top seven parties was distributed across a band ranging from 7 to 12.5 percent) worked against the formation of strong party organizations. In the ballot, 29 election committees gained representation in the Sejm, and 18 parliamentary clubs were formed. ₁₆

Party development through territorial penetration is thought to produce strong institutions with cohesive elites that maintain a firm grasp over the parties' organizational structure. The development of the major post-Solidarity parties led these organizations to approximate cadre parties -- whose activities are dominated by small groups of notables -- and did not involve significant territorial penetration. ₁₇ While parties proliferated, there was little evidence of popular mobilization or growing partisan identification. The Democratic Union (UD), organized by Mazowiecki's supporters after his defeat in the presidential elections, claimed some fifteen thousand members. Only the post-communist SdRP and PSL maintained anything resembling mass membership. ₁₈

Moreover, Solidarity -- being a social movement subject to several years of severe repressions -- did not encourage leadership recruitment and elite circulation. The predominance of a narrow circle of leaders and their high visibility left behind "the salon of the rejected," to use Kuro_'s expression, an influential group of second-generation political activists ready to take advantage of any opportunity to advance their political ambitions. Impeded party development deprived the post-Solidarity elites of organizational strength and institutionalized support.

Fragmentation of the Political Spectrum

Solidarity, the strongest organization independent of the PZPR, attracted various groupings (some of which were clearly incompatible with mainstream Solidarity), and became a "catch-all" party, a confederation of various forces opposing the communist regime. Such a diverse movement could sustain its unity only as long as it faced a powerful adversary -- the PZPR. After the PZPR's dissolution at the January 1990 congress, its heir, the weak and marginalized SdRP, seemed to be on the brink of political oblivion. However, the SdRP inherited extensive material and organizational resources, experienced leadership, and much of its former membership base, including many apparatchiks-turned-capitalists, which soon helped the party to take a dominant place on the political scene.

After the 1989 elections, the main cause for tension within Solidarity was a dispute concerning the scale of reprisals against the former nomenklatura. The fledgling right-wing parties demanded the enactment of a screening law that would remove former communist activists and former secret agents of the security apparatus from the political mainstream. The Solidarity milieus that were dominant at that time in the government and parliament opposed lustration, fearing that it would be incompatible with the rule of law. Moreover, swept unexpectedly to power, Solidarity relied heavily on the mid-level state apparatus inherited from the communist era. It feared that lustration attempts would seriously upset the functioning of the state bureaucracy.

The split within Solidarity occurred in 1990 during of the presidential campaign, later termed the "war at the top." Paradoxically, during and since the presidential elections, the post-Solidarity parties saw each other and not the post-communists as their chief ideo-logical adversaries. The competition among post-Solidarity parties became so vehement that it became something of a zero-sum struggle dominated by personal attacks. The UD became the main target of the post-Solidarity right, which accused it of promoting itself as the "best and brightest" to whose rule there was simply no alternative. ₁₉ They accused the UD's leaders of manipulating the Polish transition together with the former security apparatus and the top apparatchiks with whom they supposedly struck a deal during the Magdalenka process to guarantee the nomenklatura's "soft landing" in the new system. ₂₀ The UD, with strong social-democratic and Christian-conservative factions, had a rather unclear ideological orientation. The post-Solidarity right's leaders took advantage of the UD's ambiguous ideological profile, claiming that it promoted a crypto-leftist agenda under a liberal disguise. The UD denied vehemently that it was a leftist party, although the departure of Aleksander Hall, who proceeded to form the Conservative Party, was viewed as tilting the party more to the left. The UD strategy was motivated by the fear that its voter base might be too narrow, as in the early 1990s voter support for openly leftist parties seemed to be weak. Small groupings that in 1989-90 left Solidarity to form a few small social-democratic parties fared poorly in the 1991 elections. The UD drew 12.5 percent of the vote and formed the largest parliamentary caucus.

Meanwhile, the right side of Poland's political spectrum entered a period of extreme fragmentation, which was a sign of its ideological and intellectual chaos. Many right-wing leaders engaged both in exaggerated attacks on the left and in brutal mutual competition. That behavior aggravated the rightist parties' distinct organizational weakness: a lack of material resources, small membership, and very weak territorial networks. The right was unable to develop a coherent economic program and failed to establish strong links to the entrepreneurial community. While embracing a right-wing social and cultural ideology, most of Poland's right-of-center parties espoused statist economic platforms, and saw the disgruntled workers of the collapsing state sector as their principal constituency. The debacle of the short-lived Olszewski government of the post-Solidarity right further weakened and fragmented Poland's right. The Olszewski government was dismissed through a vote of no-confidence supported by a coalition of the UD, Wa__sa's faction, and the post-communists after Interior Minister Antoni Macierewicz procured a list of politicians allegedly registered as former secret police agents.

Meanwhile, the left consolidated somewhat. Small, post-Solidarity, openly leftist parties and milieus originating from the PZPR ₂₁ united into the Labor Union (UP), led by Ryszard Bugaj, a prominent Solidarity leader. Having very modest resources, the UP's potential for electoral expansion seemed in doubt. Therefore, the seven percent of the vote it drew in the 1993 elections was seen as a great success. The dominant party on the left was the SdRP which became the largest grouping in the Sejm of 1991-93. Moreover, the isolation of the SdRP, ostracized for not fully denouncing its communist roots, appeared to be weakening by the spring of 1993, and relations improved to some extent with the coalition of parties in the Hanna Suchocka government and the opposition UP. Some prominent UD leaders, such as W_adys_aw Frasyniuk and Geremek, hinted at the possibility of talks with the "reasonable part of the SLD" in order to elicit support for reforms. ₂₂ Many of the legislative initiatives of the Suchocka government in the last months of its existence could pass only with the quiet cooperation of the SdRP. ₂₃ During the electoral campaign of 1993, the fragmented post-Solidarity parties turned out to be unable to form any meaningful electoral alliances. Mutual resentment prevented the parties that formed the Suchocka government from making any coalition arrangements, and they all rejected Wa__sa's proposal to form an alliance. The two biggest parties in the Suchocka government, the UD and the Christian-Democratic Alliance (ZChN), engaged in bitter infighting. In addition, the resentment between the UD and the UP increased. In effect, the UD, seen as responsible for the post-1989 political and economic reforms, became the target of attacks from both the post-Solidarity left and right, who additionally fought each other.

In the 1993 elections, a new electoral law with a five percent threshold (eight percent for coalitions) and using the d'Hondt system of calculating the relationship of votes to seats came into effect. The new electoral system performed its task of reducing the number of parliamentary actors only too well, but it skewed the nature of parliamentary representation, leaving most of the right-wing groups outside of parliament. Seven parties gained seats in the Sejm, two only narrowly. The vote was more concentrated than in 1991 and the new electoral system magnified the effects of the shift. Just four years after the PZPR's crushing electoral defeat, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), the electoral vehicle of the SdRP, came out on top winning 20 percent of the vote and 37 percent of the parliamentary seats. The UD's share of the vote was reduced from 12.5 to 10 percent. Unable to unite even in the face of the electoral threshold, the right-of-center parties -- despite the fact that those parties together received almost 30 percent of the total vote -- failed to gain representation in the Sejm, and acquired only a few seats in the Senate. Even though the UD's performance looked favorable in comparison with the post-Solidarity right, its role was bound to diminish without potential coalition partners.

In one of his first public statements after the electoral victory, SdRP leader Kwa_niewski offered the UD an opportunity to form a coalition with his party. When the UD formally refused the offer, he repeated it, this time hinting that the SdRP might be prepared to give up the post of prime minister. ₂₄ The SdRP entered negotiations with the PSL and the UP, without any practical reasons to seek support of the Bugaj-led party, and despite the UP's demands, which were excessive in comparison to its actual strength. The SdRP's apparent goal was to form a grand alliance with some post-Solidarity parties. Such an alliance would have been a significant ideological success for the post-communist left, which would complete its electoral victory, legitimize it as a true social-democratic party, and once and for all remove the basis for remembering the SdRP's communist roots. ₂₅

The UP, having fared surprisingly well in the recent elections considering its modest potential and the stiff competition for leftist voters, was not ready to enter into an alliance with a much stronger partner. ₂₆ Instead, the UP set its hopes on persuading the UD to join a coalition with itself and the PSL. At the last minute, the UP declined to enter the SLD-PSL coalition but promised instead to cooperate with it in parliament. Poland's most doctrinaire left party, the UP tried to "steal" leftist voters from the SdRP in the electoral campaign. Despite the fact that a large portion of its members belonged to the PZPR, the UP promoted itself as a party of "clean hands," leftist but not postcommunist. Its leaders feared that the party's newly-established identity would dissolve and that the UP would inevitably be absorbed by the SdRP. The UP leadership blamed the party's poor performance in the 1994 local elections on its lack of a clear stance versus the SLD-PSL coalition. ₂₇ Only then did the party leadership vote to become part of the formal opposition. Less pragmatic and more ideologically motivated than the SdRP, the UP still seems to be reluctant to form an alliance with the ex-communists.

The UD, after a period of vacillation, also declined an offer to enter into a coalition government with the SdRP. In such a coalition, the UD would have been only a junior partner, and was unwilling to assume the role of a "fig leaf" in an alliance with the post-communists. The social-democratic faction of the UD feared that an open move to the left would cause the departure of its Christian-conservative faction, associated with such leaders as Suchocka and Jan Maria Rokita. The existence of different ideological orientations within the UD helped the party attract both center-left and center-right voters. An alliance with the SdRP most certainly would have discouraged those voters who, despite their leftist convictions, rejected the SdRP and were attracted by the UD's principled anti-communist stance. In addition, those voters who supported the UD's Christian-conservative faction would have been put off by a coalition with a left-wing party, a development that would threaten the UD's already gradually shrinking voter base. After rejecting the SdRP's offer, the UD decided to move to the right by forming the Freedom Union (UW) with a party that failed to win seats in parliament -- the neo-conservative Liberal-Democratic Congress (KLD). In 1994-95, a few prominent UW politicians, such as Kuro_, Zofia Kuratowska, and Andrzej Celi_ski, expressed their support for establishing local-level coalitions with the SLD ₂₈ and agreeing on a common left-wing candidate for the 1995 presidential elections. With the growing polarization of the Polish political scene along post-communist and anti-communist lines and the emergence of both the Solidarity-sponsored, center-right grouping, Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), and the radical Movement for Poland's Reconstruction (ROP), ₂₉ the UW has now enhanced its anti-communist rhetoric and its criticism of the SLD-PSL government.

Both the UW and the UP are intelligentsia-based parties with only limited appeal to other social groups. Workers tend to prefer either the post-Solidarity right -- in the form of the AWS and the ROP -- or the post-communist left. Despite its strong leftist rhetoric, the UP's support among workers has failed to exceed six to seven percent since 1993. The party's biggest constituency remains white-collar workers, a voter base it shares with the UW and the SLD. Farmers, the second-largest constituency in Poland, tend to vote for Poland's only class-based party, the PSL. The UW is losing support among white-collar workers and entrepreneurs, its main constituencies, to the SLD. ₃₀ With the emergence of the AWS in mid-1996, part of the UW's right-wing electorate began supporting the AWS. Should this become a wholesale shift, the UW would be faced with losing its representation in parliament. ₃₁

The failure to complete the elite settlement initiated by the 1989 roundtable agreements has been caused by the lack of substantial, viable political milieus capable of concluding the reconciliation process by compromising on questions of principle. Such a development was preempted by the inability on the part of political groupings within Solidarity to take the path of institutionalized party formation. The movement has instead undergone a process of intense fragmentation which deprived post-Solidarity elites of strong supportive organizations. As Giovanni Sartori argues, with the increase in the number of parties, their identification becomes more and more difficult, which pushes proliferating parties in the direction of ideological and principled rigidity. ₃₂ Fragmentation and a lack of institutionalized support reinforced intransigence on the part of the former opposition elites for the fear of being outflanked by more extreme opponents in the competition for votes. The post-communists' successes, crowned by the 1993 electoral victory, facilitated to a substantial extent by the inability of right-of-center parties to field a credible challenge to the left, further hardened the uncompromising position of many of post-Solidarity elites. In contrast to the pre-roundtable negotiations, conducted in secret between a limited number of participants, interactions among political actors following the 1989 elections became subject to public scrutiny, which contributed to intransigence and their unwillingness to make concessions. Deliberations in open fora are conducive to demagogic posturing which is designed to attract supporters. Elites engaged in public negotiations fear that the abandonment of their demands may alienate their followers and will be perceived as a sign of weakness. Threatened by "outbidding" from increasingly radical anti-communist parties on their right flank, those post-Solidarity parties that could have played the role of an elite partner for the SdRP opted not to do so, fearing the loss of their political identity and party base. With the post-Solidarity parties failing to develop extensive, dependable and committed political constituencies, their leaders lacked the autonomy required to bargain on questions of principle. The post-Solidarity elites' reluctance to make compromises can be explained by a lack of confidence that their supporters will continue to back them in the reconciliation process.

Footnotes

Note 1: Michael Burton, Richard Gunther, and John Higley, "Introduction," in Gunther and Higley, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 13. Back.

Note 2: Ibid., 10. Back.

Note 3: Voytek Zubek, "The Phoenix out of the Ashes: The Rise To Power of Poland's Post-Communist SdRP," Communist and Post-Communist Studies 28, no. 3 (1995), 286. Back.

Note 4: Jurczyk and Gwiazda were Wa__sa's earliest colleagues who split with him and unsuccessfully sought the union's leadership post before the introduction of martial law. In the summer of 1988, Gwiazda said: "There is one tendency in Poland which calls for negotiation with the government and delivering society to the governments a partner to strike some deals. [...] There is a second tendency opting for an independent action of the society [...] they do not believe in an agreement with the government," and added that he and Wa__sa "are exactly on opposite sides of this line." Associated Press, June 23,1988. Back.

Note 5: Zubek, "The Threshold of Poland's Transition: 1989 Electoral Campaign as the Last Act of a Unified Solidarity," Studies in Comparative Communism 26, no. 4 (1991), 358-59. Back.

Note 6: Jakub Karpi_ski, Poland since 1944: A Portrait of Years (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 277. Back.

Note 7: Reuters, January 8,1989. Back.

Note 8: Zoltan D. Barany and Louisa Vinton, "Breakthrough to Democracy: Elections in Poland and Hungary," Studies in Comparative Communism 23, no. 2 (1990), 193. Back.

Note 9: Such anti- or non-Solidarity groupings as the Confederation for Independent Poland (KPN), Jurczyk's faction, the Union of Real Politics (UPR),and the Orange Alternative campaigned independently but with little success. Some prominent individuals, a number of them with a Solidarity background like W_adys_aw Si_a-Nowicki, launched their own campaigns and ended up competing against representatives of "Lech's team." The Gwiazda-Rulewski faction and Fighting Solidarity boycotted the elections and engaged in strong attacks against the Solidarity leadership. Back.

Note 10: Unable to top two million members, Solidarity trade union was only a fraction of its size compared to ten million in the early 1980s. Radzis_awa Gortat, "The Feud Within Solidarity's Offspring," The Journal of Communist Studies 9, no. 4 (1993), 117. Back.

Note 11: Burton et al., 16. Back.

Note 12: For example, in Hungary the Liberals made the opposite choice to that of post-Solidarity parties and formed a governing coalition with the post-communists following their victory in the spring 1994 parliamentary elections. Back.

Note 13: For example, Geremek in an interview in late April 1989, said that old party structures had served their purpose and that "something new was emerging." Paul G. Lewis, "Political Institutionalization and Party Development in Post-communist Poland," Europe-Asia Studies 46, no. 5 (1994), 785. Back.

Note 14: Some Solidarity prominent members like Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Aleksander Hall, and Marcin Król argued that existing political groupings should be given a role in the anti-communist opposition organized by Citizens' Committee. Back.

Note 15: Jacek Wasilewski, "The Crystallization of the Post-Communist and Post-Solidarity Political Elite," in Edward Wnuk-Lipinski, ed., After Communism: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Radical Social Change (Warsaw: ISP PAN, 1995), 131. Back.

Note 16: Frances Millard, "The Shaping of the Polish Party System, 1989-93," East European Politics and Societies 8, no. 3 (1994), 480. Back.

Note 17: Lewis, 782. Back.

Note 18: The SdRP, the biggest party, has a membership of about 60,000. Back.

Note 19: Zubek, "The Reassertion of the Left in Post-communist Poland," Europe-Asia Studies 46, no. 5 (1994), 821. Back.

Note 20: Teresa Toranska, My (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Most, 1994), 91. Back.

Note 21: Some prominent members of the UP, such as Wies_awa Zió_kowska, Tomasz Na__cz, Janusz Szyma_ski, and Marek Pol, had belonged to the PZPR until it became the SdRP at the January 1990 congress. They opted not to join the SdRP, which declared itself to be the PZPR's heir, and formed the Polish Socialist Union (PUS) led by Tadeusz Fiszbach. The latter party became moribund after the 1991 elections. Back.

Note 22: However, Mazowiecki said that the remarks of his colleagues were not an invitation to a coalition government with the SLD. Gazeta Wyborcza, April 10-12, 1993. Back.

Note 23: Among them was a very important privatization bill introducing National Investment Funds, which was opposed by some post-Solidarity parties and the union itself. Later on, the UW and the SLD cooperated in changing the composition of the public television board. In a referendum on the general transfer of state property in February 1996, the UW encouraged the people to cast their votes along the lines suggested by President Kwa_niewski, the former SdRP leader. The UW, together with the SLD, PSL, and UP, drafted the constitution which is opposed by the nonparliamentary post-Solidarity parties. Back.

Note 24: Rzeczpospolita, September 25-26, 1993. Back.

Note 25: During the 1993 electoral campaign, the SdRP was joined by the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), led by Piotr Ikonowicz. The PPS -- an offspring of late Solidarity's left wing, and staunchly anti-communist in the 1980s -- was, however, too tiny a party; its accession could not amount to the authentication of SdRP's social-democratic credentials. Back.

Note 26: Seven members of the UP Presidium voted against signing a coalition agreement with the SLD and the PSL, against six who were in favor and two who abstained. It can be said that the voting pattern reflects the membership composition of the UP, half of whose members once belonged to the PZPR. Back.

Note 27: _ycie Warszawy, April 27, 1994. Back.

Note 28: Such coalitions were formed, for example, in Warsaw. Back.

Note 29: As of February 1996, the AWS and the ROP together accounted for about 40 percent of support in public opinion polls. Back.

Note 30: Support for the UD among white-collar workers dropped to 17 percent in the 1993 parliamentary elections, a five percent decline from its 1991 level. The UD experienced similar declines of support in other constituencies: 13 percent of entrepreneurs voted for it in 1993, a three percent drop compared with 1991; seven percent of workers in 1993, a three percent drop; three percent of farmers in 1993, a one percent drop. Rzeczpospolita, September 21,1993. Back.

Note 31: On average, the UW is running at eight to 12 percent in polls. At the time of the UD-KLD merger, a poll found that 22 percent of respondents said they would vote for the new party. Back.

Note 32: Giovanni Sartori, "European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism," in Joseph La Palombara and Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1972), 159. Back.