The Political Economy of Poland's Transition: New Firms and Reform Governments

Description

In the time span of a two-term US presidency, Poland went from an authoritarian one-party state with a faltering centrally planned economy to become a relatively stable multiparty democracy and a market economy with one of the highest GDP growth rates in Europe. A central feature of these economic and political reforms is a high rate of entry of new, domestically owned firms. This book uses detailed economic and political data to examine how these new firms contributed to the Polish transition. The authors test propositions about why some regions have more new firms than others and how the success of these new firms contributed to political constituencies that supported economically liberal parties. The book concludes by contrasting the Polish with the experiences of other transitional countries.

John E. Jackson is M. Kent Jennings Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he has been teaching since 1980. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two J. W. Fulbright Research Fellowships and received his PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of Constituencies and Leaders in Congress: Their Effects on Senate Voting Behavior (Harvard University Press, 1974), co-author of Statistical Methods for Social Scientists (Academic Press, 1977), and editor of Institutions in American Society (University of Michigan Press, 1989). Jacek Klich is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Economics and Management, Jagiellonian University. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Jagiellonian University and a PhD in Economics from Krakow University of Economics. He is a recipient of the Alexander Hamilton Fellowship and the ROTARY International Scholarship. He is co-editor of Managing Health Services in Poland (Jagiellonian University Press, 2000) and Privatisation and Restructurisation in East-Central Europe (Platan, 1993). Krystyna Poznanska is Associate Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics. She received her PhDs in Economics and Habilitation from the Warsaw School of Economics. She is the author of Research and Development Sphere of Enterprises (Warsaw School of Economics, 2001) and Source of Competitive Advantage of Enterprises (Warsaw School of Economics, 2002).

"Both owing to its content and the intellectual and emotional inspiration behind it, this work is undoubtedly worthy of notice." - Jerzy Hausner, Akademia Ekonomiczna, Krakow, Poland