Peter Evans Malgorzata Kurjanska University of California-Berkeley
This project is a continuation of dissertation fieldwork on how state policies of political exclusion and cultural repression shaped civic society. The past two decades have seen a resurgence of interest in associational life. Some researchers place civil society at the heart of democratic consolidation. Others cite examples of authoritarian states supported by dense yet uncivil society. Few studies, however, analyze what forces shape the associational landscape?s character. Thus, this research asks: Why do associations arise and what leads them to become civil or uncivil in character? A survey of relevant scholarly literature reveals two types of explanations: state-centered and economic theories. This project tests and builds upon these theories through comparative analysis of associational life in pre-WWI and interwar [1918-1939] Poland. The project employs cross-regional and cross-time historical comparisons. It utilizes historical narratives and descriptive statistics to examine the development of associational life in pre-WWI and interwar Poland. In addition to theoretical contributions, this research will contribute to knowledge on civic society in Eastern Europe. Polish civic society has been researched extensively in the post-communist context. Yet there are few studies of pre-WWII associational life in the ethnically diverse societies of early twentieth century Eastern Europe. This dissertation addresses this gap in existing research.
Broader Impacts
The study incorporates research that is often overlooked as it is not readily available to non-Polish speakers. Thus, it will bring to an English-speaking audience studies that have been marginalized due to language barriers. A historical analysis of factors that shaped the associational landscape in interwar Poland will shed light on the implications of social and economic policies pursued by modern, multi-ethnic states with growing civic societies and uncertain paths to democratization. This project contributes to modern debates by helping to identify the types of policies, social or economic, which support the development of civil society.
The main purpose of this project was to gather additional information for a doctoral dissertation in two sites: in the Central Historical State Archives of Ukraine in Lviv and in the Lithuanian State Historical Archive in Vilnus. Research in the Central Historical State Archives of Ukraine was crucial for collecting documents on associational life in pre-WWI Krakow. Before WWI (1846-1914), Krakow was part of the semi-autonomous region of Galicia within the Austro-Hungarian empire. The administrative offices for the region were located in Lviv. Thus state-gathered and produced documentation on associational life in Krakow before WWI is located in Lviv. Research in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives in Vilnius was necessary because of a lack of data on interwar Polish organizations in Warsaw. The absence of such data is due to fires and destruction during WWII. The co-PI travelled to Vilnius to collect state registries of individual interwar organizations, which note the political affiliation of organizations' members. This data is necessary for a comparative analysis of the domination of interwar organizations by political parties in three cities of interwar Poland that, prior to WWI, were ruled by different states. The co-PI has previously collected necessary documentation in Krakow (pre-WWI Austrian) and Poznan (pre-WWI German). The collection of these documents from Vilnius provides information on interwar organizations from a region that was under Russian rule before WWI. Fieldwork was successful in both Lviv and Vilnius. In Vilnius, the co-principal investigator located and copied individual state registries of various types of interwar organizations (professional, recreational, service, etc). The documents note the number of an organization’s members and its members' political affiliation (by percentage). This information has been transcribed into an Excel database, and has been used to conduct preliminary comparisons against similar registration documents collected during previous fieldwork in the Polish National archives in Poznan and Krakow. The preliminary results support the original hypothesis proposed by the co-PI, that state-policies shape liberal or illiberal characteristics of civil society, particularly with respect to domination of associations by elites or political actors. Once formed, characteristics of civil society are temporarily "sticky," or resistant to change. Due to state policies of political inclusion (of local elites) organizations in interwar Krakow (in pre-WWI Austria) were, on average, less likely to be dominated by single political parties than either in Poznan (in pre-WWI Germany) or Vilnius (in pre-WWI Russia). On average, 82% of members of individual organizations in Poznan supported the same political party (these results are likely higher than average for all organizations, as this kind of individual-level organizational data in Poznan remains only for professional organizations). In Vilnius, on average, 79.2% of members of individual organizations supported the same political party. In Krakow, on average, 69.8% of members of an individual organization supported the same political party. In Lviv, the co-principal investigator was able to locate two crucial sets of data. The first are associational registries for all of Galicia, which list, by county, all of the organizations registered since 1846 until 1914. The registries contain the name of each organization (and in some cases where the name is not informative, a very brief additional description), location, date of registration and date that an organization was removed from the registry. These hand-written registries were copied and are in the process of being transcribed into a database. This database will be subsequently coded and used to provide descriptive statistics about the associational landscape that arose in the Krakow region before WWI. Secondly, the co-principal investigator conducted a random sample of government-collected data on 170 organizations in pre-WWI Krakow. The documents that were collected on organizations by the state included organizations' statutes, and in some cases additional information such as some membership lists or information data. The co-PI used this data to code organizations by type (thus denoting their purpose), as well as whether an organization's statute was explicitly ethnically or religiously exclusive in membership, explicitly ethnically or religiously inclusive in membership, or implicitly inclusive (by mentioning no religious or ethnic restrictions). Where additional information was available, such as a membership list or a list of the associations' leaders, it was noted whether such additional information provided evidence that the organization had a cross-ethnic membership. This data provides a deeper look at the degree to which associations in pre-WWI Krakow were legally ethnically inclusive or exclusive in their membership. Furthermore, in comparison to data collected on pre-WWI associations in Warsaw, this data supports a hypothesis proposed by the co-PI, that policies of political inclusion/exclusion and cultural repression/tolerance lead civil society to develop liberal/illiberal characteristics. In particular, this dataset supports the hypothesis that civil societies that arise under politically inclusionary and culturally tolerant states are more likely to reflect and reinforced cultural or ethno-racial social integration than civil societies that arise under politically exclusionary and culturally repressive states.
