INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Baltics to Balkans Workshop
Wednesday, 26 April, 2006, 15.00-17.00
Public support for democracy in post-soviet Lithuania
Ainė Ramonaitė
Institute of International Relations and Political Science
University of Vilnius, Lithuania
ABSTRACT
Studies of political beliefs and values of post-communist Lithuania demonstrate that the absolute majority of Lithuanian population endorses the ideal of democracy; at the same time, however, about half of population in Lithuania support authoritarian alternatives of democracy such as the rule of a strong leader. Moreover, according to the newest data of the Standard Eurobarometer, citizen satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in Lithuania is the lowest among the new EU countries. The presentation demonstrates how the seeming inconsistencies of the attitudes towards democracy of Lithuanian people can be explained. It explores how meanings of democracy are formed by citizens that were socialised under the Soviet regime and examines the probable links between the meanings ascribed to the ideal of democracy and the level of satisfaction with democracy “in practice”.
Venue: Royal Fort House, Verdon-Smith Room, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Bristol
Contact: Gabrielle Hogan-Brun,
We thank the Institute for Advanced Studies for their support.
INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Baltics to Balkans Workshop
Wednesday, 3 May 2006, 15.00-17.00
The significance of Poland in Europe
George Sanford
Department of Politics, University of Bristol
ABSTRACT
Poland has been a major nation on the European political landscape for over a thousand years. But it has had an exceptionally varied experience as a state ranging from periods of national greatness as territorially the largest state in Europe during the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 14th-18th centuries to loss of national independence during the period of partition from 1795-1918. In the twentieth century precarious interwar independence was followed by the horror of Nazi-Soviet oppression during the Second World War and the grinding down of Soviet communism by Polish society after 1956 culminating in Poland’s pioneering form of ‘negotiated revolution’ in 1989. Since then Poland’s delayed modernisation has accelerated with a favourable international environment due to the end of the division of Europe and European Union and NATO membership. True to form Poland has resisted the extreme globalisation forms of democratisation and marketisation and has defended its original form of national identity and politics.
Poland’s experience has provoked different interpretations ranging from Norman Davies’ highly heroic-dramatic God’s Playground which stresses the tragic and turbulent aspects to George Sanford’s Conquest of History which emphasises the more normal and stable features. The Poles themselves have produced a mass of introspection about the balance between domestic and external factors in their history and whether the idealistic/heroic/Romantic or realist/positivist schools have served them best in the past. This is in order to answer their current dilemma. How best to respond to massive social and economic restructuring with consequent threats to deeply entrenched Polish core national identity as a price for acceptance as a normal member of the European community? Poland also provides an excellent case-study for deconstructing the functional use of values notably democratisation and marketisation by Western elites and their accompanying hegemonic political science discourses.
Venue: Royal Fort House, Verdon-Smith Room, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Bristol
Contact: Gabrielle Hogan-Brun,
We thank the Institute for Advanced Studies for their support.