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Why Hungary and Poland Differed in 1989: The Role of Medium-Term Frames in Explaining the Outcomes of Democratic Transition
ALAN RENWICK
Alan Renwick is Departmental Lecturer in Comparative Government at the Department of Politics and International Relations, and Rank/Manning Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Politics at New College, University of Oxford, UK.
This article has two goals. First, it seeks to enhance our understanding of the factors underlying the divergent outcomes of the round-table negotiations that accompanied transition from communism in Hungary and Poland. It argues that existing explanations emphasizing aspects of the immediate negotiating context should be supplemented by a medium-term perspective focusing on the frames through which actors conceived the options available. The second goal is to argue for an understanding of democratization as the outcome of complex, contingent and prolonged processes of interaction among actors and between actors and context. This does not imply that parsimonious modelling is not useful in democratization studies. But to understand democratization processes fully, modelling approaches need to be combined with more configurative study of historical processes.
The transitions from communism in Hungary and Poland in 1989 shared many features: both occurred following years of tentative liberalization; both were pacted, proceeding through round-table negotiations between regime and opposition elites; and both were in significant part initiated by regime reformers. They are thus often treated as a pair, and contrasted with transitions – notably those in Czechoslovakia and East Germany – where regimes were forced to accept change by pressure from below.1
Yet the Hungarian and Polish transitions also differed from each other in important respects. The round-table negotiations in Poland led to a semi-democratic compromise between the communists and the opposition Solidarity movement, allowing the opposition only a minority of the parliamentary seats and (informally) guaranteeing the presidency to the communists. In Hungary, by contrast, the negotiations created a framework for unfettered democracy, requiring the communists to fight on equal terms with the emerging alternatives. These differences mattered not only for the immediate course of transition, but also for the subsequent political systems: contemporary Polish semi-presidentialism, although moderated in 1997, descends directly from the partial transition of 1989, and contrasts with Hungary’s pure parliamentarism.
The article has two goals. The first is to enhance our understanding of the factors underlying these differences between the Hungarian and Polish transitions, particularly the differences in 1989 itself. The study begins by investigating three explanations that appear in the literature, each focusing on an aspect of the immediate context of the negotiations in 1989: the timings of those negotiations; the strength of regime reformers in each country; and the bargaining strengths of the respective oppositions. Each one captures part of the story. But the account presented here focuses on a further factor that has received less attention, namely the medium-term frames through which the opposition perceived the available options. The concept of frames – introduced by Goffman and prominent in the contemporary policy studies, social movements, and international relations literatures2 – refers to the ways in which actors conceive the world they are in and the choices they face. The argument that frames were important to the different outcomes in Hungary and Poland in 1989 rests upon two points. First, key actors in Hungary and Poland held different frames – different conceptions of the situations facing them in 1989 – and these frames shaped the actions they took during the transition. Specifically, since the early 1980s a conception of the path of possible change had developed in Hungary that allowed the opposition to take full advantage of the opportunities present in 1989. In Poland, by contrast, the Solidarity opposition operated through a frame that constrained its ability to pursue radical change. Second, those frames were not simply the deterministic products of structural factors further up the causal chain. Rather, a complex set of structural and more contingent factors shaped frame development in Hungary and Poland in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Given this complexity, the frames were a crucial step in the causal process underlying the divergent outcomes, and cannot be left out of the story.
The article’s second goal is to contribute to a wider debate in democratization studies. Some authors – such as Przeworski and Colomer – analyse democratization episodes through parsimonious rational-choice models.3 Others – such as Bernhard and Whitehead – argue that such models cannot capture the complexity and contingency of democratization.4 An intermediate approach is proposed here. I have argued elsewhere that abstract models can be valuable in mapping aspects of complex transition processes.5 But they cannot capture the whole of those processes. On one side, although rational choice analysis can model actors’ preferences among available options and their strategies for pursuing those preferences, full understanding of transition requires also that we understand what they conceive the available options to be. On the other side, although we can identify structural factors that mould episodes of political transition, we also need to understand the contingent processes through which those factors influence outcomes. The argument in this article is thus that understanding outcomes requires configurative study of complex and contingent processes linking long-range factors to immanent choices, and that the concept of frames provides one important means of doing so.6
The argument proceeds in five stages. It begins by outlining the different outcomes in Hungary and Poland in 1989. Second, it reviews three explanations for those differences already prominent in the literature, arguing that each captures an important part of the story, but that neither individually nor collectively do they capture the whole story. Third, it defines the concept of frames more precisely and explores the impact of frames upon the Hungarian and Polish transitions in 1989. Fourth, it examines the sources of those frames, and argues they were shaped by a mix of structural and contingent factors. Finally, the conclusion draws out implications for the study of democratization.
The Difference between Hungary and Poland in 1989
The outcomes of the round-table negotiations in Hungary and Poland differed markedly. In Hungary, the new electoral system allowed free contestation for all seats. The communists certainly sought an electoral system maximizing their expected seat share in the new parliament, but the system offered no institutionalized guarantees of their position in power. By contrast, the new electoral system in Poland guaranteed 65 per cent of the seats in the lower chamber (the Sejm) to the communists and their allies; 35 of these seats would be filled through uncontested elections, where voters’ only choice would be to leave their ballot blank or delete the candidates’ names. Solidarity and other opposition organizations would be able to compete only for the remaining 35 per cent of the Sejm seats, as well as all 100 seats in the newly recreated Senate.
Both round-table negotiations led to the creation of a presidency, but differences were large here too. In Poland, again, the institution was designed to guarantee for the communists continued power: as Brzezinski notes, ‘the presidency was seen as an important guarantee of the Party’s preservation of control over the executive branch’.7 This guarantee was sought through election of the president by the ‘contractual’ parliament. In the event, the communists’ unexpected rout in the parliamentary elections of June 1989 and the subsequent desertion of their previously loyal satellites extinguished their majority; nevertheless, Solidarity honoured the round-table agreement and ensured the election of communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski the following month.8 The presidency was endowed with strong powers, particularly in foreign affairs and defence.
In Hungary, meanwhile, although the communists saw the presidency as a guarantor of their power, they accepted fully democratic election; their victory was thus contingent on popular support. The precise nature and timing of the presidential election was contested at length in the round-table negotiations and the issue was resolved, in favour of election by parliament, only through a referendum in November 1989 and subsequent constitutional amendments after the parliamentary elections of Spring 1990. Although the communists sought a strong presidency, they were forced by the end of the round-table negotiations to accept an institution of only rather weak powers.
Thus, Hungary’s round-table negotiations paved the way for rapid democratic transition: in the 1990 parliamentary elections, the communist successor parties won just 14.6 per cent of the vote and 8.5 per cent of the seats between them,9 and the reformed communist party entered opposition; the presidency was won by a former dissident. Poland, by contrast, entered a semi-democratic period: the government formed in September 1989 contained four communist ministers;10 Jaruzelski was replaced as president by Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa only in November 1990; a fully democratic body replaced the ‘contractual’ Sejm only in October 1991.
Three Existing Explanations
The search for explanations for these differences begins with three existing accounts, each focusing on an aspect of the immediate context of the 1989 negotiations. The first relates to timing, the second to the strength of the reform communists, and the third to the bargaining power of the opposition. Each captures part, but not all, of the story.
The Disadvantages of Coming First
According to the first view, Poland suffered because it came first. As Sanford puts it, ‘Poland’s anti-communist trail-blazing was … achieved at the cost of initially slow and partial systemic transformation’.11 The Polish round-table negotiations were conducted between February and April 1989, those in Hungary between June and September. Several analysts emphasize this difference in timing in explaining the divergent outcomes.12
Two crucial events occurred between the two sets of negotiations. First, Poland’s communists suffered unexpected defeat in the June elections. Solidarity won all the seats available to it in the Sejm and 99 of the 100 seats in the Senate; the communists and their allies won no freely contested seat. Even in the 35 entirely uncontested seats, so many voters deleted the candidates’ names that only two were elected; the communists needed a post-election deal with Solidarity to fill the remaining seats.13 No one had predicted these results. Solidarity had seen its participation in rigged elections as the price for securing trade union pluralism.14 During the period between the roundtable agreement and the elections, commentators evinced no expectation that major change was imminent.15 The election results thus came as a great shock, and they can be expected to have changed the Hungarian actors’ calculations of their own relative strengths.
The second shift between the Polish and Hungarian negotiations was the clarification of Moscow’s stance towards the reform process. That the Soviet leadership accepted the Polish election results itself signalled that attitudes had become more permissive. Still clearer was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on 6 July 1989, where he stated:
The fact that the states of Europe belong to different social systems is a reality. The recognition of this historical fact and respect for the sovereign right of each people to choose their social system at their own discretion are the most important prerequis...
