Whose Solidarity? The Ambiguous Legacy of Contentious Politics in Postcommunist Europe

Michael Bernhard

University of Florida

Abstract

Polish opposition to communism, culminating in the formation of the Solidarity Trade Union, was an early example of an innovative form of social revolution, which was urban, civic, contentious, and non-violent. Along with the People's Power Movement in the Philippines and the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, it pioneered a new form of anti-authoritarian emancipatory politics that effaced peasant-based insurgencies that dominated rebellion and revolution for the first three quarters of the 20th century. The innovative nature and success of Solidarity’s contentious politics made it a model for resistance in other Eastern Bloc countries in the 1980s and its model of civil society organization and mobilization continued to exercise influence through the Color Revolutions of the 2000s until today. What have been the long-term effects of this form of politics for the nature of twenty-first-century democracy and its durability? While the path from authoritarianism to electoral democracy was relatively trouble-free, did the difficulties of marketization and privatization pose added complications for the construction of durable democracy? Is continued reliance on contentious politics an advantage or disadvantage for stable democracy in this era of democratic backsliding?