Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper analyzes the politics and social service outcomes of the second round of decentralization in Poland. Poland's 1999 public administration reform reduced the number of provinces from 49 to 16, restored 373 counties, and decentralized public programs and services to these two levels. In the process it dramatically altered many programs in social services previously administered on higher levels including residential nursing homes, orphanages, adoption services, rehabilitation centers, and services for the disabled. It also provided the potential for increased citizen participation in social service programming. While the reform intended to improve services and participation, outcomes in these areas for social service delivery often failed to meet these goals. Many of these unsatisfactory outcomes can be traced back to the politics of reform development. Conflicting ideologies and pressures on policy actors stemming from a variety of historical, institutional, political and international sources resulted in compromises that caused unfavorable public service outcomes. Most significant for immediate outcomes was the tension between neoliberal and neotraditional ideologies espoused by reformers. This paper addresses a gap in decentralization studies by connecting the politics of decentralization with specific outcomes for public services on subnational levels of government.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper explores how the implementation of economic reforms affects the process of democratic consolidation. It does so by examining the post-1989 transition Poland and drawing on public opinion surveys conducted in the second half of the 1990s by the Centrum Badania Opinii Spo³ecznej (CBOS). It investigates the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and public attitudes towards democracy, political participation and perception of efficacy of such participation. The paper argues that while formal institutions of a democratic system have been established in Poland, the developments of the last decade raise a number of troubling issues concerning democratic consolidation. In particular the growing social inequalities and increase in poverty levels has meant that rather than seeing the growth of the middle class, there has been a growing bifurcation of the society into a small, well-educated, urban sector and the mostly poor, lacking marketable skills residents of small towns and rural areas. The first of these two groups tends to be supportive of economic changes, views democracy positively and is active in political and civic life. The second, is dissatisfied with economic changes, expresses a more tenuous support for democracy and is less likely to participate.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper seeks to develop a comparative framework through which to understand state-economy relations in post-socialism. It conceives of the struggle over the economy as a two level struggle:

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: By looking at the distribution of childcare and unemployment benefits in post-communist Poland and Russia, this paper explores why some transitional states are capable at administering policy in a satisfactory manner. To obtain a full picture of the distribution of these benefits over the past decade and a half, the degree to which arrears plagued the social welfare systems in the 1990s first is examined. Then, the results from a set of social welfare bureaucratic responsiveness surveys, undertaken in June and July 2004, are presented and analyzed to show that both countries’ social welfare bureaucracies perform in a manner deemed helpful to Poles and Russians. The two countries’ social welfare structures next are evaluated through the lens of Max Weber’s criteria for a rational bureaucracy and are found to be less “rational” than their counterparts in the tax administration, suggesting that they both meet minimal thresholds for providing adequate service.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This essay analyzes Rousseau’s writings on Geneva, Corsica, and Poland. I show that Rousseau’s advocacy of economic and cultural autarky in these “semi-peripheries” derives from his critique of Stoic cosmopolitanism, but that the side-effect of Rousseauvian autarky is xenophobia.