Political Exclusion and Cultural Repression: The Rise of an Illiberal Civil Society in Congress Poland

• In Event: 278 - Regular Session. Building and Transforming Civil Society

Abstract

Why does civil society emerge and what leads it to support liberal, democratic states in some cases and illiberal, authoritarian regimes in others? Economic development approaches would argue that capitalist development drives the emergence and self-organization of classes, leading to the development of liberal civil societies. The latter, in turn, promote the consolidation of liberal democratic states. Institutionalism and state-centered approaches suggest that states, not markets, shape the character of public discourse and associational life. This paper examines competing approaches to explaining the development of civil society. Through a narrative historical analysis of civil society development in the Russian-ruled Kingdom of Poland (1815-1914) it proposes a state-centered explanation that focuses on elites’ conflicts, interests and the strategies that elites can apply in pursuit of those interests. It argues that the state, and specifically its policies of political exclusion of local elites and of cultural repression of the masses, played a central role in the development of an illiberal civil society, marked by elite domination and ethnic fragmentation, in the Kingdom of Poland.

Author

• Malgorzata Kurjanska, University of California-Berkeley