Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

POLISH BUSINESS REFERENCES LITERATUR – POLITICS RELATIONS
NOTES
1
According to the FTSE group ranking (Sept. 2008), all EU15
countries were classified within the group of 25 developed market
economies in the world. Apart from Poland and Hungary,
all the other new member states from Central Europe that joined
the EU in 2004-2007 were still labelled as emerging markets;
www.ftse.com.
2
In his classic essay, Radaelli (2000) defines Europeanization
as ‘processes of construction, diffusion and institutionalization of
formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles,
‘ways of doing things’ and shared beliefs and norms which are
first defined and consolidated in the making of EU decisions
and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, identities,
political structures and public policies’. Understood as process
of adaptation, Europeanization does not lead to homogenization.
As abundant literature demonstrates, due to interaction,
institutional systems undergo adaptation processes according to
their own specific paths (Heritier 2005, Radaelli 2000, Ladrech
1994).
5
Corporate governance is understood here as ‘legal and economic
institutions constituting a system of formal and informal rules,
determining the behaviour of entrepreneurs’ (Kozarzewski,
2007).
6
For instance, Hungary has moved up 19 positions and Romania
16 positions during the same period.
7
The phenomenon of clientelism constitutes a continuation of the
nomenclature system of state socialism in many respects. It defines
the asymmetric governance system, where decisions are taken in a
fully discretionary way, and personal loyalty together with commitment
to exchange goods of unequal value form the backbone of
the relationship. In such a system, the patron uses public resources
in pursuit of private benefits, as the division between public and
private is blurred ( Jarosz, 2004). As for oligarchic patterns, they
are based on social networks, direct contacts with politicians and
administration, abuse of personal ties and reciprocity of favours
( Jasiecki 2002). The classic example is the financing of political
party activities by businessmen in exchange for privileged positions
in public tenders.
3
The scope of this article does not allow for detailed explanation
of the different understanding of lobbying, in particular, in
contrast to notions of interest representation, or social and civil
dialogue. For instance, the understanding of who a lobbyist is
under Polish law is quite different from the definition used by
the European Commission. I assume that lobbying constitutes
one of the forms of interest representation, next to territorial
parliamentary representation and corporatist representation
(Łabno 2009). For different aspects with regard to the conceptualization
of lobbying phenomenon in Polish literature, see:
Wołpiuk 2004, Jasiecki 2006, Wiszowaty 2006, 2008.
8
In these cases, the focus on building a blocking minority in the
Council of the EU was not sufficient, as the main political battle
took place in the European Parliament. With the expanding competences
of the European Parliament (also with the intialization
of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009), the Council appears to
be losing its crucial bargaining position within the EU decisionmaking
process. This puts the efficiency of the national route of
lobbying into question even further. For details on the lobbying
campaigns with regard to the above mentioned legislative acts,
see: Petsch (2006), Gazeta Wyborcza (2007a, 2007b).
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4
There are three transformation models identified, namely capitalism
from below, capitalism from above and capitalism from
without. The first model stipulated that a new private market
sector emerged in the shadow of old socialist redistributive
economy. The second one pointed to the attempts of the socialist
nomenclature to transform the system, while converting
themselves into the grand bourgeoisie and using
the resources (political and social capital) acquired
under the previous institutional setting. Finally, the
third model accounts for dominant impact of foreign
capital and ownership in the transformation process
(King, Szelenyi in Smelser, Swedberg, 2005).